Meet the Ripplers: Will Sorg

Engineer at heart

I was born and raised in a rural area in the south of Brazil, and then moved around quite a bit. I lived in the Netherlands, worked on the East Coast in the US, and in Germany, came to the West Coast for my MBA and then joined Rippling. I did mechanical engineering for my undergrad. I still love getting into the details and assembling things, like road bikes on my weekends. Beyond that, I am an avid sports fan and I nerd out on investing.

Zero to one

Business operations can mean a lot of things. In other places, it’s purely operational. At Rippling, it’s different. I lead a team of four and our work focuses on getting to the bottom of things and fixing problems from end to end, whatever they may be. I work with our executive leaders on critical initiatives—from identifying root causes and developing strategies, to creating systems and a culture of accountability that ensure successful execution.

One project I'm proud of is rethinking our top of funnel and building our outbound motion from the ground up. Up until 2023, Rippling had grown primarily through inbound, but sustaining growth required a robust outbound strategy.

We ran what we call a Blitz. Every week I would meet with the executive team where we would enumerate the punch list, go through the results, and act on opportunities. We ultimately transformed our approach completely—building a team of hundreds of SDRs, now driving a sizable portion of Rippling's revenue.

Go and see

Next up was reimagining our partner referral program. In our industry, we work closely with partners, such as insurance brokers, who often recommend HR solutions to their clients. At the time, we relied on a tech-first pitch that didn’t work. In the spirit of “go and see,” I talked to over twenty partners, and learned what truly mattered to them. Based on their feedback, we enhanced our offerings by creating a unique value proposition in the industry, with dedicated implementation and account management teams, and developing stronger partnerships with an incentive-sharing program. These changes resulted in significant growth, with the team doubling its production in 2024.

New prospects, new products

I still hold cross-functional business reviews on earlier initiatives, but with teams all set and free to run, most of my time now is focused on expanding our successful outbound strategy to new product lines, working closely with Parker Conrad, our CEO, and our product leads — Matt Epstein, who runs our Spend organization, and Anique Drumright who runs our IT organization. I corral everything that's going on in their orgs and their teams, review results, and then work together to accelerate, make decisions, and drive the success of both product lines.

Skeptic to champion

Coming into Rippling, what drew me was our ambition and what kept me has been the complexity. Most tech companies place their bets on one product. That tends to be easily copied, not defensible, and after a while, they run out of ideas on how to innovate and fail to drive continuous growth. Rippling, on the other hand, is unapologetically a multi-product company, or as Parker calls it, a compound startup. I knew that making that work would take a deep bench of talent. That drew me in.

As a skeptic by default, I often expect value statements to be generic and empty. But at Rippling, I’ve found that our leadership principles are embedded in what we do. Here’s a bit of what that looks like for me:

• Go and see — I’ll gladly take the time to listen to 10 calls to figure it out.

• Push the limits of possible  — I’ve learned to set unreasonable goals, by design. 

• Challenge each other directly — There’s always a right answer and I’m willing to have the hard conversations to get to the truth. (Hey, I’m very German, culturally.)

I’m very excited about Rippling's future, and I truly believe we are building a generational company that can reach a unique breadth and scale in this space. I look forward to helping us fulfill that promise.