By: Lauren Shelby
I had the pleasure of interviewing Topher Reynoso as Penn State Dickinson Law’s June Entrepreneur of the Month. A Penn State Dickinson Law graduate, Topher is the co-founder of PlanGrade, web-based software for business employers. The software simplifies employer benefits compliance and management by providing easily integrated solutions and automating different aspects of health & welfare benefits compliance plans. PlanGrade was acquired by ZenPayroll and 
rebranded as Gusto. Today, Gusto provides cloud-based payroll, benefits, and human resource management software for businesses. Topher serves as Gusto’s Head of Insurance and Benefits Compliance.
Don’t hesitate to Choose the “Non-traditional” path
Topher knew from the start that he wanted to take a non-traditional path after law school. In fact, he never sat for the bar. Nonetheless, he still felt the pressure to subscribe to a typical path. He was frequently questioned about his choices and worried he might be wasting his education. The pressure was intense enough to cause Topher to consider dropping out of law school during his third-year and focus on his first start-up, Wyatt’s Torching Publishing, LLC. His start-up contracted with publishers like LexisNexis to license and develop educational software that could provide students with digital textbooks.
However, he is happy that he finished his legal education. He finds the skills he developed in law school to be very applicable to co-founding and managing a business, specifically the skills of problem-solving, writing, and negotiation. In addition, he believes that non-traditional law students should consider expanding beyond legal knowledge and develop a basic understanding of engineering and programming because there is often no one on a legal team who is capable of dealing with those areas.
passion should drive you
Despite showing potential, the 2009 recession created conditions that ended Wyatt’s Torching Publishing. Despite the failure of the business, Topher doesn’t regret the experience. Rather, he viewed the knowledge and connections he gained from it as “an investment in future entrepreneurial opportunities.” Additionally, he learned the importance of having a passion for the industry of your start-up and not hesitating to give the business your all.
Topher has long held a passion for helping small businesses, specifically within the health industry. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Philosophy with a focus on Medical Ethics. Before law school, Topher spent two years in Brazil working with the Ethics Committee at Albert Einstein Hospital, one of the largest hospitals in South America.
His advice for anyone starting a business: “unless you love what you are about to get into, don’t do it.”
Without a personal interest, the long hours and high risk required to start a business are more likely to subjugate the drive to succeed.
After working at an investment bank that focused on the health industry for two years, Topher spent an entire summer researching and learning about the Affordable Care Act.
From his experience studying the ACA, Topher realized that compliance could lead to great uncertainty, especially for small businesses. Larger businesses typically have the resources to pay for compliance experts to advise them, whereas small businesses often have to navigate complicated new requirements themselves. Topher saw the opportunity to help small businesses and the need for simplifying the compliance process. Thus, Topher and his PlanGrade co-founder moved to Utah and began their search for funding. They began attending conferences, networking, giving presentations, and eventually won a small seed investment contest.
broadcast your business plan
While many entrepreneurs tend to try to keep their start-up ideas a secret out of fear, someone may steal their idea, Topher suggests doing the complete opposite.
“Scream your idea from the rooftops. If people can poke holes in your business plan or have a way to do it better, then it is probably not going to survive long past launch anyway.”
By discussing your business plan with other professionals, you receive eye-opening insights and advice. Keeping your business plan a secret until launch is more likely to lead to blind spots and problems you never anticipated. The more people you tell, the merrier!
making big decisions
When Topher and his co-founder began their discussions with ZenPayroll, now Gusto, they thought they were going to be considering an offer to integrate. Instead, ZenPayroll was looking to build its health benefits internally and wanted the founders to bring what they had built with PlanGrade to ZenPayroll and continue building and innovating there. Open minds and open communication between the co-founders were key to the decision to sell. Topher’s next concern was whether they would have the freedom with ZenPayrolll they needed to innovate. Ultimately, Topher was persuaded after a working session with the ZenPayroll team. The team was a great match and was composed of the type of people he would have wanted to hire himself. Moreover, selling his company eliminated risk and the need for more funding.
advice for entrepreneurs looking to make an impact
You don’t need to have the grandest mission to make an impact. For Topher, he loves seeing the direct results of his work on small businesses, especially during such uncertain times.
“You don’t have to take on the biggest problems to actually solve things. If you find something that’s difficult for someone else to navigate, and you reach enough people, you can make a big difference. So don’t be pushed away by the small problems, because if you can simplify a small problem for 50 million people, that also has a meaningful impact on society.”
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Lauren Shelby, at the time of this post, is a rising third-year student at Penn State’s Dickinson Law. She is interested in pursuing a career in Business Law.
Photo Sources:
https://gusto.com/blog/author/topher-reynoso
https://gusto.com