Zabal Media
at a glance
Launched in 2019, Zabal Media is a web design and development agency that helps B2B tech companies like Slack, Webflow, and Discord design and build high-performing digital experiences for their customers.
Zabal Media used Oyster to scale quickly and compliantly with global contractor talent. Thanks to Oyster, they transitioned from fragmented workflows across multiple tools to a single platform to streamline onboarding and payments, saving 40 hours a month and $120,000 per year.
- Zabal Media scaled quickly and cost-effectively with 33 contractors in 7 countries
- Contractor onboarding and payments are now automated and effortless
- Zabal Media saves 40 hours a month and $120,000 a year using Oyster
The challenge
As a web design and development agency, Zabal Media delivers innovative, user-centric web design solutions to clients around the world. With a globally distributed team spanning seven countries on five continents, Zabal Media is proud to serve customers 24/7, including global brands like Slack, Discord, Webflow, and Mural.
However, building and managing a team of global contractors wasn’t easy for Wilian Iralzabal, founder of Zabal Media. It meant worrying about compliance and misclassification risks since countries and jurisdictions have varying criteria for distinguishing between employees and contractors. These legal anxieties slowed down hiring and made it difficult to scale.
“If you’re looking to hire a contractor, how do you know you’re doing it compliantly and won’t get a massive bill later because you accidentally misclassified someone? Sending out a contract was a prolonged process involving my legal team and a lot of back and forth with partners and contractors. For me as a founder, it was a slow grind that held my business back from growing.”
The grind didn’t end when the contract was signed because Wilian also managed contractor onboarding and payroll himself. As a product designer turned founder, the last thing he wanted to do was spend hours poring over contracts, spreadsheets, invoices, and payments. Being bogged down in tedious manual workflows across a patchwork of fragmented tools and processes was a serious hindrance to his work.
“I used to stitch together many different tools, everything from bank wire transfers to PayPal, Payoneer, and TransferWise. If I got a new card, I’d have to update it across several different accounts. I used spreadsheets to keep track of hours and pay rates. It was death by a thousand cuts, and it robs you of your time.”
As a founder of a creative agency, Wilian needed to spend his time on scaling the business, not contracts and payroll. He did the math and estimated the time and money wasted on tedious HR tasks.
“It’s an HR nightmare to manage a team of contractors on your own. I was spending around 30 to 40 hours a month on contracts, onboarding, and payments. That translates to $90,000 to $120,000 a year that I was spending doing all of this HR work—manually.”
It was clear to Wilian that he needed an automated solution that would free up his time and energy to focus on more important things.
The solution
After considering various options, Wilian eventually chose Oyster as Zabal Media’s contractor management solution in February 2023 because he was impressed by the intuitive and user-friendly platform and the Oyster team’s focus on continuous improvement and innovation.
“When picking the right solution, you have to think about who to trust with the most critical parts of your business—like compliance, hiring, and payroll—that make your business viable. I looked at all of the competitors in the space, and I chose Oyster because the platform is well designed—they really listen and are constantly evolving.”
Using Oyster has enabled Wilian to automate contracts and onboarding. With the Oyster platform, he can simply enter a few basic details to automatically generate and send out a contract within minutes for the contractor to review and sign. From there, Oyster takes care of the onboarding process without any further time or effort from Wilian.
“Oyster’s onboarding process is totally seamless. I just put in basic information and within 10 minutes a contract has been sent. I can see when someone accepts the offer, and both parties get an email to sign the contract. All the steps are automated, which allows me to be hands-off. The feedback I’ve received is that it’s a positive experience from the contractor side as well.”
Oyster has also made it possible for Wilian to manage contractor payments effortlessly. Now he can review invoices and approve payments within minutes instead of the many hours it used to take manually with emailed invoices, endless spreadsheets, and an assortment of payment platforms.
“Oyster provides a central hub where I can easily review and approve invoices to make sure all my contractors are paid on time. I never have that voice at the back of my head wondering if there’s a pending invoice somewhere that I haven’t seen or an email that got buried. That peace of mind is super important because it means that I’m taking care of my team the same way they take care of me.”
Wilian and his team also rely on Oyster’s self-serve global employment tools to better understand local labor laws, compliance requirements, and hiring costs in various countries. They particularly appreciate the misclassification analyzer, which allows them to assess risks and make informed decisions when hiring contractors. Thanks to Oyster’s local knowledge and guidance, Wilian’s team can monitor compliance risks when working with global contractors, without having to manually research and navigate employment regulations and worker classification criteria across countries and jurisdictions.
“The compliance aspect of properly classifying contractors is an integral part of why I remain with Oyster. There are certain rules you might be oblivious to that can come back and hurt you. So the peace of mind to know that you’re compliant—you can’t beat that.”
The ability to onboard global contractors with Oyster has enabled Zabal Media to scale quickly and cost-effectively since they weren’t limited to hiring locally in the Bay Area. They now have a team of 33 contractors working across seven countries on five continents.
“When you’re getting started as a founder, you can’t afford to hire the most expensive resources. Being able to hire remote contractors across the world with Oyster is the reason why Zabal Media has been able to scale as quickly as we have.”
Most important to Wilian is having peace of mind about compliance as well as the time, effort, and money saved by not having to manage HR paperwork and payments on his own. He did the math and found that with Oyster, he’s saving up to $120,000 per year of his time.
“The biggest ROI of using Oyster is the peace of mind of knowing that you’re compliant, that it’s being taken care of behind the scenes. Then there’s all the time you get back because you don’t have to be involved at every step. Oyster saves me 30-40 hours of work per month, which is around $90,000 to $120,000 a year that I’m not spending anymore.”
With a global team covering all time zones, Zabal Media is able to better serve their customers by ensuring a seamless continuity of operations, so that website issues get fixed even while their customers are asleep. “Our global team provides round-the-clock coverage, so there’s no off button, just continuation. That’s a major value proposition for our clients,” says Wilian.
As a founder, Wilian cares deeply about the employment experience and company culture he offers to his team. Oyster has helped him ensure a smooth and seamless people experience for Zabal Media’s global contractors, from streamlined, self-serve onboarding to hassle-free invoicing and timely payments in their local currency.
“Oyster reduces all the friction and ensures a smooth and seamless experience for our contractors. It helps us create the culture and people experience we want to provide. Everyone that has touched the Oyster platform has only positive things to say about it.”
Looking ahead, Wilian has big plans for Zabal Media and plans to scale his global contractor team to 100. “Oyster has positioned me well to grow my business,” he says. For Wilian, Oyster is an essential solution for growth that he’s happy to recommend to others companies:
“I’ve recommended Oyster to my friends, partners, and clients. Most people are looking for ease of use, and Oyster is a one-stop shop that has everything you need. And if you have an urgent or critical question, you’ll get an answer within 24 hours.”
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"Prior to using Oyster, employing anyone outside the U.K. was a nightmare for us... now it's super fast and painless."
CEO and founder of Juno
Ally Fekaiki
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