This interview is with Talia Mashiach, CEO, Founder and Product Architect, Eved.
For readers meeting you for the first time, how do you describe who you are and what you’re building at Eved?
I’m Talia Mashiach, a five-time founder, fintech CEO, and community builder. I’ve spent my career creating technology that simplifies how businesses connect and move money.
Today, I’m the Founder, CEO, and Product Architect of Eved, a B2B accounts payable and payments company that automates the entire financial process for productions, studios, and Fortune 500 events. Our platform brings together everything finance teams need: onboarding, approvals, payments, tax compliance, and reporting, all in one secure, connected system.
Eved was built to solve a problem I saw over and over again: industries like entertainment and events move fast, but their financial systems never kept up. We give them the speed they need, along with the visibility, control, and compliance their corporations require.
Over the years, I’ve built and sold multiple companies and have been honored to receive national recognition, from the Inc. 500 list to Ernst & Young’s Winning Women, and being named a Crain’s Chicago Business 40 Under 40 and part of their Tech 50. Those milestones remind me that innovation isn’t just about technology; it’s about persistence, clarity, and purpose.
As an Orthodox Jewish woman and mother of five, I’ve always believed you can build big companies without compromising your values. I’m proud that Eved’s culture reflects that, grounded in integrity, service, and innovation.
At the end of the day, we make it possible for productions and enterprises to pay securely, operate efficiently, and create fearlessly.
Looking back, what key experiences most shaped your path from your first venture to leading five companies and raising over $30 million?
I’ve always believed that you build your career around the life you want, not the other way around. For me, family has always been at the center of that. I am also incredibly passionate about business. I love building things, solving problems, and constantly challenging myself to grow.
Even as a kid, I was the one running little businesses in high school. I’ve always seen the world through the lens of what problems exist and how I can bring a better solution.
When I started Eved, I was at a point where I wanted to take everything I had learned from building profitable, self-funded companies and push myself to a whole new level. One of my earlier ventures grew to over $10 million in revenue, but I wanted to see if I could build something truly transformative: a billion-dollar tech company, and learn what it meant to lead at that scale.
Becoming a venture-backed CEO was my biggest growth curve. I wanted to understand how to raise capital, work with a board, and lead at an enterprise level. What I didn’t realize was how long and how hard that journey would be. It required sacrifices I could not have imagined. But it also transformed me from a founder CEO into a truly strong operating CEO.
Those 12 years as a venture-backed founder were like the most intense business boot camp imaginable — full of pain, growth, and hard-earned wisdom. Very few people, especially women, get to experience that kind of pressure and learning up close. It gave me the resilience, knowledge, and perspective I have now, and it’s what allows me to take Eved to its next level.
It’s also why I’m so passionate about helping other entrepreneurs. Through our family office, my kids are now running three companies of their own, and I’ve been able to pass on what I’ve learned, not just about building businesses, but about building lives that align with your values and ambitions.
And really, all of that goes back to how I was raised. My parents always told me that I could do anything I set my mind to, and I believed them. That belief, combined with the support of my husband and the people I surround myself with, gave me the confidence to keep getting back up every time I fell. And there were a lot of times I fell.
But that’s the real story of entrepreneurship. It’s not a straight line. It’s believing in yourself enough to get back up every single time until you reach the goal.
From that journey, what specific pain in enterprise payments for events, media, and entertainment convinced you that a verticalized platform like Eved had to exist?
Eved was born out of lived experience. My husband was a musician, and through his work, we found ourselves immersed in the events industry. He observed that major corporations were spending millions on events; sometimes a single program exceeded a million dollars. Yet event planners, not finance teams, held most of the purchasing power. There was little financial oversight, no approval process, and almost no visibility. It felt like the Wild West.
That fascinated me. How could global companies spend hundreds of millions on events each year and still have no structured process for how that money moved?
As we built our own event services business, I saw the issue firsthand. These Fortune 500 companies all ran on ERP systems like SAP or Workday, which are great for predictable workflows but completely incompatible with events and productions that move fast, change constantly, and rely on hundreds of one-time vendors. Onboarding those vendors, opening purchase orders, and routing approvals through corporate systems took weeks—long after a hotel contract or headline entertainer had to be booked.
