As Head of ADP Ventures, Usman “Oz” Khan leads strategic investment and innovation initiatives at one of the world’s largest HR technology companies. During his five-year tenure, Khan has expanded ADP Ventures beyond its origins as an internal incubator to include a strategic corporate venture arm.
We spoke with Khan about structuring successful startup partnerships; driving adoption of new technologies across a global enterprise that operates in more than 140 countries; and building trust with business unit leaders.
This conversation is part of our “Early Adopters” series highlighting business leaders who are driving digital and AI transformation at major companies. For initiatives to succeed, there must be strong partnerships between Innovation teams and business executives. Through these interviews, we share perspectives from leaders who are putting emerging technology into practice.
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ADP Experience & Startup Partnerships
Can you kick off with an introduction to your professional background and tell us more about ADP Ventures?
I have led ADP Ventures for the last five years. Prior to this, I led product strategy and portfolio within global product and technology at ADP.
I got my start here at ADP within corporate strategy and business development, where I was helping a business unit drive growth sales, partnerships, and business development initiatives. Prior to ADP, I spent time at Rakuten, Accenture, and TD Bank across roles in consumer and tech, corporate development, and strategy.
ADP Ventures was conceived about nine years ago as a product lab and incubator, and we still are. We’re an experimental platform for ADP to develop new concepts, monetize them, and scale them up to revenue. We started to venture invest about 18 months ago when we did our first deal, and we’ve now started a strategic investing arm.
You’ve spoken about your experience working in product and strategy roles at ADP. How did those experiences prepare you to lead ADP Ventures?
My past roles gave me a really deep understanding of how ADP functions. It has been incredibly helpful to have a deep understanding of how the organization functions — from how products are structured and distributed to their lifecycle patterns and competitive dynamics.
My time in the product and strategy functions gave me clear insight into what drives success and where our strategic priorities lie. This understanding is crucial given ADP’s scale. We serve hundreds of thousands of small businesses, tens of thousands of mid-market businesses, and many enterprise clients across 40 countries. Each market has unique challenges, especially since we’re operating in two-sided environments connecting employers and employees.
How do you help startups navigate the complexity of serving a customer base that is as large and diverse as ADP’s?
We’ve learned invaluable lessons from building and scaling our own internal ventures into successful businesses. Three years ago, we expanded this expertise by creating a dedicated partnerships program for startups within ADP Ventures, which has shaped our approach to go-to-market strategy and startup engagement.
For startups that we heavily invest in, we act as their sherpa — coordinating with business units, co-developing product strategy, and establishing distribution channels. For lighter-touch engagements, startups can leverage tools like ADP Marketplace and other channel mechanisms to work more autonomously. In fact, we have just as many people— if not more— working on platform and partnerships as we do on investments, demonstrating how seriously we take post-investment support.
Can you elaborate on some of the lessons learned regarding the go-to-market motion for startups within ADP’s ecosystem?
When I think about the go-to-market motion for startups, there are two significant approaches: product-led growth and sales-driven distribution.
Once you’ve done a few of these partnerships, you realize how much effort is involved. It’s not just about writing a check. It’s about creating a true, strategic partnership that adds value on both sides.
For product-led growth, you have to make a substantial product investment to become prominent in our ecosystem. This means removing friction, understanding the user journey, and precisely identifying the client’s needs. The startups need to have established channel relationships and the bandwidth to work with our enterprise product teams.
On the sales side, we have nearly ten thousand sellers across different markets. Our teams are incredibly focused, and we’ve learned that successful integration requires understanding their specific dynamics. We can often tailor offerings within our platforms like Workforce Now or Run, but it takes real work. The key is setting very clear expectations.
Once you’ve done a few of these partnerships, you realize how much effort is involved. It’s not just about writing a check. It’s about creating a true, strategic partnership that adds value on both sides.
Can you tell us more about ADP Marketplace?
As the first HR tech marketplace, ADP Marketplace is a really proud achievement for ADP. Today, the platform connects hundreds of third-party partners to ADP systems via APIs, enabling secure transfer of worker, payroll, and time data.
ADP Marketplace allows our million-plus clients to go in, browse, pick an application, and essentially initiate the sales process. Partners benefit from access to willing customers who have done their research and can close the sale very quickly. Meanwhile, ADP clients can avoid hunting for solutions, as well as custom integration work.
What does it take for startups and other third-party partners to succeed on ADP Marketplace?
You can’t just toss a product on a marketplace and let it sit there. You have to do the work in terms of enabling it.
Our Marketplace team has developed playbooks and frameworks to help third-party partners gain mindshare. While there’s a product-led growth function on ADP Marketplace that generates leads, many leads come from the thousands of ADP salespeople who are in active discussions with clients.
