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.
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
07/10/2026
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
June 9 2026, 23:00 (PDT) Dolby and MagentaTV Bring Fans Closer to the FIFA Worl...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
22/07/2026
Among other tweaks to coverage, the broadcaster added announce positions in the ...
22/07/2026
The Australian Sports Technologies Network (ASTN) has reported a sharp acceleration in Australia's sportstech sector, with revenue growth rising from 10% in...
22/07/2026
From a retrofitted broadcast bus to packed Match Day Live! events, Bennett detai...
22/07/2026
TMRW Sports has named Brendan Donohue as President, Flag Football, where he will lead the company's professional flag football business in partnership with ...
22/07/2026
Stephen Arnold Music (SAM) designed and produced soundtracks for nine projection...
22/07/2026
Harmonic has announced a $25,000 donation to Global Empowerment Mission (GEM) fo...
22/07/2026
Telemundo has announced it has acquired from UC3 exclusive U.S. Spanish-language...
22/07/2026
The Rest Is Football, hosted by Gary Lineker, Alan Shearer, and Micah Richards, ...
22/07/2026
Sports Studio has announced a partnership with TheSoul Group to distribute Free ...
22/07/2026
Daktronics has concluded its 2026 High School Video Summit, a two-day hybrid event combining virtual sessions with hands-on host school visits across the countr...
22/07/2026
FOR-A America will exhibit at the MMCA Show in Pensacola, Florida (July 21-24), marking the company's first appearance at the house of worship AV event. FOR...
22/07/2026
The New York Yankees have selected Lumen Technologies (NYSE: LUMN) to connect Ya...
22/07/2026
Calrec will exhibit at IBC 2026 (Stand 8.C47) with demonstrations of its IP-native audio ecosystem built around the Argo console range, and will announce two ne...
22/07/2026
Solid State Logic has announced the appointment of Algam EKO as its distributor for SSL large format consoles in Italy, covering the Live, Broadcast, and Studio...
22/07/2026
FloSports has announced the launch of the FloSports Channel, a free ad-supported streaming channel premiering on Prime Video in the U.S. on July 21. The channel...
22/07/2026
Banana Ball TV (BTV), the broadcast operation of the Savannah Bananas, has insta...
22/07/2026
SiriusXM and Audacy have announced an agreement bringing 42 Audacy sports, news, and talk stations from 29 U.S. markets to SiriusXM. Twenty-three Audacy sports ...
22/07/2026
The collaboration produced more than 500 short-form videos across four cities th...
22/07/2026
At 2,600 sq. ft., the new home of digital content houses a main studio, podcast space, and an auxiliary control room
NFL franchises are accelerating their prod...
22/07/2026
Library now available in Engine Player
Another of Eduardo Tarilonte's popular sample libraries has just been moved over to Engine Audio's Engine Pla...
22/07/2026
All-in-one mic & DSP interface overhauled
Cloudvocal have just refreshed the design of their all-in-one mic, audio interface and DSP processor, introducing ...
22/07/2026
The final boss of the lost dual-op-amp circuit
Electro-Harmonix have just introduced the Deluxe Big Muff Pi 2, which they say offers their latest take on t...
22/07/2026
eds3_5_jq(document).ready(function($) { $(#eds_sliderM519).chameleonSlider_2_1({ content_source:......
22/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
22/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
22/07/2026
Proven managed IP solution helps broadcasters confidently navigate the future of broadcast distribution
LTN announces it has completed successful satellite-to-...
22/07/2026
Today, Chaos announced V-Ray 7, update 4, eliminating the need for asset conversions and tool switching, which slow down media and entertainment pipelines. Arti...
22/07/2026
An AI playground for the Project Indigo camera app
Marc Levoy July 22, 2026
0 Comments
At left is the user interface of our Playground, running on an ...
22/07/2026
Custom Consoles announces the completion of a large technical furniture project for Radio T l vision Suisse (RTS) at the networks recently inaugurated productio...
22/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
22/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
22/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
22/07/2026
Culver City, CA, July 21, 2026 3D streaming infrastructure provider Miris today announced glTF intake, including the binary .glb form, to its spatial streamin...
22/07/2026
Documentary Lo Invisible Captured with Blackmagic PYXIS 6K
Brie Clayton July 21, 2026
0 Comments
Camera's versatile design allowed filmmakers to c...
22/07/2026
AAF Bridge converts AAF and XML Timelines to Ableton Live - and back
Jerome Gardier July 21, 2026
0 Comments
A two-way converter for macOS and Windows...
22/07/2026
From Class to Concert: Explore a Student-Led Production of David Bowies Work Thr...
22/07/2026
A poisoned spy, a secret war, and a small English city contaminated by a deadly chemical weapon. Available on Sky Documentaries from 4 AugustWednesday 22 July 2...
22/07/2026
Audio at Parity: Comscore Launches Transcript-Level Targeting and Measurement wi...
22/07/2026
Arvato Systems and Lobster Enter into a Partnership and Combine the Integration Platform and Managed Services
Flexible integration solutions for cloud, hybrid...
22/07/2026
RT REPORTS NET SURPLUS OF 22.5 MILLION IN 2025...
22/07/2026
In the Opinion of the Censor airs Monday 27 July at 9.35pm on RT One and RT Player
In the Opinion of the Censor looks at how films for theatrical release wer...
22/07/2026
Before a healthcare robot can be useful in the real world, it has to learn how the physical world pushes back. Anatomy varies. Instruments bend, press, slip and...
21/07/2026
New research involving a cross-section of Mongolias independent media landscape finds enthusiasm for AI as a tool to improve efficiency, sustainability and resi...
21/07/2026
With winners Spain having already paraded the World Cup trophy through Madrid in front of millions of fans and the dust now settling on an epic tournament of th...
By Cack Wilhelm and Jake Storm
