Giovanni Vajna de Pava Chief Technology Officer, Billhop
Previously
IT Technology & Development Director/CIO, KinlyHead of Software Engineering, Knab
Director of R&D, Travix International
Company
Billhop was founded in 2013 by Sebastian Andreescu, Erik Malm and Ingemar Sjögren after they, collectively, started looking into why it wasn’t possible for SMEs to pay their suppliers with credit cards.
They quickly realised that card acceptance within the B2B space was less than 15% worldwide, which led them to create Billhop.
Billhop is a payment platform which connects the card infrastructure with the banking pay-out infrastructure, allowing businesses to pay all their suppliers irrespective of whether the suppliers accept business cards or not. Suppliers are paid on time and the client’s cash balance is preserved until their credit card statement is due.
Billhop skirts the issue of low card acceptance in supplier payments by acting as an intermediary between the supplier and the client, accepting credit card payments at one end and forwarding the cash to the creditor at the other. In this way, users get to pay their due bills without putting an immediate strain on their liquidity. The business is a regulated Payment Institute with a license to operate across the EEA, Switzerland, and Israel.
Search Background
Following a successful Series B raise in February 2022 from EQT Ventures, Billhop embarked on a journey to augment its executive leadership team and help scale the business towards further profitability and revenue growth over the next 3-5 years aggressively and robustly. One of the main elements of this initiative was to strengthen Billhop’s technology leadership given that technology sits at the heart of what the business does, replacing the Co-Founding CTO that would take on a new role within the technology team and work side by side with the new CTO.
Requirements
Due to the nature of the offering, Billhop were seeking somebody with great experience in developing robust platform products within strict regulatory frameworks, as well as somebody who more generally had experience in architecting platforms at scale and across multiple geographies. Above all, Billhop were seeking a mature and cycled leader who could take the reins of a burgeoning engineering team, professionalise it and cultivate a high-performing engineering culture.
Result
Erevena found and placed Giovanni Vajna de Pava, who brings deep knowledge of platform architecture and development, as well as experience in a multitude of industries, such as travel, banking and remote solutions. Giovanni has proven himself in building high-calibre engineering departments across his various roles, ensuring stability, optimal performance and delivery of the highest quality in the engineering team. He ultimately brings the leadership maturity to augment the technical depth established by the Co-Founding CTO and Giovanni’s scaling experience will enable Billhop to navigate the next phase of its growth.
Sebastian Andreescu
CEO & Co-Founder
We had very specific requirements for this search and decided to go with Erevena due to their vast network and proven track record of finding C-level tech executives.
There are many qualities than just competence and experience that you are searching for when filling a C-level position. You needed to ensure, for example, cultural fit, that the candidate is stage appropriate for the business. For us there was no doubt in choosing Erevena as we had used them in the past for leadership searches and what stood out for us in particular was their approach to the search. They have a well-thought-out and diligent process that is designed to mitigate, to the extent possible, for the risk of failure when it comes finding the best fit for your organisation’s specific need. Now that Giovanni has been with us for some time, we can conclude that we found the perfect candidate for the role, and we have Erevena to thank for that.
