The making of: Rippling+

When we set out to reinvent professional content, our team had a clear but ambitious goal: create something as engaging as Netflix—but tailored specifically for HR, IT, and finance professionals and startup founders. The result was Rippling+, a platform designed to deliver concise, engaging, and insightful video content that professionals actually want to watch. 

But video is only the front door. Behind it sits an expanding library of step-by-step playbooks, ready-to-use templates, member-only events, and newsletters that drop fresh ideas into your inbox every week. Rippling+ is fast becoming the premiere destination for business professionals looking for a community where they can uplevel every aspect of their careers.

We sat down with Ryan, Ilija, Ellie, and Matthew to get behind the scenes of how Rippling+ came to life. Getting there wasn’t easy—it required rethinking traditional approaches, meticulous planning, and collaborative execution. Here’s the inside story.

Vision and inspiration: Reinventing what professional content can be

Ryan Narod, Rippling’s VP of Corporate & Integrated Marketing, was driven by a simple insight: Traditional B2B content wasn't resonating anymore. He saw a unique opportunity to elevate the content landscape for professionals—merging educational value with the compelling nature of consumer media.

"Rippling+ is our one-stop-shop destination to produce educational content for business leaders to get smarter at their jobs," Ryan explained. "Put simply, it's Netflix for HR, finance, and IT professionals."

Recognizing that professionals today want content that is short, impactful, and entertaining, Ryan saw an opportunity to move beyond static blogs and webinars.

"The future of content is consumer-grade video," he said, adding, "The bar for B2B content is as high as it is for consumer content. You have to be short, punchy, and entertaining, all at the same time."

For Ryan, the “ah-ha” moment was recognizing that Rippling could create a dedicated, owned destination—rather than relying on external platforms.

“We want people to keep coming back to this content because it's truly valuable,” he said. “We want the notification that we have a new episode to feel similar to when a new White Lotus episode comes out. We want to set the standard for what B2B content marketing looks like. And the good news is the bar is pretty low, so I think we can do it.”

Designing Rippling+: Balancing form and function

Senior Web Designer Ilija Vujinovic was on the team faced with the task of transforming the vision into a visually compelling, intuitive experience. Initially, the goal was simply to redesign Rippling’s existing resource hub. But as the idea evolved, so did the complexity of the challenge.

“The goal was to have a page where people can navigate to their own specific hubs:  IT, HR, Finance, or Founders,” Ilija explained. “And then, they can browse content specific to their branch—ebooks, infographics, reports. And for all of those content hubs, we would have a video series. The videos are the primary content types that we want people to go to, but they're also linked to other resources. For example, we might mention an ebook in one of the videos, and then we would have the ebook linked down below the video, so it's all connected.”

Ilija’s role in bringing Rippling+ to life took place in three main steps:

1. Research

“As a web designer, my first task was to research what other people are doing and see what works and what doesn't—label the good and bad things and see what we can pull and apply to our own resource hub,” he said. “There's a lot of resource hubs out there in different industries, so I was taking inspiration from others and labeling what works and what does not work.”

Ilija also took inspiration from Dribbble and Behance—platforms where other designers post their concept projects.

“There are projects that designers put up there that might not be even real, but there's a lot of inspiration that you can take from them,” Ilija said. “They usually post their best work.”

2. Wireframing

Ilija explained that the second part of the process involves beginning to figure out the UX, which was especially complicated for Rippling+ due to all the different types of content it will eventually be home to.

“That was the biggest challenge in the project: making everything feel cohesive and connected, even though everything is different. You have ebooks, you have videos, but it should not be that big of a jump if you go to a video page compared to an ebook page,” he said. “But down the road, we also wanted to make it super special and visually different from the rest of our website. As far as UX goes, we had the most iterations there—two or three rounds, if I remember correctly.”

There were a number of questions Ilija and his team needed to answer at this stage, such as:

• How will gated content be treated, versus ungated content?
• How will we prompt visitors to discover more content after finishing a video or resource?
• How would we tackle navigation within Rippling+?
• How will visitors want to filter content? By type? By topic?

