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I’ve talked to a lot of entrepreneurs over the years, but John Caplan might be the first one to tell me, flat out, that the best entrepreneurs are basically unemployable. As CEO of Payoneer, John runs a company that quietly powers the global economy — a financial services platform serving two million customers around the world, moving roughly $100 billion a year for entrepreneurs selling on Amazon, Shopify, Etsy, and beyond. Since taking the reins, he’s helped grow Payoneer from a $500 million business into a billion-dollar one. Here’s his playbook.
Dan Bova: Can you give us the elevator pitch for Payoneer?
John Caplan: Payoneer’s an incredible company. We are 22 years old, and we provide all the financial tools an entrepreneur who operates their business cross-border needs. Think of us, in some ways, like a bank alternative. If you’re an entrepreneur in Vietnam and you’re selling products to Latin America and hiring talent across the Philippines, you use Payoneer’s multi-currency wallet to really run your financial operations. We have two million customers in 190 countries, just about $100 billion of activity in the Payoneer accounts around the world, and we’re over a billion-dollar revenue business and nearly $300 million of adjusted EBITDA.
What’s something about crossing borders that entrepreneurs aren’t thinking about that you’re solving for?
There’s a bunch of things — the first thing is holding multiple currencies. If you sell in one currency and get paid in another, having a multi-currency wallet is not easy, because your local banks around the world don’t provide that capability. The second thing we solve is providing everything in the palm of your hand — using your mobile phone as your financial command center. And I think the third primary benefit is all of the accounts receivable and accounts payable tools an entrepreneur needs. Maybe it’s cards that they give their employees when they go on business trips with limits on them, or being able to send an invoice and a link to get paid quickly. A very simple set of tools that make running a business globally easy from day one. If you’re at Procter & Gamble, you have a whole finance department that does that. But if you’re a 100-person company in the Philippines, banks aren’t really built for you. We exist for the entrepreneurs of the world — really the backbone of the global economy.
What is it about entrepreneurs that makes you want to help them?
I am an insatiable entrepreneur myself. And, in a funny way, the best entrepreneurs are really unemployable at some level. We rebel against authority, and we want to make the world a better place. I’ve often thought of entrepreneurship and leadership as two different things. Entrepreneurs are driven by passion and vision and sometimes naive hope, and leaders are driven by trying to build systems to turn those ideas into economics and a reality. I’ve spent my career doing both — starting things from scratch and scaling them. The thing I enjoy most is coming into a company like Payoneer and running it with the entrepreneurial passion I’ve had my whole life.
Can you talk about the steps you took that allowed you to grow to a billion-dollar company?
This is the fourth or fifth big-scale transformation I’ve led, and I really have a transformation playbook. It starts with cutting all the noise out, talking to customers, and actually listening to their needs instead of looking at your competition. That’s thing number one. Recognizing how they create value so you can help them create the value they’re trying to deliver is the second. The third is building a culture and a community of executives with a shared passion for the mission to make other people’s lives better. And then a rigorous, data-driven decision-making process, so the numbers tell the story and we make decisions out of that data. At the end of the day, I act fast and I act fair, and people who work with me know I’m committed to the results and the team delivering those results.
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