Heru

About Heru

Heru was created with a very clear mission: to make life easier for millions of independent workers in Latin America by helping them automate taxes and tax filings. That might sound simple in one sentence, but anyone who has dealt with taxes knows it is not exactly a walk in the park with a lemonade. For many independent workers, tax compliance feels confusing, heavy, and honestly a little scary. Heru stepped into that space in 2019, founded by Stiven Rodríguez and Mateo Jaramillo, with tools built for people who work on their own and often do not have a full finance team sitting behind them. Today, Heru has more than 60,000 active users who process thousands of filings automatically every month. That says a lot about the need they are solving. In Mexico alone, the potential market is more than 30 million independent workers, and across Latin America, it is more than 140 million. So yes, the opportunity is huge. But growth like that also brings pressure inside the company. More users, more product needs, more support, more hiring, more decisions. The team had to move fast, but not in a messy way. From early on, Heru understood that if it wanted to scale properly, it needed a strong internal structure. Human Resources and payroll could not be treated like side tasks waiting patiently in the corner with a paper hat on.

What challenges were they facing when managing payroll internally?

At the beginning, payroll was handled by the founders themselves. That happens in a lot of startups. In the early days, everyone does a bit of everything. One person is working on product, answering messages, reviewing numbers, fixing a deck, and somehow also making sure payroll gets done. It can work for a while. But it is not a long term plan. It is more like using a chair as a ladder. Fine for one quick thing. Not great if the whole company depends on it. As Heru grew, it became clear that managing payroll without specialized support was not only inefficient. It was risky. Payroll comes with delicate calculations, deadlines that cannot be missed, legal requirements, incident tracking, employee information, and enough details to make a spreadsheet start sweating. A small mistake can create real problems. It can affect trust, compliance, and the peace of mind of the team. And for founders trying to grow a company across a massive market, payroll should not be the thing keeping them up at night.

“We knew payroll had to be in expert hands; not having internal specialists made the process fragile and difficult to scale,” recalls Mateo Jaramillo, CEO of Heru. That line explains the situation well. They were not trying to avoid responsibility. They were trying to handle it properly. At that stage, hiring someone dedicated only to payroll did not make sense yet. The company needed to stay focused, lean, and efficient. But it also needed payroll to be done right. That is a tricky balance, and without the right support, it can turn into one of those operational problems that looks small until it suddenly walks into the room wearing giant shoes. For Heru, the challenge was clear. They needed expert support without building a whole internal payroll function too early. They needed structure without slowing the company down. They needed a way to protect compliance, employee trust, and operational control while still keeping the team focused on product, users, and growth.

How has Runa impacted Human Resources operations?

Runa arrived at a moment when Heru was starting to accelerate. And that timing mattered. Instead of letting payroll become a weak spot in the operation, the company was able to turn it into a more stable and reliable process. Runa helped move payroll out of the risky manual zone and into a setup with more automation, more order, and more visibility. For a growing startup, that is not just helpful. It is the difference between moving fast and moving fast while holding a tray of soup on a skateboard. The platform helped automate payroll calculations and payments, but the bigger impact was the confidence it gave the team. Tasks that used to take time or create uncertainty became easier to manage. Information became clearer. The process became less dependent on manual work or founder memory, which, let’s be honest, is already busy remembering fifty other things. “Being able to leave payroll with Runa was a complete relief; it gave us structure and allowed us to grow with much more confidence,” shares Mateo Jaramillo.

That relief matters because payroll is one of those processes that people only notice when something goes wrong. When it works, it is quiet. When it fails, it becomes very loud, very fast. With Runa, Heru gained a process that felt more dependable. The team could access information directly, review reports, and make decisions with more certainty. They were no longer relying on scattered manual steps or gut feeling. They had clearer data and a more professional operation without needing to build a full internal payroll department from scratch. For Human Resources, that changed the way the function could support the company. Instead of getting stuck in fragile payroll workflows, the team had a stronger base to manage people operations as Heru grew. That kind of structure is easy to overlook in a startup because growth always feels urgent. But the companies that scale better are usually the ones that fix the boring important stuff early. Payroll is definitely one of those things. Boring, maybe. Important, absolutely.

Why was Runa the right choice for Heru?

For Heru, the decision was clear from the start. They were not only looking for software. They needed a partner that could take a critical process seriously and support the company as it grew. Runa offered the right mix of reliable technology, automation, and human support. That last part was important. A platform can be powerful, but if the team behind it feels distant or slow, it becomes just another tool people complain about in private messages. One of the key points was that Runa allowed Heru to keep direct hires within the team. That mattered a lot to the company. Heru did not want people to feel like they were floating around the organization with one foot outside the door. They wanted employees to be part of the company in a real way. Runa gave them the tools to manage that properly from day one, with the right structure and support behind the process.

The close support also made a difference. Heru valued having clear guidance, easy access to information, and the certainty that changes, incidents, or questions could be resolved quickly and with good judgment. In payroll, that kind of response matters. Nobody wants to wait in the dark when a payment question appears. That is when people start refreshing inboxes like the answer is hiding inside the screen. In the end, Runa helped Heru solve more than an operational issue. It helped the company build a stronger foundation for growth. Payroll became more organized. Human Resources gained more clarity. The team could keep focusing on its mission of supporting independent workers across Latin America. And the founders could stop treating payroll like a fragile side project sitting next to the main business. With Runa, Heru gained the structure to keep scaling with more confidence, less friction, and a lot fewer payroll headaches.