Entrepreneurship is very lonely.

Eina Dguez, co founder CEO of Papaya Global, valued at 3.7 billion.

When I start something, I have very clear goals of success. Aside from health, nothing is out of our control. We might fail and we might get very bad headlines. It's okay. The day after, everyone will forget. Part of being an entrepreneur is really working with your instincts and intuitions. It's super important. It's the That's the most important thing.

Aynat Gez, co founder CEO of Papaya Global, which is a global payroll and workforce HR solutions. We'll talk about it. It's valued at 3.7 billion. Was a B. Yes, billion dollars. They were on the times 100 list of most influential companies in the world. Very few women have been unicorns, Aynat. It's incredible. And you've been an entrepreneur for almost two decades, if I'm counting roughly correctly. We'll talk about how you started, but let's start with the most important question. What's the hardest part about being an entrepreneur, Aynat? Welcome to the show.

When you're saying two decades, I'm getting old. Great to be here. Thanks for having me. I think the hardest part is wake up in the morning and have two different mindsets that you need to run all the time. Looking on everything that works very, very well and keep pushing there. But then looking on everything that you know that is not working well and can be small problems now that can evolve to be major problems or things that you are behind timeline, you are behind scheduling schedules of things. Early stages can be definitely fundraising behind your targets, behind quite a lot of things, or just ongoing issues that you have. Working with those two mindsets during the day, because I honestly feel that You need to be in those two mindset because if you're going to look only on the things that are working well, that's going to change. You need to handle the problems. But if you're only going to look and be in a mindset that I need to fix only the problems and so on, it's also demotivating. With everyone else around you. It's juggling between those two and finding the right balance, but definitely also forcing yourself to be in this mindset that you are doing those two angles altogether.

That almost gets to an insanity. You feel like you almost have two personalities and you need to somehow balance between them. I assume it's also a little lonely to try to juggle them. Am I right, Daynaat?

First, I think CEO is a very lonely job. Entrepreneurship is very lonely, and I think that we've been cofounders, the CEO is even lonelier. I think there are very few cases that I know, that I've met, that even if you have great cofounders, they can be great friends. But at the end of the day, the CEO So for all these very, very long, you're right. Yes, part of the drill.

I want to take you back in time. Let's start not all the way back because you've had multiple companies, and I want to go there. But first of all, I think one of the most One of the most inspiring stories that I heard, I think it's 2016, when you're trying to raise capital for this company. Can you share a little bit what was this like? What were the first few years like?

I always say that when you're looking on the headlines and reading the big story, so Papaya, it's a great success story and it's a phenomenal company, and I'm really, really proud of what we build and achieve during the years. But if to be completely honest, I think that the first three years is the place where we really achieved the most because it was very, very challenging. I came with a background. I've been in this domain. I had two services company, we can speak about that, that had on this exactly the same domain. We solved the problems. We knew what are the pain that we are solving. But from the other hand, in every single conversation that we had with investors, institutional investors, we were hearing that there is not a real market, it's not a real problem, there is no real need, it's not a real product. It was so hard. I think one of the roughest feedback that we received, because we are a global platform, and for us, from day one, we said, if we cannot solve global problems, so if I cannot serve your problems in any country that you need, and I'm just being very specific with countries, so we are not a really global platform.

We went to an investor, and I know that he meant well, but eventually he was telling us, Listen, startups are not dying because they don't eat. They are dying because they are over eating. You cannot solve all of those problems altogether. So all countries altogether. I said, This is our existence. This is what we need to solve. So first three years, we raised less than $5 million, I think even less than $3 million. I can count every single dollar, friends and family, great investors, angel investors that believed in us, but obviously, I mean, not sufficient in order to become really global company. I always told my co founder at the time and the team that we had that we're going to grow by proving our real use case by the market. The funny thing is that eventually when we raised, when we started doing our Series A fundraising, we were already crossing the $5 million in ARR. I didn't realize at the time that this is not the normal stage of companies that are raising their Series A. Then we heard that it's abnormal, so how can we invest in you? I mean, you are not in round A, maybe you're in round B, but you did not raise funds.

