Tipalti, the company I co-founded in 2010 and run as CEO today, was originally supposed to be my hobby company - a low-impact side project. But the more we uncovered the need for our solution, a frictionless way to manage and scale accounts payable, it became apparent that this was too big a project to run from my kitchen table in Israel. Our success was inevitably tied to a global market sending trillions in B2B payments around the world, with the majority of business centered in the United States. And that meant we had to establish a presence there.
Today, at over one hundred employees, we’re still not a big enterprise. Even after our recent Series C funding round, we are still running as lean and agile as possible and growing organically within our means. Yet we’re able to maintain a high level of execution.
In the first few years of the company, we were mostly focused around developing the product. We were selling in the U.S. with a three-rep team until a couple of years ago. Most of my time was spent in Israel, helping to define and develop the product with the occasional travel a few times a year to meet customers and participate in industry events.
As the product matured and as it became more evident how significant the problem we were solving was, we were ready to expand our U.S. footprint. We started hiring sales, marketing, and operations executives and teams. The larger we grew, the more my role gravitated towards sales and marketing and less of my time attention was focused on the engineering front.
Around this time, I also came to the realization that while my home is in Israel, I really work for the Tipalti U.S. subsidiary, so we shifted headquarters there. I started traveling to San Mateo once a quarter, then every other month, and today I split my time almost evenly between the U.S. and Israel.
My story isn’t unique. But in an increasingly globalized world, more entrepreneurs will be challenged to live globalized lives to develop their businesses. There are three lessons I would impart to anyone in this situation as a way to contend with leading across different time zones, cultures and communication styles.
1. Run Each Location as Unique Entities
A common complaint I get is that “we act like two separate organizations; there’s not enough interaction.” While this usually comes in the form of a criticism or as desire for change, I see it as an expected outcome of a generally good and stable structure, given the 10-hour time difference between the 2 locations.
I’ve spent most of my professional life working with an ocean between me and some of my team. It’s a real challenge, and selecting the right organizational structure is key to minimizing it.
At Tipalti, engineering is in Israel and all customer facing functions are in the U.S.
But how does sales and marketing interact with product and engineering? Should the product team be closer to engineering or to the market? And how does operations resolve deep product issues?
The solution was to settle on a very thin interface. The product team is divided into two distinct functions: outward facing and inward facing. The outward facing team in the U.S., interacts with sales, solution consultants, and customers regularly both for capturing customer needs, and to support sales and marketing. The inward-looking product team remains in Israel, working closely with engineering in the same office and time zone. The inward and outward-looking product managers experience the most time zone challenges. But it’s limited to them.
For operations, most of this team is based in the U.S. to support our larger client-base. However, there is also a small team in Israel that works closer with engineering and can handle any escalations in the same time zone. It’s not perfect (as not everything can be handled by the local team), but each hemisphere gets a local operations expert.
While this structure minimizes daily friction due to the cross-border nature of the company, it also introduces some distance, as reflected by employee requests to be closer to the other entity.
To ensure we operate as a single unit, there are regularly scheduled times where we unite as a company over digital meetings to review our shared mission and progress. The beauty is that our team as a whole has internalized what we need to do, and embraces that the customer is our priority. Once that is part of your culture, everyone will do their best to reach those goals. The natural borders of being in different parts of the world doesn’t change that. It makes it easier to overcome managing across different work hours, holiday schedules, and gaps in communications.
2. Hire the Best of the Best
Given that I can only spend half my time with my executive teams, I really need the best talent that can work well together and who can run the day-to-day duties without being micromanaged. This obviously includes our C-level team, but also trickles down to just about everyone.
For me, it translated to very long hiring efforts until I could bring on the very best in their fields. Our executives are seasoned, they’ve run complex organizations in the past, and they understand what it takes to operate as a unit. I’m sure other CEOs think highly of their team, but it’s twice as important in such a cross-border environment.
3. Travel Often and Plan in Advance
With two lively office settings and tons of activity every day, there’s a desire to want to be there for every function and event. After all, I used to be a part of every task. Beyond CEO and co-founder, I often joked that I was also the lead dishwasher when we were in the office kitchen.
The reality is that I need to be in both places in person. The way to work around it is to travel frequently. To make it efficient, I plan my travel roughly six months in advance and treat it as “my commute.” If needed, I can change my plans, but so far, I’ve rarely had to. This also leads to much lower flight and hotel costs.
With set travel times, the beauty is that I have real office hours when I’m “in.” That enables our team to schedule any customer or partner meetings that require my presence. But mostly, it’s a forced discipline to maintain my attention on the areas where our company needs me most. I don’t have to chase every ball and instead I hone in on those areas where I can drive growth and benefit.
Chen Amit is the CEO of Tipalti.