So, companies did what they had to: they sent large lump-sum budgets to third-party agencies or paid vendors by credit card, reconciling everything manually. That meant no real-time approvals, no detailed reporting, and no visibility across spending. It wasn’t just inefficient; it created massive fraud risk and missed opportunities. Most companies are still working this way today.
That’s when I realized there needed to be a purpose-built platform that understood both sides: the creative speed of events and productions and the financial rigor of the enterprise.
We built Eved to bridge those worlds. The platform gives planners and production accountants the autonomy they need while providing finance teams with the visibility, compliance, and fraud protection they require. It automates onboarding, tax verification, approvals, payments, and reporting, and connects directly into the company’s ERP and production accounting system.
Now, instead of reconciling after the fact, enterprises have real-time visibility across every project and vendor. They can spot trends, negotiate better rates, and make decisions as spending happens, not weeks later.
For me, it started with one simple belief: even the most creative industries deserve financial systems that are as innovative and fast as they are.
Building on product choices, what is one decision you made at Eved that meaningfully reduced fraud or improved compliance for clients?
One of the most important product decisions we made at Eved was to remove email from the payment process entirely. It sounds simple, but it completely transformed the level of security and compliance our clients in both production and events could achieve.
In film, TV, and event finance, vendors frequently send sensitive information, tax forms, bank details, and W-9s through email. It’s quick, but it’s also the number one source of fraud in these industries. “Bank-change fraud,” where someone impersonates a vendor to redirect payments, costs companies millions every year. Because productions and events both move fast and rely on hundreds of short-term vendors, they’ve historically been easy targets.
So we built what we call Eved’s Vault Architecture, a secure, closed-loop system where vendors manage their own information directly inside the platform. No one on the production or event side ever handles or transmits banking or tax data. Every update requires multi-factor authentication, automated bank verification, and full audit logging. If a vendor changes their bank account, the system automatically flags it for review before any payment is released.
That single design choice, eliminating email-based workflows and moving to a closed system, has virtually eradicated one of the biggest sources of fraud across production and events.
In fact, since launching the Vault, we’ve maintained a 0% fraud rate, thanks to constant monitoring, layered controls, and continuous improvement. And we’re so confident in our protection that we back it with a Fraud Guarantee: if fraud were ever to occur within Eved, we absorb the loss, not the client.
The impact goes beyond security. The same architecture enhances compliance, tax accuracy, and audit readiness. Every approval, edit, and transaction is traceable, creating total accountability.
For our clients, that means peace of mind and the freedom to move fast without financial risk. For us, it reinforces what Eved was built to deliver: enterprise-grade trust, visibility, and innovation for the world’s most creative industries.
Turning to execution, for a founder standing up a finance stack, what is the first workflow you would automate to show measurable ROI within 90 days?
If I were building a finance stack from the ground up, the first workflow I’d automate is vendor onboarding and payments. It’s where finance teams spend the most time, face the most risk, and see the fastest measurable ROI.
In production and events, setting up a vendor is traditionally one of the most painful processes, involving the collection of W-9s, validation of tax IDs, chasing down bank details, and manually processing payments through multiple systems. It’s repetitive, error-prone, and exposes organizations to major fraud risk.
Eved solves that by combining intelligent automation with a white-glove concierge service that completely removes the onboarding burden from the client’s plate. Vendors onboard once into Eved’s secure, closed-loop network — their tax and bank data are verified automatically, and they never have to share sensitive information over email.
We already have over 18,000 vendors globally set up to accept EvedPay. When a new client joins, we typically find that 60% of their suppliers are already active on Eved, which means onboarding can happen in days, not months. When a vendor is already in our network, they don’t need to set up again; it’s as simple as sending an invite through Eved to connect and start transacting.
Clients also don’t need to onboard these suppliers into their ERP or accounting system. Everything lives within Eved, and we send only the necessary, verified data back into their ERP for reporting and reconciliation. Because we aggregate all approved payments into a single daily invoice, the client processes one payment to Eved, and we automatically distribute the individual payments to each supplier.
Within 90 days, our clients see a measurable impact: faster processing, complete compliance, zero fraud (backed by our Fraud Guarantee), and significant time savings for AP and production finance teams.
Automating onboarding and payments isn’t just a quick efficiency win; it transforms how finance teams operate. It gives them back the bandwidth to focus on strategy, insights, and growth, rather than paperwork and payments.