It was like, okay, now we are overqualified to raise funds. It was very frustrating. I think for me, the transition from being a company that is really not fundable to a company that investors actually really want to invest was very, very quick eventually. It was amazing to see how it's completely transitioned.

But I want to take you back there because you're for a few good years, three years, you're knocking on doors and probably a little less than But you're knocking on doors, trying to open those doors. You're getting a lot of nos. Why continue? And again, you knew the problem. So I think that's a big part because you've seen it, and we'll talk about the previous companies in a second. Is that what incurred you to continue?

First, yes, because I felt very confident in the domain. But I think that one of my friends defined it very well. He said, entrepreneur, eventually, those are the person that they literally, and even by intent, are walking through the walls and are not using the doors. I think that eventually, the motivation of getting to a yes and really working hard towards this yes, learning, adjusting the feedbacks. I never had a problem with the nos. I always had a problem with the almost yes. Doing a very long process with someone, almost being there, feeling that you are getting to the final line and then getting the no, this is the hardest moments because you almost of at the final stage and then you are going backwards. For me, that was the hardest period. But I think that you need to build the motivation from the success that you have along the way. Going back to the first balancing between the good and the bad, you see client stories and you see that you're actually bringing a real value, and you realize that eventually the story will end up. Something will happen and it will change.

You have to be this constant optimist. Now, in your case, Aynat, if it's okay to You had a personal challenge here, you were also pregnant some of the time that you raised capital, am I right?

Yes. So Papaya is seven and a half years old, and I have three kids, seven, five, and three and a half years old. So I was pregnant multiple times during this period and during the fundraising of papaya. For me, the second pregnancy we were trying to raise round A was the hardest because I felt that there are business metrics and everything Everything looks really good. We had really good momentum with quite a lot of investors. I came to roadshow pre-COVID in the Bay Area, knocking on quite a lot of doors, doing quite a lot of meetings that were planned. Obviously, I turned in with my huge Five or six months of pregnancy, barely. It was very clear from the very first moment that it's not going to happen, not at this stage, not at this currently state. It was a hard moment for me. That was probably It was the hardest period that I had, both personally and both professionally, because I came back from this trip. I spent three weeks in the US. We already had 60 employees. They all knew that I went to fundraise. It was very clear. I needed to look on their eyes and tell them, Listen, I'm failed.

We're going to make it happen. We're going to eventually solve this true. But this is where you are browsing between your selfish, I wanted this kid. That's my personal good. From the other hand, I have 60 pairs of eyes looking at me currently and feeling that my personal decision might send them home. It was a very hard moment.

Talk to me for a second, because I think one of the biggest, and I appreciate your honesty here, I think one of the biggest elements in entrepreneurship is you literally feel like you're suffocating. And that is also the difference between the people that make it and don't make it, because in those moments, most people will basically pull the plug. So how did you recover from this? Because you still had, obviously, a few months to go, and you have a lot of mouse to feed, and not just at home, but also in the office. There's a lot of weight on your shoulders in that. How do you do it?

I have a very strong strategy here that I use for years, honestly, not only on business, on the personal side. From my personal perspective, I think that the majority of the neurodevelop experience fears that we have, both on the personal field and business fields, we are more fearing to face those experiences than actually getting to this moment and see what's going to happen. If we take it to the real life, it's not near death. We are not sending anyone to a dangerous field. We don't want to fear and we don't want to feel the failure. For me, it starts with really visualizing the worst case scenario and feeling this failure. Taking those near death moment and post-death and saying, Okay, what's going to happen if I'm going to fail? I'm going to try the hardest I can. I'm going to do this and this. But tomorrow morning, I'm going to get to a place where I don't have money in my bank account. What's going to happen? Somebody maybe we acquire the assets because it's actually a good company, it's a good team. I'm going to spend more time at home with my kids. I'm I'm going to learn this and this for my next journey.