Our sellers naturally turn to ADP Marketplace to find solutions for challenges that clients and prospective clients raise in their conversations. Third-party partners need to invest time and energy to engage with our Marketplace team, train our sellers, and maintain visibility. That’s how they stay top of mind. For example, we have partners in the earned wage access space who dedicate specific resources to ADP Marketplace. We do significant business together as a result.
We tell startups: You’ll get out of the ADP Marketplace what you put into it. That holds true for most partners.
You can’t just toss a product on a marketplace and let it sit there. You have to do the work in terms of enabling it.
Investment Strategy
Can you walk us through your investment thesis and what categories you’re most excited about heading into 2025?
As a strategic investor, you tend to plot your course relatively close to the markets you’re in. We think about investments across three distinct theses. Our first thesis is that the HR stack as it looks today is going to look very different over the next five to ten years. Here we’re talking about the evolution and revolution of core HR capabilities and how they work together, whether that’s payroll, talent acquisition, or talent development.
Our second thesis is that the line between HR tech and adjacent tech is blurring. We’re seeing HR systems converge with benefits and healthcare platforms, financial technology for employee outcomes, and back-office systems for B2B operations. We care a lot about the tech that’s in close proximity to our space.
Our third thesis is that large technology shifts beyond our industry are going to significantly impact us — from AI and agentic platforms to portions of the hyperscaler ecosystem that start to get into the software category.
How will AI transform HR tech and the future of work in the next five years?
In the next five years, I see a Horizon 1 in which enterprise software will continue to modernize while maintaining its core client base. After all, companies don’t replace major systems every few years.
In Horizon 1, AI will make the workflows and connections between systems more automated and intelligent. In our case, core processes— from payroll and compensation cycles to onboarding and offboarding— become much more automated and frictionless with intelligence embedded in every step.
Further down, Horizon 2 will be more radically futuristic.
Can you share an innovative solution that you recently invested in and rolled out at ADP?
Nayya is an innovative employee benefits system of action. The startup helps employees make smarter benefits decisions by leveraging AI to connect client and employee data with benefits and carrier information. Their platform simplifies the open enrollment process by providing personalized guidance for selecting and managing benefits.
Since becoming an ADP partner in 2022, we’ve embedded Nayya within ADP Workforce Now, where it now serves over 600,000 employees. The impact has been significant. We see higher benefits participation rates from employees, better insights for carriers, and more effective data-driven advice from brokers. It’s really a win-win-win for everyone in the ecosystem, while making our platforms more competitive.
Why would a startup like Nayya consider ADP Ventures?
Our goal is to add value on both sides. We want our portfolio companies to thrive and grow, and we want ADP to generate better outcomes for our clients and associates, as well as create economic value.
When a startup’s product capability aligns naturally with an existing market, software, or team within ADP, combining these elements with strategic investment can create significant value for all parties involved. This goes beyond mere capital investment — it’s about establishing a meaningful partnership and exploring distribution opportunities. Naturally, we calibrate our approach based on the investment size and the company’s stage.
As a CVC, which internal stakeholders do you involve when evaluating potential investments? Do you need to have business unit buy-in before the investment?
While business unit buy-in is not absolutely critical, when you have it, it’s far easier to do business with the startup during or after the investment process. We’re really well connected with product teams, business teams, market teams, and sales teams across ADP. When we see a domain that might be relevant to them, we like to pull them into the conversation.
Our Investment Committee is relatively lean with senior executives at the top of ADP. We try to work through a series of thoughtful conversations about where the startup and the company applies within ADP so we can have a strong partnership post-investment.
Business teams are extremely busy and focused on making sure that they execute at scale. When we pull them aside to think about new and innovative opportunities, we need to earn their trust. We need to understand their landscape and their problems.
What have you learned about collaborating with other business unit leaders around piloting emerging tech?
There’s a lot to be said about building trust and adding value. One of the reasons why ADP as an organization operates so well is that the company is excellent at executing. Whether it’s onboarding net new logos, retaining clients, or navigating busy periods like open enrollment or year-end for our clients, our teams are really operationally great.
Business teams are extremely busy and focused on making sure that they execute at scale. When we pull them aside to think about new and innovative opportunities, we need to earn their trust. We need to understand their landscape and their problems.
We have an internal Innovation Council with executives across multiple domains that we consider advisors and decision makers. We update them on a regular basis and pull them into decision making and internal communications. That does a lot to foster collaboration across teams because they feel like they also have an ownership stake.
At the end of the day, why do you have a CVC? You have a CVC to bring external innovation to your corporation and to the group of people that work there. And at the same time, you want to bring the goodness of your organization to the external market.
Paulina Karpis leads Early-Stage Platform for B Capital, a global multistage venture firm investing in B2B startups.
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
