Sony Pixel Power calrec Sony

Talent Decentralization Why IVP Invested in Papaya Global

08/03/2021

By Cack Wilhelm and Jake Storm

The push to remote work and distributed teams has been underway for years, as companies and hiring managers realize that one can find excellent talent not just in Silicon Valley. Companies like Kellogg or Hanes employ 56% and 88%, respectively, of their workforce overseas and they aren't an aberration.1

We have watched Covid accelerate this trend, with individuals dispersing to smaller cities and towns and closer to family, be it in the US or elsewhere. Based on analysis by early-stage venture firm Initialized Capital, we should expect this to persist. Post-pandemic the Initialized survey would suggest that Silicon Valley has fallen in founders' eyes to #2 behind distributed or remote for the most desirable company headquarters.2

The trouble has often come in the complexity of actually hiring that talent and formally employing a person. This has been a blocker for some. B2B companies are often accustomed to setting up regional offices, especially for sales account executives and corresponding pre-sales engineers. And many companies have one-off situations for a key developer who moved back to his or her home country, but many fast-growing mid-market companies are still figuring out how to scale a dispersed, multinational workforce.

We believe this trend toward larger, more dispersed, multinational companies has been accelerated by COVID-19 and is here to stay. CEOs and management teams are often acutely aware of tech debt and the trouble it causes but less aware of the operational debt from doing manual, complicated workflows by hand, but we have come to appreciate that employing a multinational team is just that.

This is why we invested in Papaya Global, because we believe that providing a SaaS platform through which a company can aggregate, manage, and pay all of their international workers is highly valuable to companies. Papaya has innovated in three key ways:

Product: Papaya takes away the complexity of personnel type (contractors vs. direct payroll vs. employer of record), provides a singular view, and synthesizes into actionable reports and analytics. Papaya can start to answer is it cheaper to hire an engineer in Ireland or Argentina?

Automation: Papaya automates the communication with each of these payroll service providers and removes manual toil on the part of payroll and finance teams.

Pricing: The industry has always charged a % of payroll and Papaya has changed that: Papaya charges a flat rate per employee / per month and takes no increasing tax for a higher-paid employee.

Applying a SaaS platform here to centralize and orchestrate is not a new concept, with companies in the IVP portfolio like Steelbrick (sold to Salesforce) having done the same, in their case to streamline and centralize the configure, price, quote process in sales.

Country-by-country payroll has always been services- and headcount-centric, and prior to Papaya had not been solved elegantly with software. At a glance, Papaya's centralized SaaS platform and dashboard abstract the true level of detail going on under the hood; international payroll is highly detailed and nuanced and requires extensive domain knowledge.

With that in mind, the Papaya team was the clincher for us. We did not find a question that the CEO, Eynat Guez, could not answer. Eynat previously founded and grew a company focused on global mobility and relocation, and another focused on payroll outsourcing in Asia; Eynat knows the market in which she's operating and the buyer persona to whom she is selling.

We are excited to work alongside Eynat, Ruben, Ofer, and the entire Papaya team to cement their position in global workforce management and see the Papaya product in the hands of many more teams.

Cack Wilhelm and Jake Storm are Investors at IVP, a later-stage venture capital firm based in Menlo Park, CA.
LINK: https://www.ivp.com/news/blog/talent-decentralization-why-ivp-invested...
See more stories from ivp

Most recent headlines

05/01/2027

Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be demoed at CES 2026

Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...

07/10/2026

Dalet Flex LTS Delivers Smarter Media Operations from Ingest to Distribution

Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, today announced the latest Long-Term Supported (LTS) release of Dalet Flex. Build...

06/09/2026

Dolby and MagentaTV Bring Fans Closer to the FIFA World Cup 2026 in Germany with Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos

June 9 2026, 23:00 (PDT) Dolby and MagentaTV Bring Fans Closer to the FIFA Worl...

21/08/2026

Avid Brings Agentic Media Production to IBC2026

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

21/08/2026

Avid brings agentic media production to IBC2026

Avid will unveil how it is transforming production to help media organizations unite content, agentic workflows, and business insights at IBC2026 (RAI Amsterda...

21/08/2026

Grass Valley Connects SDI IP and Software as One Unified...

New routing, modular processing, orchestration and monitoring capabilities bridge dedicated hardware and software-based processing as part of the Dynamic Media ...