There is always scenario that you understand that is not as bad as you thought. And honestly, I think that we need to take a really good proportion to life. Aside from health, nothing is out of our hands and out of our control. It's only money or it's only business decision. We might fail and we might get a very bad headlines. It's okay. The day after, everyone will forget. I think that breaking it into those scenarios and stop fearing from this is one stage. Because once you stop fearing from this, something else happens and you start optimizing the scenarios. You're saying, Okay, let's think about what is it here that I can work with, that maybe I'm going to get closer to the end, but maybe I can optimize it. Maybe I can find another outcome, maybe I can think on a creative solution. I think that actually when we are in those near-death experience and we are not fearing from them, this is where we get the most creative. It's actually a really really good exercise to do. I think that even if you fail, if you know that you did the best and you did not work out a minute before, you feel much better with yourself.

I absolutely agree. But first of all, I think this is just incredible to hear you say it and describe it. I think a lot of people know, theoretically, that they should look at the worst case scenario, but you don't want to see the worst case scenario because it's actually scary. But like you said, it's not real death. It's scary, but it's not real fatal. But tell me a little bit, you've had a lot of naysayers, you've been involved with a lot of things, you are very vocal about some of your opinions. How did you build this thick skin? Were you born with it?

I think 50 20% is prebuilt, so yes, for sure. I think that you see it on very early stage and very early age, right? I was always on the first front on everything that we wanted to achieve. I was always an activist on small things, on big things in my life and so on. I think that this is part of who I am. Definitely, I think that the current world of social media and very quick judgment and so on, it's much, much harder. I think as probably every entrepreneur, the first talkbacks that you read about yourself is like, Oh, my God. I mean, is this me? But then you look at this and you said, Okay, this is actually quite funny. I think that you need to look at that from the outside and just detach from it emotionally.

Can you share a big slap in the face that you... Because again, I look at my ads and sometimes it's almost like talkback. It's like, Oh, God. I think, especially in platform like Reddit, et cetera, when people can be anonymous, it goes wild. They can say whatever the heck they want, which is very dangerous as well. But can you share an episode that just made you feel like a huge slap slap in the face? Because they do wobble you from time to time.

I think there are two areas where it really bothers me. First, I'm very client-centric. If I'm going to read a bad client experience about papaya, I'm going to take it very personally. Normally, when I can identify who read it and it's authentic, it's not just trash of someone, I'm going to call this person. I'm going to get a very, very candid feedback. I don't think that you can avoid negative experience in business, but I think that you need to hear them. I think that the fact that you take them very personally actually help you to learn and to do things better. It's really hard for me to read this because I'm looking at it from the outside. I said, Okay, this is not what we want to do. But I think that instead of looking at this and said, Oh, this is not a good client. This is his fault, and so on. Let's really get the harsh truth in the face. So actually dive into it, ask them to give us the feedback, and work with them or without them. Sometimes it's too late in order to learn from this and to grow from this.

So this is one thing that I think that I'm learning also with myself to take very negative feedback and to transition them into something that I'm actually learning and reading. The other one, which is probably as a woman, that's the hardest one where people are, Oh, she's the most terrible mother in the world and blah, blah, blah, and so on. I'm very candid about the way that I balance kids and work and so on. I always said that probably the second or the third word of each one of my kids was papaya, and they can recognize papaya's logo everywhere and so on. I'm very proud about that. I think that, honestly, This is always the outside. I think that this is... I don't want people to judge me about the type of parent that I am, but definitely those are the roughest feedback that you don't want to get.

First of I think this is a big testament to why you build such an incredible company, because you're able to get that feedback and turn it into action. And that's a big gift, right? Because a lot of people just don't want to read it, versus actually taking action, taking the time to collect the feedback and turning it into action and something that you can learn from. So first of all, that's incredible to hear. And it's a testament to the CEO that you are. But I do think it's an important element that you talked about kids. I don't I don't think that men, sorry, get as much about how they balance the work and life. But how do you balance the work and life as somebody that is also a workaholic? I do believe that kids learn a ton from seeing us, but I do want to hear how do you balance and what's your thoughts around some of those conversations?

