The Peel with Turner Novak Building the $3B API That Didn’t Exist, Europe’s Regulation Problem | Marcelo Lebre, Co-founder of Remote
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Jan 15, 2026 
Marcelo Lebre, Co-founder and President of Remote, shares his journey in revolutionizing global payroll. He dives into the complexities of payroll automation, revealing why many still cling to outdated spreadsheet systems. The conversation highlights the challenges of navigating European regulations and how Remote addresses them. Marcelo recounts the lessons learned from launching Remote during the pandemic and offers insights on managing distributed teams. His story includes eight failed startup attempts, culminating in the creation of the $3B API that changed the industry.
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Remote Built The Missing Global Payroll API
- Remote built an API layer over its global payroll infrastructure and now powers other HR platforms.
- Marcelo calls it the global payroll API that previously didn't exist and now amplifies partner capabilities.
Seven Years Of Failed Products
- Marcelo and Job tried many product ideas over seven years, leaving a "cemetery of apps" in their repos.
- Those experiments taught them to keep building until they found the right, hard problem to solve.
Pandemic Accelerated Demand Overnight
- Remote launched in 2019, scaled pre-pandemic, then saw demand surge when COVID made distributed work mainstream.
- Marcelo says they had months of backlog and had to keep working one day at a time.