3. Rebranding to Rippling+

Finally, when the project shifted from Rippling’s resource hub to Rippling+, there were new design considerations.

“That's where things got a little bit more interesting visually, because we wanted to put those video series front and center on the homepage,” Ilija said. “We started to take some inspiration from our favorite video platforms like Netflix, and that instantly felt like a very fun and interesting challenge.”

Engineering the experience: From WordPress to Contentful

Building Rippling+ required significant backend work, including migrating to a new content management system. Ellie Wilkinson, Director of Digital Marketing Operations, helped with the migration from WordPress to Contentful, which came at just the right time.

“We outgrew WordPress,” she explained. “We were hitting some limitations in terms of scaling. We just have a lot of content on the website. Things were getting a little bit slow. It's also a little bit challenging for editors to work on pages with the visual editor we have in WordPress. So it just felt like time to move on to a new system.”

Ellie noted that the migration presented an interesting challenge, because it involved detailed mapping of content from the old system to the new one to make sure everything remained accessible and functional.

“We basically needed to take a fine-tooth comb and map one-to-one: ‘OK, the title in WordPress is going to go to this field in Contentful,’” she explained. “I went back and forth with the devs running the migration script, they ran a test run, and then I got to go and look at it in the test environment in Contentful. I could see how they were mapping it, so then we could make corrections. It was this back-and-forth process to make sure things were where they needed to be—and then identifying any gaps.”

Despite how meticulous the process was, Ellie shouted out the positive changes for both website visitors—and Rippling team members.

“It's a really nice, cool design. It’s always fun to be able to build something that you're excited about,” she said. “I think it's also just helpful for website visitors. I feel really good about how it leads up to our goals for the website overall. But also, I think I'm really excited about the back end piece. I'm a nerd, but the CMS part is going to be so much better for marketers working on our resource library now—adding a new resource is going to be a lot easier than it was in WordPress. I’m just excited about them having that experience as well, and making things better for them on that side.”

Purposeful content: Creating real value for professionals

At the heart of Rippling+ is its carefully curated content. Matthew Huo, Content Marketing Manager for Finance, is one of the people helping to create it. Drawing from his experience as a YouTuber, Matthew brought a unique focus on actionable value and high-quality production.

“We're trying to create our own little corner of the Internet that has the highest quality business content for HR, IT, finance, and startup founders,” Matthew said. “We just want this to be something that's valuable for people, whether you're a Rippling customer or not. Our whole mandate is just to help you do better at your job with no agenda.”

When Matthew talks about the process of building Rippling+, one thing he comes back to over and over is “detail.” 

“There was a lot of attention to detail throughout the entire process, and just setting a really high bar and high standard for quality. In the end, it's just all about upholding that standard,” he said. “For the video series, which is what I'm personally most excited about, there's so much attention to detail that goes into the editing of the videos. We're not just recording a Zoom interview and then throwing it up online. We're really trying to package these interviews—take out the most juicy, valuable topics, and turn them into digestible, engaging content.”

Matthew also explained the three key parts of his experience as a YouTuber that he brought to his role helping to build Rippling+:

1. Ideas

“‘What is the title of this going to be?’ ‘What is the main takeaway?’” Matthew asked. “In Youtube, there's the whole title and thumbnail game, where it needs to be really clickable. But to adapt that to Rippling, I think it needs to be a very interesting topic. I think sometimes content can be very broad, and it tries to cover everything in 30 minutes, but then you don't actually get very deep into anything. So my goal when I have a guest is to pick one thing that they're an expert at, and just go deep in that one video.”

2. Editing style

“I’m trying to make things more engaging by maybe bringing some things that are out of context,” Matthew explained. “Maybe I bring in a Spongebob gif, or a gif of the Chicago Bulls dream team. These are things not related to finance at all, but when you put them into this finance video and you just add a little bit of context, it actually works visually and makes sense within the video, but it's just way more entertaining and keeps people watching and hopefully makes this content more fun.”