First, I don't balance. I'm very bad in balancing. Maybe one day I'm going to do a better job here. But I think what I decided from very, very early days that I'm not going to separate my kids from my career and business. I do a lot of calls at the evening times. If they jump into the screen, I let them, their 30 seconds of glory, say hello because kids are kids. You can always bring them to the screen. It's actually always nice. It's funny, but sometimes they want to listen to the call. Sometimes they, Can you put it on Can you remove it from your headphones? We want to hear the call, even if they don't understand. I let them be present. Sometimes they ask me funny questions, how they understand reality from their side. I think that the fact that they are part of something is actually bring them to feel that they are a part, that they are a meaningful part of it. It's not like papaya is taking our mom away from us. Sometimes it happens, and sometimes I'm away, I need to travel and so on. It's not easy. I think that here you need to be very genuine with yourself and understand that you are doing it because you think that this is the right thing for you and for your career and for your business.

You don't want to get frustrated about them avoiding you of achieving your personal goals. But it's hard. I think that also understanding that living not with guilt, but with the constant feeling that you are missing some great moments in their lives and eventually Being far away sometimes is super hard when they really need you. It's part of it. I think it's also part of just accepting it and not trying to feel guilt or trying to solve it because you can't really solve it. You can't be at two places at once.

I agree. I always say that I think you can have it all just not exactly at the same time. So if I need to choose, I choose quality versus quantity. I think the role model that you are gives them the quality. I don't think that I need to be counting hours. I've seen people being super toxic with their kids, and maybe they've been there for many hours. But guess what? I would not replace that. I love that you're saying this. Talk to me a little bit about your previous companies. Previous companies, you were more in the service arena. How did you even start being an entrepreneur, basically?

I think that I I wanted to be an entrepreneur since I was four years old. I literally remember myself asking my dad, How come you work for others? Why you don't want to work for yourself? I was always curious. I remember that people were telling me, I was reading about businessmen, and I was like, What is a businessman? What a businessman is actually doing? I was really intrigued. Honestly, that was something that I really wanted to achieve from a very, very early days. After completing seven years in an amazing company, a holding company that did mega projects in Africa and so on. For me, that was university for life. It was very convenient. I had a great job. It was really amazing. I really enjoyed it. But there was this moment, as I said, it's now or never. I leave my convenience or I bring back the phone and the car and the salaries and the benefits and so on, and I start my own thing now. Otherwise, it's not going to happen. I was really scared about this moment that I'm going to choose convenience over My adventures of being an entrepreneur. I'm a very strict person with myself.

When I start something, I have very, very quick, very clear goals of success, personal success. Like, what are the KPIs? I said, Okay, I'm taking a year If in this year, I'm not going to achieve a specific amount of income, and this is again going to the planning the worst case scenario, I felt that, Okay, I'm talented enough. I'm going to find another job. Maybe it's not going to be as great as the last one, but okay, I'm going to start from there. That will be okay. I believe that I'll find my way through. I really wanted to start and eventually setting a startup. It was end of 2008, beginning of 2009, not the right time to raise funds. We were working on an idea and the market crashed. We had initial investors that were turning away and saying, It's not going to happen. I literally remember this moment. I was sitting on my couch in Tel Aviv and looking at the wall and said, Okay, a minute before, I had a career. I knew what I was doing. I left. I wanted to start a startup. It's not going to happen. What do I do tomorrow morning?

I was thinking with myself and saying, Okay, what is it that I know? How can I contribute to the world? We were doing a lot of relocations at the time, definitely to developing countries, definitely to Africa. I said, Okay, let's start. Let's work with this. I think this is a very specific need, talent, and knowledge that I have. I started with this. I built the first website myself. I was coding the website at night and then picking the calls in the morning, sending messages to press to try and promote myself and why the uniqueness and so on. Everything really trying to hack the system with zero resources and on a self-service all in one operation. I think that eventually when you are very, very committed to the thing, and again, that was, for me, by the way, much harder than getting, I don't know, 20 nos a day because it's waking up every morning and telling to yourself, You are going to succeed today. You need to get the first client. You need to get the first person that actually is going to pay you because the money is just running out and out and out and out.

