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 ...
09/10/2026
September 10 2026, 06:00 (PDT) Dolby Expands Dolby OptiView Platform with New Capabilities at IBC 2026
New Sports Intelligence helps providers better unders...
08/10/2026
Modern venues have come a long way since the tinny, echoing audio of the mid 20t...
08/10/2026
ESPN's first Super Bowl production will stream in English and Spanish on Disney+, while the ESPN App carries the full slate of game, ManningCast, studio, an...
08/10/2026
From high-school videoboards to War Eagle Productions, the Opelika native is learning how to lead shows and capture big moments
The future of live sports produ...
08/10/2026
The Television Academy and Prime Video have announced a six-year agreement making Prime Video the exclusive global home of the Emmy Awards beginning with the 20...
08/10/2026
Techex will exhibit at NAB Show New York 2026 (Booth 623, Javits Center, October...
08/10/2026
X Games has announced the appointment of Steve Rogers as Chief Operating Officer. Rogers previously served as COO of World Supercross and spent nearly a decade ...
08/10/2026
Fonn Group has appointed Trevor Spielmann as Sales Director for Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Spielmann joins from EVS, where he held sales and business de...
08/10/2026
The flagship program will originate from major PG events with a four-camera production, live distribution across PGTV, social platforms
Perfect Game is bringin...
08/10/2026
Innovation rarely happens in a vacuum. More often, it happens at the point of collision: when worlds that have run on separate tracks begin to converge. That is...
08/10/2026
For decades, the production and broadcast services business has run on a familia...
08/10/2026
Uplynk, Zixi, BroadView Software, and Grass Valley have published The IP Converg...
08/10/2026
The NFL has announced the return of the Big Data Bowl, the league's analytics competition, now in its ninth year and again powered by AWS. Registration is o...
08/10/2026
Eutelsat has renewed its partnership with T l diffusion d'Alg rie (TDA), Algeria's national broadcasting network operator, for continued distribution of...
08/10/2026
Disney will livestream Super Bowl LXI on February 14, 2027, alongside the game's broadcast on ESPN and ABC. All Disney subscribers in the United States wi...
08/10/2026
RHStv and Red House Streaming have announced an expansion of their partnership w...
08/10/2026
Gray Media has announced a distribution agreement with TEGNA and DAZN to simulca...
08/10/2026
SVG readers can save 10% on registration and receive a complimentary Solutions H...
08/10/2026
PROTON Camera Innovations GmbH has been named a recipient of a 2026 Technology a...
08/10/2026
Industry leaders discuss real-world cloud workflows for live game production, pl...
08/10/2026
The next-gen audio technology joins Dolby Vision as part of Apple TV's immersive F1 experience...
08/10/2026
David France, Jesse Short Bull, Mato Wayuhi, N. Bird Runningwater, Jodi Archambau, Jhane Myers, Paul McGuire, Amber Morning Star Byars, Holly Macarro, Nick Tils...
08/10/2026
Dynamic panning plug-ins get an upgrade
Sound Particles have just announced major updates for two of their popular dynamic panning plug-ins. Energy Panner 2...
08/10/2026
New expandable instrument boasts full DMNO engine
UDO Audio have just announced the upcoming release of a new, expandable synth that packs the power of the ...
08/10/2026
Two new subwoofers added to monitoring line-up
ADAM Audio's monitoring range has just been expanded with two new DSP-equipped subwoofers, the Sub8 PRO a...
08/10/2026
eds3_5_jq(document).ready(function($) { $(#eds_sliderM519).chameleonSlider_2_1({ content_source:......
08/10/2026
Calrec gives broadcasters freedom of choice at NAB Show New York We're looking forward to meeting up with you all at NAB New York on 21st-22nd October.
Cal...
08/10/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
08/10/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
08/10/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
08/10/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
08/10/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
08/10/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
08/10/2026
Globecast, a leading provider of broadcast, media and entertainment managed services, will showcase its next generation of media orchestration services at NAB S...
08/10/2026
Clear-Com played a critical role in the production communications infrastructure for Rock in Rio 2026, one of the world's largest and most recognized music...
08/10/2026
Sohonet Launches ClearView Rush: A Leap Forward in Studio Review, Built for Crea...
08/10/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
08/10/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
08/10/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
08/10/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
08/10/2026
Ikegami announces a major expansion to its range of broadcast-quality live production cameras. Scheduled for introduction on Ikegami booth 708 at NAB New York, ...
08/10/2026
Calrec will be located at Booth 444.
Freedom to choose
The media landscape is evolving quickly, and the broadcasters best placed for what comes next will be...
08/10/2026
LiveU has announced that CRD Audiovisuel relied on LiveUs LU900Q intelligent production unit, with built-in native LiveU IQ (LIQ ) connectivity, to deliver live...
08/10/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
08/10/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
08/10/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
08/10/2026
Marshall Electronics, a globally recognized provider of high-performance video solutions for broadcast, streaming, AV and professional production, will exhibit ...
08/10/2026
Latest Innovations Extend Fiber to Any Location and Elevate Subscriber Quality o...
By Cack Wilhelm and Jake Storm
