Dovi Frances – credit Group 11
Dovi Frances, a founding partner of the investment firm Group 11, is threatening to dump his stake in Israeli startup Papaya Global, a fintech unicorn that offers a cloud based platform for companies to handle their payrolls, at as much as a 90% discount. Frances is reportedly planning to sell his 2.8% share in the company for $12.5 million, which would leave the firm with just a $444 million valuation. After Papaya’s last round of funding the startup was valued at as much as $3.7 billion.
In January, Dovi Frances issued an open letter highly critical of Papaya Global’s move to divest itself from Israeli banks. The company’s leaders did so in protest over judicial reforms planned by the government of Benjamin Netanyahu. In the letter, Frances stated that he does not feel that a business should be making such a drastic move based on political considerations.
“As venture capital investors, we are responsible for funds of institutional and private investors,” explained Dovi Francis at the time.
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“Sometimes venture capital investors and company managers forget who owns the house, so I want to remind all of us – our landlord is the private person, the owner of the pension policy. It’s their money, not mine, not Group 11’s, not the pension fund’s and not the portfolio company’s,” he added.
“The role of the high-tech industry,” Francis declared, “which is mostly not part of this (The political debate), is to bridge between everyone and give a tremendous opportunity for financial well-being to anyone who wants it.”
Now he is claiming that his criticism of that move led Eynat Guez, co-founder and CEO of Papaya Global, to “declare war” against his firm Group 11.
In a letter to Papaya Global shareholders, Dovi Frances wrote, “To my amazement and disappointment, this simple action of exercising my freedom of speech and daring to voice an opinion differing from the CEO’s in a specific matter concerning the Company, resulted in an extreme and harsh reaction by the Company’s CEO, who apparently decided to wage war against Group 11 and against me personally, while using and abusing her powers as CEO of the Company.”
Founded in 2016 by CEO Eynat Guez, CTO Ofer Herman and CPO Ruben Drong, Papaya Global says that it is reinventing global payroll, payments, and workforce management. The company declares that its automated platform helps companies hire, onboard, manage, and pay people in more than 140 countries. The cloud-based solution is “easy to use and scale, ensures full compliance and provides industry-leading BI and analytics.”
His official bio at Group 11 states Dovi Frances is a financial services entrepreneur and the Founding Partner of Group 11, a venture capital firm based in Los Angeles, California. Over the course of his career, Frances has invested over $550 million in some of Silicon Valley’s most prominent and disruptive financial technology companies, including Tipalti, TripActions, Next Insurance, Papaya Global, HomeLight, Sunbit, Masterschool, EquityBee, Venn, and Lili to name a few.