On AI adoption, as a CEO who got hands-on, what weekly practice most effectively turned AI from a tool into part of your company’s culture?
For me, the shift happened when I made AI a weekly discipline, not a project. In the two months leading up to our rollout, I set aside time every week to personally experiment with AI, building small automations, testing prompts, and working alongside each team to understand how it could simplify their daily work.
That period got everyone comfortable with the technology. It removed the fear, created excitement, and built the foundation for what’s now become a core part of how we operate as a company.
Eved has always been a technology company, but historically our resources were almost entirely focused on building our product for clients. Now, going into 2026, we’ve split our roadmap in two: one side continues to innovate on our enterprise platform, and the other is fully dedicated to internal operational AI, building AI agents that act as extensions of our teams across every department.
Ninety percent of that internal roadmap is focused on how AI can make our people more effective, from finance and client success to marketing and operations. It’s about creating intelligent support that reduces friction and frees our teams to focus on higher-value work.
Because I’m not only CEO but also the Product Architect, I’m directly involved in that process. I spend time inside each department, understanding how they work and where AI can create the most impact. One of our executives is currently on maternity leave, so I’m temporarily leading her teams, which gives me an incredible opportunity to go even deeper operationally, helping design the AI agents that will support those functions long-term.
That’s really how AI became part of our culture: not by delegating it, but by modeling it. I got hands-on first, then built a structure that made AI everyone’s responsibility.
Now, it’s not something we “use.” It’s something we build into everything we do, a true extension of how Eved operates.
On capital and customers, what approach has helped you, as a woman in tech, shift the conversation from perceived risk to demonstrated credibility?
It was definitely a challenge, especially early on. Before COVID, the venture playbook was very clear: if you’re building a billion-dollar tech company, you’re expected to live at the office. As a woman with a family, that didn’t fit their model.
I think many investors saw me as a talented founder and CEO, but one who didn’t fit their definition of what a high-growth tech leader looked like. More than once, I was told that I needed a president who could “be there” when I couldn’t, not because they questioned my ability to lead, but because they believed the only way to drive performance was to have someone physically in the office, arriving early, staying late, and setting that same expectation for everyone else. Their view of leadership was about presence, not impact.
Ironically, it took COVID to prove that the old playbook was wrong. When the world went remote, the CEOs who focused on outputs instead of hours, on results instead of visibility, were the ones who thrived. That’s how I had always led, and for the first time, people started to see that a different leadership model could be just as, if not more, effective.
But even before COVID, I had already built credibility the hard way, through proof. Before Eved, I built another company entirely on my own, without venture funding, and grew it into a $10 million, highly profitable business that landed on the Inc. 500 list and earned multiple national awards. So, when I launched Eved, I came in with a real track record of execution. The investors who ultimately backed me were the ones who looked at that proof and said, she’s already done it once, she can do it again at scale.
Still, I knew that words wouldn’t change bias; results would. That’s been my approach from day one: prove it. Women, in particular, often understate their credibility, but the most powerful response is performance.
The real turning point came when I stopped trying to fit the mold and decided to lead authentically. We built a culture around a simple idea: never apologize for living a life, but never make excuses for not delivering results. That philosophy fueled our best year ever in 2019 and became the foundation that helped us survive and rebuild after COVID.
In the end, credibility isn’t granted; it’s earned. You don’t talk your way into it; you prove it, one milestone at a time.
Scaling from there, how do you design a leadership team and operating cadence that lets you move fast in fintech while meeting enterprise and regulatory demands?
For us, moving fast isn’t about chaos; it’s about clarity. We’re a very intentional and proactive company. Everything starts with goal alignment and planning. Before we break for the holidays, our entire leadership team finalizes detailed quarterly plans. Each department’s goals, metrics, and execution steps are locked in and fully aligned with company objectives.
That means when we return on January 2, we’re not figuring out what we’re doing; we’re already moving. Every department knows exactly what they’re driving toward, how success will be measured, and how their work connects to the broader business goals. It eliminates noise, prevents conflicting priorities, and keeps the entire company drumming to the same beat.
I’ve found that this is what allows us to move with real velocity, not just reacting to the quarter, but executing it.