I think it was an amazing learning experience. A relocation source grew to be a great company. I think that the one thing that for me is very, very important also Infrastructures in the things that I brought to papaya is that I learned how to manage a PnL. I needed to assure that this business is profitable from day one. I didn't have any other choices. In the first year, the company was already profitable and we had clients and so on. I worked really hard, honestly. I mean, I worked crazy hard, but it was really, really, really fun. And a few years later, I felt that I'm ready for a new adventure. I didn't knew what was the adventure, but I really felt that I'm ready for a new adventure. At the time, a small company called Waze, called me and asked me to help them with their relocation to China. I said, Okay, I hear that China is being the new buzzword around. What's going on in China? I know Africa very well. I've never been to China. I started to travel and to see what's going on in China. Eventually, Waze never relocated their team to China because they've been acquired by Google short period afterwards, and they realized that China is not a good market for them.

But I started my second company, Expert Source, because I realized that there is a huge potential. Obviously, pre-COVID, the whole Western world was ironing to China as a huge business and market expansion potential. It all starts with people because I remember this week in China, it was a very hard week for me. No WhatsApp, nothing. You are always disconnected. I mean, no Google Maps, nothing. I mean, everything is disconnected. You are literally relying on the person in the hotel to write you the addresses in Chinese and to hand it over from one taxi to another taxi. For a person that is free control and likes to know what's going on, it was a very, very tough experience. But generally speaking, I met a business partner there that we are still working together. I think it's more than 15 years, and it's been a great partnership. We did tons of things together. It's really a great partnership. I think that it also gets to a place where you understand that people are people. To remove the culture, remove the language and so on, you really need to work with your instincts, and you really need to eventually start everything by trusting the people and feeling the people and feeling if this is the right partnership or relationship or can be with employees as well.

But it's super important. It's the most important thing.

I think what's really, really important to emphasize to everybody listening is that even though you came up with a specific passion, relocation, et cetera, you needed to put a lot of hats on, just like any entrepreneur. You need to put the technology hat hat on suddenly and the sales hat on and the marketing hat on, business development, et cetera. You need to put a lot of hats on. I think a lot of people are not ready for the multiple hats. They come with a certain passion and they're like, Oh, great. I love to coach or I love to work is HR. I love to help whatever. But then they don't realize most of the time you're not really going to do that. You're actually going to put on a lot of hats and do it. You're somehow instinctively knew that this is what you need to do and you're not from the effort, the hard work? What helped you along the journey?

First, I think I got the inspiration when I was traveling, backpacking. I mean, on my early 20s, I met an amazing businessman in Australia. We started the conversation because as I told you, I was always passionate to understand how people became businessmen. I wanted to learn. He shared with me, Listen, I arrived to Australia early days. I had no job. I didn't have a good English. So I said, What can I do? Then they started to build those very high towers and so on. He said, If I can clean the windows from the outside, this is going to be a very dangerous job, but I'm adventurous, so I'll do that. I think that I don't need a good English. I don't need anything. Let's make it happen. His story, he told me that the biggest expense that he had at the time is printing colorful business card, which was really expensive because he needed to assure that it looks exclusive and so on, and he's serving a high-end market. He was exactly sharing this with me. That was my number. I was doing everything. I was picking up the call, I was setting job to myself, I was getting the complaints of, Oh, your workers, he didn't do this and this and that.

I was like, Yeah, sorry, we're going to fix this. It was one-man show doing everything. I think I was so impressed about this. And he's a great guy and a great inspiration for me. I felt that this is really the right way of building a business. I think, honestly, if you go back to the best business persons that you read, it always starts with them wearing multiple hats and doing everything from the wound up.

I do believe that it's very, very hard to lead something that you have no clue about. I think you need to touch it. You don't have to be the best at it, but you need to touch it to know how to manage a team. Let's talk for a second Because you've had multiple of these smaller companies, but there's also a very big difference between a service-based company, even if it's successful, and a venture-backed company, and also a lot of difference between build stage and growth stage. So I want to touch all of these one by one.

I think for me, it was a big learning experience. I started Papaya with two cofounders. Both of them, they came from tech companies beforehand. For me, at the beginning, I was struggling to understand why everything takes so long, why we are planning for so long, why we are not solving problems tomorrow morning. When you are on operational mode, you always want to achieve things. You want to end the day with accomplishments, and not on the drawing board, not on the whiteboard. I think that was always the tension of let's build things for scale rather than just let's serve the here and now. I think for me, I needed to learn a lot. I needed to learn about I needed to learn about what is it that we are building. I really believe that on those stages, if you listen, you hear tons of in things. If you're receptive to just listen. So this is the best learnings and lessons that you're going to get in your life because you don't know what you don't know. So only if you're going to listen, you're going to understand. I think one of the first investors meeting that we had, and actually somebody that said no to us, but he's still He was a good friend, he told us, in order to build a very, very successful B2B company, you need to do 2T, 3Ds.

