Industry History | Paychex — Three Thousand Dollars on the Second Floor at 255 Alexander
· 1971-10
Unreviewed contributionBy kevin · · Report an issue
Find memories left by people near you.
Distribute Bounty
This will distribute the bounty equally among all qualifying memories. This action cannot be undone.
Cancel Bounty
Are you sure you want to cancel this bounty? The remaining amount will be refunded to your account.
Success!
Operation completed successfully.
Error
Something went wrong.
Industry History | Paychex — Three Thousand Dollars on the Second Floor at 255 Alexander
kevin
People treat Paychex as a Henrietta campus that always ran payroll and HR software for a national book of small firms.
The first book was one rented room and a credit card.
In 1971 B. Thomas Golisano left Electronic Accounting Systems after the firm twice refused his plan to sell payroll processing to companies with fewer than one hundred employees.
He started Paymaster, later Paychex, with $3,000 in 1971 dollars plus consumer loans and personal cards.
The office was a one-room second floor at 255 Alexander Street on Rochester's east side.
Kathy Angelidis joined that October as the first employee; the two of them sold, processed, and filed tax returns for about forty local clients.
Golisano's first target was three hundred Rochester accounts.
It took four years to break even and five years to hit the three hundred.
Eighteen franchises and partnerships were later folded into one private company in 1979; Paychex listed in 1983.
The mechanism is still the Alexander Street one.
A shop with a handful of employees cannot keep a payroll clerk and a tax calendar, and a bureau priced for a factory will not take the work.
A visitor on Alexander still walks the East Avenue block where that second floor sat.
The campus outgrew the room.
The room is where the book started.
Photo: Hiram Sibley Building at East Avenue and Alexander Street, Kenneth C. Zirkel, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
_thumbnail.jpg)
_thumbnail.jpg)
_thumbnail.jpg)
changes?
delete this memory?
We detected that you have a Blox in your crypto wallet! We will import the Blox into your account.
Click on done below to complete the import.
Welcome Back!
Sign in to preserve cherished moments
Don't have an account?
Welcome!!
Sign up and start preserving cherished moments
?
?
Choose your payment method
Buy with Metablox Credit
Do you want to mint Blox with Metablox Credit?
Which Crypto would you like to use?
Purchase Confirmed!
Your Blox is being minted on-chain and will appear in your profile shortly.
Log in or sign up to claim your Blox.
How many credits do you want to buy?
$100 USD = 1 Metablox Credit = 1 Blox.
Use Metablox Credit to mint any Blox you want on the map.
expand_more