Eynat Guez is a leading expert in global payroll and global workforce management in the remote work era. Papaya Global combines her three passions, technology, supporting the employee experience, and empowering finance leaders, and is now valued at over $3.7 billion under Eynat’s leadership. The company provides a nascent technology approach to how we pay people and how technology can provide real-time business intelligence around global people data to empower finance, HR, and business leaders. Read more on the Papaya Global website. 

Hi Eynat, thanks for joining us! What brought you to establish a Fintech company?

My background is in HR and operations, focused on global talent and relocation. I’ve always been a great advocate for the idea of “taking care of your neighbors” - that we need to invest in people to improve quality of life. In my first ever CEO role, I was responsible for supporting employees when transitioning to new geographies, and I saw first-hand how many challenges there are in managing a global workforce. I couldn’t believe that there was no technology that could make this easier - so I set about creating it.

Where did you get the drive to continue even though things were so hard?

I knew immediately that our idea was a good one. The ability to consolidate global payroll and be able to draw a clean stream of usable data from what is often a patchwork of different systems and processes just made great business sense. However, in those first few years, I had to work on translating that vision to investors. That was a struggle at times! I wanted to find investors who would stand by our side, not look to put themselves in the front. But throughout, I was passionate about improving the employee experience, and creating a better way to handle a global workforce, as well as supporting Finance leaders in understanding their real-world labor costs, something I saw time and time again there was a lack of visibility into. That kept me going. 

Eventually, we found the right investors who understood our vision, and now we have a valuation exceeding $3.7B, and a truly global presence for our technology and purpose. Everywhere you look people are talking about how payroll is central to the employee experience, and that workforce analytics are critical. We were ahead of the game in that regard. 

What is your favorite life lesson you can share with other intrapreneurs?

Always be looking forward. When you’re working in such a fast-paced world, whether that’s business or technology, there are endless challenges. Building and growing a business can be hard, especially when you experience hypergrowth. But you can put up with more than you think you can! Keep the challenges in perspective, allow yourself to make mistakes, and then pick yourself up and move onto the next. 

What do the recent Papaya partnerships bring in terms of benefits?

We’ve been busy here at Papaya! In Q1 2022 we acquired Azimo, allowing us to offer a payments solution that can deliver in hours, in contrast to their existing payment processing which often took days or even weeks. It gave us a lot more flexibility in terms of what we can support, including cash advance, credit, and even crypto. Thanks to that acquisition, we are also now part of a digital payments network which is 150+ countries strong. We’ve also partnered with Mesh Payments this year, allowing Finance teams to set policies and limits on employee expenses, orchestrate approvals for expenses ahead of time, and automatically collect receipts and generate real-time reports. It’s all about making payments and payroll more streamlined and giving finance teams back hours in the day. 

Integrations are also a key part of our strategy to grow quickly and with best-in-class capabilities. We’re now a certified HCM Workday partner, which has relieved customers of the multi-stage, manual approach to transferring payroll data to Papaya, and will offer complete API integration for data in both directions. We’re also now members of the Netsuite SuiteCloud Developer network - the only payroll company to be able to display the “Built for Netsuite” designation loud and proud. If you’re a NetSuite user, you can see all employment costs from a single ledger, including taxes, reimbursements, payroll and even benefits. 

What is your solution to a growth standstill?

I’ve talked a lot about strategies to support your business during an economic downturn, and unfortunately many companies are facing this in reality as we enter 2023. 

Make sure you are pragmatic. Sometimes there are tough decisions to make, and you need to be the one to make them. This could be something simple yet effective like cutting non-mandatory PTO, or pulling back on soft HR benefits. Look to your clients and manage billing with an iron fist - this isn’t the time to be lax on collecting debts. Think about when you’re traveling abroad and packing your luggage. You only take what’s critical and what can physically fit. That’s the mentality you need during a recession - only leaving in the suitcase what is critical and will contribute to your growth. 

Throughout it all, make sure that you stand behind your people. Your employees will be nervous, and it’s your role to reassure them and be transparent about your strategies and what you know behind the scenes. You don’t want rumors to start, which can quickly cause bad feeling. Whether the downturn is global, or localized to your business, you’re all in this together. 

What are your 3-4 best customer experience strategies?

Customer experience is no longer about troubleshooting an aspect of the software or product that isn’t working as intended. That can be dealt with by self-serve website content or peer forums. Today, customer experience is about becoming a strategic partner in your customers’ goals. 

That means each customer needs a dedicated point of contact who supports them from day one, and understands their needs implicitly. We’ve seen that you can’t offer a cookie-cutter approach to your services, it needs to be customized. We offer legal support at Papaya for example, where customers can ask about niche issues of global employment, equity, termination, and more. Sure, we have a vast knowledge base and library of content, but they expect personalized advice when something specific comes up, and they deserve that, too. We also house a unique Center of Excellence, so that if individual CSMs don’t have the answers, customers have access to the information they need on any area of global employment. 

What are the 5 most important things for a successful tech company?

Here are 5 of my favorite pieces of advice, and why they work:

  • Be humble: Great CEOs face up to what they don’t know, so that they can keep growing and become better leaders. You can’t get there without making some mistakes. 
  • Think in real-time: The market for technology companies never sits still, so you need to be happy to make quick decisions on the fly. Your competition is coming up behind you in the rear-view mirror.
  • Know what problem you’re solving: Does your technology solve a real need? If it doesn’t, you’ll find it a lot harder to convince investors, customers, and employees of its value. 
  • Data is everything: Your customers, whether they are the C-suite, middle managers, or end-users expect to be able to glean data from your technology. Real-time insights will prove ROI. 
  • Never stop innovating: We live in a time of record investment, and there are always more startups hitting the market. You can’t ever assume that you’ve “made it”. Stay relevant by making sure you are always questioning and looking ahead.