21/08/2026

Indiana Pacers Selects DAZN As Exclusive Streaming Partner

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

21/08/2026

Chyron To Showcase Newsroom Advancements At IBC 2026

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

21/08/2026

Broadpeak to Launch Multiview as a Service at IBC2026

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

21/08/2026

University of Maryland Deploys Sony FX30 Cameras

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

21/08/2026

Study: FAST Sports Programming Surges

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

21/08/2026

Spectrum SportsNet LA Launches in Former Cox Markets

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

21/08/2026

ESPN Airs Its Most-Watched WNBA Game

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

21/08/2026

Wisycom Wireless and DPA Microphones Support Pope Leo XIV...

When hundreds of thousands of people gather to hear a single voice, there is no room for compromise. Every word must be delivered clearly, every wireless transm...

21/08/2026

Telestream and ScorePlay Turn Live Sports into Immediate...

Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, today announced a strategic partnership with ScorePlay, the AI-powered media infrastructure that spo...

21/08/2026

NUGEN Audio Launches New Post and Producer Subscription P...

NUGEN Audio announces the launch of its new Post Plan and Producer Plan, two flexible subscription offerings designed to give audio professionals short term acc...

21/08/2026

Join the Screen Currency 2026 Ask Me Anything (AMA) Online

Join the Screen Currency 2026 Ask Me Anything (AMA) Online 20 August 2026 (L-R): Adrian Coates, Grainne Brunsdon, Deirdre Brennan, Rachael Perkins Got questio...

21/08/2026

The Late Late Toy Show kicks off search for this year's stars

The countdown to the most wonderful night of the year has officially begun! Host Patrick Kielty is gearing up for another unforgettable Late Late Toy Show nig...

21/08/2026

New children's series Bellie and Whizz at Big School set to air on RT KIDSjr & RT Player from Monday, 24th August

Meet puppet duo Bellie and Whizz, who are about to explore all the big feelings ...

20/08/2026

NEP's Summer of Soccer Didn't End at World Cup: 1,100+ Domestic Productions Follow the Final

From host-broadcaster and rightsholder support in June and July to MLS, NWSL, US...

20/08/2026

SVG GameDay, Ep. 27: San Jose Sharks' Emily Garner - Production Tales From the Shark Tank

In-venue and creative video staffers at the professional and collegiate level ha...

20/08/2026

IBC 2026: Veritone To Showcase Enterprise AI and Media Supply Chain Automation

At IBC this year, Veritone (14.A56) is bringing two connected themes to the booth: architectural independence in enterprise AI, and the automation of the media ...

20/08/2026

Telestream and ScorePlay Partner to Connect Live Sports Ingest with Media Management

Telestream and ScorePlay have announced a partnership combining Telestream's...

20/08/2026

Grand Slam of Curling and Rock League Sign Multi-Year Deal with ESPN

The Grand Slam of Curling and Rock League have announced a three-year agreement with ESPN, bringing more than 300 hours of live curling coverage to U.S. audienc...

20/08/2026

Nielsen Announces Measurement Enhancements Ahead of Fall TV Season

Nielsen has announced a series of enhancements to its Big Data + Panel currency measurement methodology, taking effect August 31. The updates were developed in ...

20/08/2026

ORF Deploys Net Insight Nimbra Platform for Nationwide IP Contribution Network

Net Insight has been selected by service provider Big Blue Marble (formerly ORS Group) to provide its Nimbra platform as the core media transport solution for a...

20/08/2026

2026 US Open Launches Fan Activations Across New York City

The 2026 US Open will bring a series of free fan activations across New York City ahead of and during the tournament, which runs August 23-September 13. We...

20/08/2026

Bridge Technologies Adds TS Playout to VB330 and VB220 Monitoring Probes

Bridge Technologies will announce a transport stream (TS) playout feature for its VB330 and VB220 compressed monitoring probes at IBC2026 (Booth 1.A71). The fe...

20/08/2026

IBC 2026: ENCO To Showcase AI and Automation Solutions

ENCO will demonstrate solutions across captioning, translation, AI production tools, automation, and virtual production at IBC2026 (Stand 7.A34, Amsterdam RAI, ...