Triple 2 time, double 3 time. I was like, What does it mean? What does it even mean? He says, Take all the most successful SaaS companies on the enterprise space. All of them were tripling their revenues on the first two years or the first years of revenues. Then the three years But after, they were doubling the revenues year after year. So I said, This is the model that you need to get. We were in early stages. We hardly raised half a million dollars. I was like, How are we going to build this model? How it even makes sense? But I think that What I like about tech that I didn't have on the services side, and I think it's going to the beginning of the lonely journey, that you have tons of playbook and you have a community that is sharing. So maybe it's not a close community that you're going to go and speak with them at the end of the day, but you have a lot of knowledge and you have a lot of information and things that worked for others, did not work for other, like metrics and tactics, how to get to things.

In a way, you just need to be receptive to learn, to to read and to listen. This is probably 50 to 60% of the things that you need to do in order to achieve.

First of all, you talked about listening, which is not easy. We come with a certain level of ego, and sometimes that ego, it's hard to push it aside. But also, it's how do you decide who to listen to? Because there's a lot of opinions out there. The grass always sounds greener on the other side. You need to also watch out from taking all the experts' opinion and start wishy-washy and going in all directions. How do you balance listening, but also really listening to yourself as well and your instincts? How do you balance it?

A great question. I think that this is something that You don't know it day one because I think that definitely you are coming from one hand with an ego, but you're also coming with some very low confidence about yourself because they've already been there. I never built a tech company. They raised money, I didn't raise money. Maybe they sold a company. Everything sounds so glorious and so amazing and everyone is so smart and so on. You are the only one that don't understand anything that they are saying and so on. I think that you need to listen to everything. Definitely, you listen to a lot of things at the beginning that will have zero meaning afterwards. When you're going to be a bit more experienced, you're going to understand that that wasn't the right suggestion or even those people are not as smart as you thought that they are, not successful as you thought that you are. I think that you need to listen to people or you need to find the ability to listen to people that are very genuine. Because if someone is only telling you how successful it was, how everything is great, how definitive it is, maybe in his mind, currently, this is a story that he to himself, but it's never the story.

We do mistakes every day. We have failure in every stage. It's not a journey of great high and fun and so on, probably the other way around. I think that you need to listen to people that you feel confident, but also if you listen to people that you feel confident and you think that they are very genuine with you when you get the right advice to the stage. This is also very important because sometimes, if I'm trying currently to achieve $1 million in AOR, when you are in $10 million in AOR, your advice This means nothing to me. I need to capture them in my memory, but they are not relevant to my stage. I also need to find devices that are relevant to the stage. Yes, growth and eventually scale and so on. Completely different mindset, completely different stage. Sometimes people forget. If you ask me currently about what I did on the three days of papaya, I probably don't remember 80% of the things. I'm not the best person currently to give great practical advice. I think you need to listen. I think you need to analyze things very, very clearly. I think you always need to challenge your inner model, your business model, the product that you were solving.

Okay, he did this, but eventually, is he right? Or he said this? As I gave the example of someone that told us, You cannot be total global on day one. Choose five geos and so on. It just wasn't the right advice. I understand why he said it, but it would mean nothing to the market in terms of what we bring to the table. You need to listen to everything there and you need to decide if you're putting it on the places that you said, Okay, I learned or I listened, but I know that eventually it's irrelevant. I know why it's irrelevant. You need to take things I can analyze them and sometimes say, Okay, maybe there is a point here, but I'm going to choose my own. Maybe it's right, maybe it's wrong. I don't know, but I need to following my own path here. Sometimes you just listen to things, you hear them, and you realize that there are actually things that you need to change. There is no one way of doing it. I think it's really following your instincts and your intuition. I think that eventually, part of being an entrepreneur is really working with your instincts and intuitions.

