When the lockdowns began in 2020, Deputy's customers disappeared. Cafes, restaurants and shops were the heart of its business, and the pandemic halved a user base of two million. The company laid off 30 percent of its roughly 300 staff and had to fight to stay alive.
That low point is easy to forget now. For most of its history Deputy had looked like a quiet success. It had been founded in 2008 by Ashik Ahmed and Steve Shelley. Ahmed had been the chief technology officer of an aviation services business run by Shelley, and the two moved from planes to rosters, building software that would let a manager schedule a shift from a phone.
The company that had grown by selling to hourly workers lost them overnight.
For about eight years, Deputy was bootstrapped, a stubborn choice in a start-up scene that raised money early. The first outside cheque came in January 2017, a Series A led by Boston's OpenView of around US$25 million. Late 2018 brought the Series B: A$111 million, which valued the company at A$423 million and was one of the largest for an Australian software company.
Then came the pandemic. The company that had grown by selling to hourly workers lost them overnight. Survival meant cutting a third of the staff and rebuilding for a different kind of recovery.
It worked, slowly. Revenue roughly trebled in three years, and annual recurring revenue passed A$100 million by 2023. The statutory loss of A$24.9 million turned into a A$8.5 million profit in FY23. In February 2023 Ahmed stepped down after six years as CEO, handing over to Silvija Martincevic, based in the US. In 2024 a A$37 million investment from US staffing firm Express Employment Professionals put its reported valuation above A$1 billion, although the company was reluctant to discuss it publicly. A spokesperson said backing from a customer or partner was strong validation.
What is the lesson? Deputy was built to serve the workers who were hit first and hardest, and it survived the worst year of its life by shrinking first. Founders who build for a narrow market should know that the market can vanish, and that a reputation for frugality, earned in eight bootstrapped years, is what lets a company make the hard cuts without breaking.