20/08/2026

IBC 2026: MultiDyne MRMC To Exhibit for First Time as Part of MultiDyne Organization

MultiDyne Video and Fiber Optic Systems will demonstrate camera robotics and mot...

20/08/2026

IBC 2026: Chyron Showcases Newsroom Workflow Solutions

Chyron will demonstrate news workflow solutions at IBC2026 (Stand 7.A23), marking the company's 60th anniversary. Highlights include updates to PRIME HTML, ...

20/08/2026

Spectrum SportsNet LA Now Available to Customers in Former Cox Markets

Spectrum SportsNet LA, the exclusive television home of the Los Angeles Dodgers, is now available to Spectrum customers in former Cox markets following the clos...

20/08/2026

IBC 2026: swXtch.io Launches Expanded SRT Distribution and Native Multicast Services

swXtch.io will unveil expanded Global SRT Distribution and native multicast tran...

20/08/2026

Transformation Church Deploys Riedel Artist Intercom System

Riedel Communications has announced that Transformation Church in the United States has deployed a communications system built around the Artist intercom ecosys...

20/08/2026

Apple at 50: Author and CBS Sunday Morning Correspondent David Pogue on How a Tech Giant Became a Media Powerhouse

The bestselling author and longtime Apple observer explores how product launches...

20/08/2026

Orlando Magic's David Storm Reflects on the Franchises First Year With Its New ST 2110 Control Room and Massive Center-Hung Videoboard

The Orlando Magic entered last season with a dramatically upgraded in-venue prod...

20/08/2026

Indiana Pacers Name DAZN Exclusive Streaming Home Beginning 2026-27 Season

Pacers Sports and Entertainment has announced a partnership with DAZN, making it the exclusive streaming home of Indiana Pacers basketball. A team-branded strea...

20/08/2026

Ratings Roundup: Scotty Scheffler Win Tops the Week, ESPN Posts Most-Watched WNBA Game Ever on Cable

Ratings Roundup is a rundown of recent ratings news and is derived from press re...

20/08/2026

NHL Announces Germany Expansion with FC Bayern Partnership and 2027 Global Series Games in Munich and Cologne

The NHL has announced two major developments tied to its Germany growth strategy...

20/08/2026

SoundBridges TURN server tutorial

Set up your own private remote collaboration infrastructure SoundBridge have recently put together a tutorial video that provides users with a step-by-step ...

20/08/2026

Neyrinck revive Avid D-Control surfaces

New V-Control Pro features restore basic functionality Neyrinck's V-Control software has long been keeping older Avid control surfaces compatible with n...

20/08/2026

ROSE AYLING-ELLIS BEGINS FILMING SERIES TWO OF ITVS BAFTA-WINNING THRILLER CODE OF SILENCE

TV, BritBox and Mammoth Screen have announced that filming is now underway on th...

20/08/2026

Nielsen Incorporates New Enhancements To Improve Its Data Measurement Leading Into The New Fall TV Season

New York August 19, 2026 Nielsen today shared a number of key enhancements t...

20/08/2026

FAST Sports Programming Surges at More Than Twice the Rate of Sports Channel Growth

New Gracenote Data Hub analysis finds sports program titles up 31.2% and individ...

20/08/2026

Charter Completes $34.5 Billion Cox Acquisition

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

20/08/2026

SubtitleNEXT makes a significant leap in localisation eff...

At IBC, Profuz Digital will showcase at stand 8.A88 the SubtitleNEXT platform delivering innovative AI transcription integrations and stunning new features boos...

20/08/2026

Transformation Church Elevates Production Communications...

Riedel Communications today announced that Transformation Church, one of the fastest-growing and most influential digital ministries in the United States, has d...

20/08/2026

QuickLink Showcases New 4K Capabilities Across StudioEdge and StudioCall at IBC 2026

QuickLink Showcases New 4K Capabilities Across StudioEdge and StudioCall at IBC ...

20/08/2026

The Boys Season Five Graded with DaVinci Resolve Studio

The Boys Season Five Graded with DaVinci Resolve Studio Brie Clayton August 20, 2026 0 Comments Colorist Siggy Ferstl uses Depth Map to bring a three ...

20/08/2026

Adobe Firefly expands its creative AI studio: generate music, speech, and sound effects in one place

Adobe Firefly expands its creative AI studio: generate music, speech, and sound ...