A lot of experiments and really listen to what the market actually says, I assume.

I also say that people love to give advices. That's for sure and so on. But we always need to remember that once they walk out of the room, that's it. I mean, their job is done. Now you are stuck with this advice. If you implement this, be sure that you are taking it and you really believe in this, because otherwise, that's the wrong decision to take.

Absolutely. I can totally see how this can also wiggle you and get you doubts. But let's talk for a second, because there is a big difference between build stage and growth stage. You guys are right now, again, valued at 3.7 billion, times 100 is extremely hard to get to. You guys are literally a global company. What is the difference as a CEO running literally a monster? So talk to us a little bit about this growth stage.

I think almost every year in Kapaia forced me and the company to think differently, to act differently, because we have about 850 employees these days around the globe. We are in a stage that, unfortunately, I don't know everyone in person. Moreover, I don't even know what people are contributing to the company as they knew before. You know that you have a great team, you know that eventually there is a chain of command that eventually makes things happen. But you really need to I feel this in a place where you have much more control without being involved with everything and so on. I think it's a huge change in mindset. I think that two years ago, we were fighting internally with the sentence, What's the problem? If someone don't understand something, why don't they ask me? People that worked in the company for three years, they were like, It was clear for them. I'm here. Everybody knows me. I'm available. I'm a very nice person. Why don't they ask me? I was constantly telling them, They don't ask you because they don't know who you are. They don't feel comfortable to just pick up the phone and ask you.

Maybe they don't even know that you are a person that they need to ask because there are hundreds of people around them in different time zones. Starting to build different communications and collaborations and looking on all of processes again and again and again and again. I think that people also need to understand. I think that this is something that for me personally, I'm addicted to changes. I love changes in my life, in my home. I love changes. But I think that Everyone has a specific sensitivity to changes. I think that I'm on the extreme. You can change everything before morning. I'm going to be super happy. I'm going to be excited about that. Some people, if you change in small things, they freak out and build the the DNA of the organization to also adapt to the phase of the changes that you have. For me, by the way, this is the biggest struggle in Papaya because as I said, I'm a very big believer on quick changes. I love them. But over time, I learned to understand that I need to work with different phases of people. Eventually, I understand also that implementing a change in a big organization cannot happen overnight.

You need to work differently than your instinct. I think as a personal founder, this is the biggest lesson for me. Drop your instincts of how you did things or how you're going to do things when you're on bootstrap mode and try to educate yourself to work differently and to eventually have different sets of tools for success because otherwise you're going to fail. There are lots of things that you need to learn. You need to learn how to communicate with a bigger organization. You need to work how to build processes at scale. You need to work how eventually you are building a different DNA because you need to keep this DNA working together and connecting together without seeing those people. I mean, it's much easier when everyone is the same room, you know you can have lunch together and so on, then just having people in different geos that eventually, they all get papaya's, I don't know, like T-shirt or hat, but you don't really share the same DNA, and you need to create this. This is a tough thing. I think that I didn't realize how tough and how important it is. Like three years ago, and in the last year or two years, we were spending a lot of time there.

I think that this is for me, internally, this is a very, very important thing. Externally, when you are going to the market and you are on a large scale, you need to understand also that every change and everything that you are doing and every decision that you are making is going to be a decision for the long run. I cannot change my decision and my strategy as quickly as I did when I was small because it's actually stopping the machine. When you are trying to stop a large machine, it just take more time.

That's incredible. Who teaches you that? Where do you get all the information? Because this is a lot of change in a very short time. It's not taught in the regular MBA, whatever. This is not where it's taught. Where do you get the learning of how to run a ship like this?

As I said, I think what I like about the tech community community is that people are very open. A lot of them are very open to share their knowledge and their experience. I always try to find, at least every six months or so, founder and a CEO of a company that is two years ahead of me in terms of their face and ask them, What is it that I don't know now? What is it that I need to know? And what is your current mindset? And so on. It's funny because sometimes you hear the things and you I said, How come? I'm going to beat her? I mean, that sounds like crazy. It's crazy that when you are looking ahead and you are learning to hear average problems ahead or what is currently they are busy with, you understand how you're going to get there? Actually, the company is not relying on you. I think for me, that was very important. Maybe also it went side by side with the fact that I had three kids during papaya. And although I never took any formal I always wanted to prepare the company to the day that I'm not going to be there because I'm going to give birth and maybe, I don't know, I won't be able to work.