On the enterprise side, we’re purpose-built for scale. One of our clients is one of the largest companies in the world, and they use Eved to process event payments in more than 30 countries, including markets like China. That means our systems, compliance, and regulatory frameworks had to go global quickly.
We’ve built for that complexity. We have a Head of Compliance solely dedicated to regulatory requirements, SOC certifications, and audit readiness. We’ve spent nearly 16 years building code that reflects the sophistication of the world’s largest enterprises—tax, VAT, division-level approvals, global payment workflows, all built in.
But the beauty is that, for the user, it feels simple. That’s the Eved difference: simple on the front end, deeply sophisticated on the back end.
Culturally, we hire people who understand large, complex organizations—people who know what it means to operate with precision and accountability—and then we train them deeply in our industry.
At the end of the day, moving fast in fintech isn’t about cutting corners. It’s about being so aligned, so disciplined, and so purpose-built that speed becomes a byproduct of structure.
For the next generation, what concrete first step would you have a first-time fintech founder take to mitigate an early risk you’ve encountered?
The single most important first step is to truly understand your customer, not just who they are, but what problem they’re actually trying to solve. A lot of early founders fall in love with the product they want to build instead of falling in love with the pain point they’re solving. In fintech especially, you have to start with deep empathy and clarity around the customer’s real workflow, constraints, and goals.
From there, you have to know your differentiator—what sets you apart from everything else that already exists. It sounds basic, but if you can’t articulate that clearly and concisely, you’re not ready to scale, and you’re definitely not ready to raise money.
And that’s the second thing: get proof points before you bring in outside investors. I learned early that once investors are involved, the pressure changes everything. Their expectations can easily pull you off course before you’ve had the space to fully understand what you’re building and what your customers truly need.
For Eved, I put in my own first million from selling my previous company and focused entirely on proving the core value proposition—that enterprises would transact on the platform and suppliers would adopt it. That gave us the leverage and clarity to raise capital on our terms. Founders should aim for the same: de-risk the model first, then scale it with capital.
The other piece of advice is to stay nimble and open. The path will never go exactly as you expect. Have a big goal at the end, but be flexible on how you get there. I’ve learned that the best founders aren’t the ones who defend their idea the hardest; they’re the ones who listen the most.
It’s natural to feel defensive when someone challenges your vision, but the greatest insights often come from that friction. Don’t protect your idea; evolve it. The founders who succeed are the ones who stay curious, adaptable, and humble enough to keep learning.
At the end of the day, building in fintech is a long game. Lead with empathy, proof, and openness, and let the results speak for you.
Thanks for sharing your knowledge and expertise. Is there anything else you'd like to add?
What I would add is that I think people often underestimate how much building a company, especially in fintech, is really about perseverance and belief. Not belief that everything will go right, but belief that you can keep going when it doesn’t.
The path is never straight. There are incredible highs and really tough lows. But I’ve learned that if you stay focused on your purpose, stay open to learning, and surround yourself with people who share your values, you can build something that lasts.
For me, that purpose has always been about solving real problems for real people, creating systems that bring clarity, trust, and efficiency to industries that have needed it for a long time. Eved started as an idea born out of frustration, and over time it’s become a platform that empowers some of the largest organizations in the world to move money securely and confidently. That’s something I’m incredibly proud of.
I also want to say to other founders, especially women, that it’s okay to lead differently. You don’t have to follow someone else’s version of success. You can build a big company, raise capital, and grow globally while also building a full life. Success and humanity aren’t opposites; they can coexist beautifully.
And part of that humanity is the people you build with. I believe the foundation of any great company is great people—people you enjoy working with every day, who care as deeply as you do. It has to be a true partnership: when they give their all, your job as a leader is to give them the best opportunities, the right resources, and a culture that helps them grow. You don’t use people to build a company; you build the company through your people. That mutual commitment is what creates both loyalty and excellence.
After everything we’ve been through as a company—the challenges, the rebuilds, the wins—what means the most to me now is the people I get to work with every day and the difference we make for our clients. That’s what keeps me inspired: seeing how our work genuinely makes life better for them.
If there’s one message I’d leave people with, it’s this: dream big, build with integrity, invest in your people, and stay the course. The proof always comes; it just takes time, persistence, and a little bit of faith.