3. Review process

“On YouTube, you're judged on your click through rate and watch time—how long is the average person watching your video? So if every word isn't driving the video forward, it's more difficult to keep people watching,” Matthew said. “The other part is I review the videos and think about it from the audience perspective. I step out of my shoes as Matthew, and think about it as someone who's just coming across this video in the wild like, ‘what are the questions that would pop into my mind while I'm watching this?’ That allows me to figure out the gaps in my video. I want to try and anticipate the audience's questions and make sure I try and answer them as best I can.”

Building a community, not just content

Rippling+ isn’t just about consuming content—it’s also about community. Ryan emphasized that community is central to the platform’s vision.

“I view this as a way to deliver our community programs that we're starting. A good example of that is Rippling Book Club,” he explained. “When we run Book club, we'll send you a book, first of all. Then, it'll be a Zoom that you get on with the author, and the author will talk about the book you just read. And then we'll put you in breakout rooms where you can actually network with peers. So to me, this is the best example of community. A lot of companies say they’re gonna start a community, and at the end of the day, it's just a Slack channel. We're going to send you ways that you can get outside of your own company, whether that's our episodic content or events you can be part of or things like Book Club. We're going to create those types of programs.”

Rather than a “dumping ground” for content, Rippling+ encourages active participation, connection, and ongoing engagement. It’ll be a place for professional learning and connection.

“We want Rippling+ to be the place you go to—to learn, to make friends, to find events, to really be part of something that's bigger than just yourself,” Ryan said.

Teamwork and collaboration

Bringing Rippling+ to life was a true team effort, and everyone involved wanted to shout of the teamwork involved. Here’s what Ryan, Ilija, Ellie, and Matthew had to say about the collaboration that was crucial to their success:

• Ryan praised the cross-functional teamwork: “It takes a lot to pull this off, from our web team to design to marketing operations. At the end of the day, people come to Rippling to do their best work, and build their own personal brand of stuff they're proud of. As much as this is extra work for everyone, we didn't approach the team and say, ‘Hey, do us a favor. Build this crazy, complex hub.’ We're about to build the first, best streaming service B2B has ever seen, and really elevate our content and marketing game with that, and everyone's just very bought into that vision.”
• Ilija valued clear, structured briefs: “Hayley [Steinberg, Head of Content Marketing] brought the original brief. She did an awesome job, and that's the first step when you start a project—having a good enough brief and people knowing what they want straight off the bat. The examples that they shared, the vision that they shared around Ripping+ and the UX—it was all pretty clear. I think processes like these really make your life much easier as a designer. That's definitely not an uncommon thing here [at Rippling].
• Ellie highlighted adaptability as key: “At first I was a little nervous, like, ‘Oh, no, we have to go back and revisit the designs, and we're in the middle of this migration.’ In this case, it really worked out. I think what we came up with for the new homepage is really cool. I thought it was a really good partnership between the teams to figure out what was reasonable and what we could go and change at that point. I think it was a reminder for me to be open minded. Something can turn out even better than the original plan if you're open to change and open to things evolving as the business grows and as business requirements change.”
• Matthew emphasized the collective dedication to quality: “We have a very small but mighty team of content marketers pouring our hearts and souls into Rippling+. You'd be hard pressed to find a content team or find a company that's putting as much effort as we are into making these videos high-quality and valuable as possible. A lot of times content is seen as something that you can just click record and then upload it to the internet. But in reality, there are so many layers to making a good video. We've tried to create a team that really understands that. I just genuinely believe that this is gonna be some of the best content for business professionals.”

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See the team’s hard work in action: Rippling+. 

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This blog is based on information available to Rippling as of April 29, 2025.

Disclaimer: Rippling and its affiliates do not provide tax, accounting, or legal advice. This material has been prepared for informational purposes only, and is not intended to provide or be relied on for tax, accounting, or legal advice. You should consult your own tax, accounting, and legal advisors before engaging in any related activities or transactions.