I wanted to assure that there is a solid team and a strong leadership that can take decision. I think this is also a very important phase and definitely a very important lesson for founders because it's hard. It's hard to take this thing that you just created and started and so on and let others driving their their domains and territories and so on. But I think it's a combination of learning from others and eventually bringing the right people in. Also constantly challenging yourself and the organization. Is this the right people? Are we on the right direction? And so on. I think that's one of the things that we are very fear of saying out loud is that we did mistakes. We didn't took the right decision or we are not under... I mean, I'm very criticized with myself because I think that eventually, if I'm I'm going to wake up in the morning and tell myself how amazing everything that I'm doing is, we're not going to get anywhere.

I think what you said about you need to literally fire yourself from your job and move to another job is a really important one and where a lot of people don't know and they keep holding on and micromanaging. I think this is what lets you whatever, triple, double all the time. I don't know if you know, but what's one thing maybe that you went through that maybe people don't know about that has built you to the person that you are today? Do you think there's a certain situation or something that formed you a little bit?

I think I had few life experience that made me, I would say less fearful than others and taking things in good proportion. I think that if you go to everyone's childhood, there is something there that was for moments, for good and for bad, that was dictating our ability to handle challenges and so on. I lost my mother on a very early age. She had a serious brain damage when I was four years old, and I needed to grow side by side with her at home, but she was dysfunctioning She was actually... We needed to walk around her and seeing her in very unpleasant mode for many, many years. She passed away 18 years later. For me, I really think that eventually understanding that it It happened overnight. This is your new reality. As I said, I'm very adaptive to change. Maybe it happened there, I don't know. But okay, what is it that I need to do for myself currently? What is it that actually... I mean, everyone was so busy around her. I had a younger brother. I have a younger brother. He was baby at the time. So obviously, a lot of attention went to him.

And understanding, how do you play your cards? And I think that one thing that my father was really good at at, he probably messed up a lot of along the way, but he was really good in always keeping us on the mindset that it is what it is. Don't feel sorry about yourself. Just look on the things that you can bring, you can achieve, you can grow from this and play with your best cards. I think that this is first, I think it's an approach to life, but it's also approach to the business because bad things going to happen in the business. If you don't want to eventually go and face bad things or bad years, or years that... That thing is going to happen. That's for a fact. I mean, it's unavoidable. But you can always play with your best cards at any point of time.

I love this sentence. I kept saying, Challenges are inevitable, but the suffering is a choice. And you were somehow ingrained with that. It was really interesting. It's such an inspiring story. We usually finish our episode with one advice that you would give to your younger self. What would that be?

Well, worryless, probably. Learn how to celebrate the small moments. I'm really, really bad at this, but I think that I'm learning and trying. I'm learning from my kids, actually, how to learn how to celebrate those small things in life and cherish them. But yeah, worryless. I always like to worry about future things and so on.

That's incredible to see because you never look like you're worried. You always look so happy, so cheerful, so inspiring. I mean, you're involved with so many things, so we can't tell from the outside. But Aynat, you are such an inspiring leader. I just love having you on this show.

Maybe we're going to end with this because for me, when we just co-founded Paya, I think six months later, I was pregnant at the time, and we had a woman delegation to the Bay Area, and you were hosting us. I was looking at you and I said, Wow, she's an amazing, exceptional. I remember the stories that you shared and the journey that you had. For me, you were the inspiration. You were the amazing person that achieved those great things. I think this is really what great in this journey that you learn first to meet great people, talented people. I think the only thing that I do hope that people will keep the honesty and share their stories very, very openly because it really helps others.

So inspiring. Thank you, Aynat. That meant a lot. Now we're closing the loop and I'm interviewing you because you're the inspiration. I love that, Aynat. Such a beautiful story. Thank you for sharing.

Thank you.