Welcome To The Era Of The Multinational Microbusiness

Forbes

30-04-2025

Beau Pilgrim runs his business, ia Blueprint, from Vidalia, Louisiana, a bucolic town of 4,000 people. In addition to running an insurance agency, he connects other small insurance brokers with specially trained back-office personnel.
Pilgrim couldn't find all the talent he needed locally— 'People move away from my town to go the big cities,' he says—so he built a remote team in the Philippines.
But paying workers in another country can be complicated. He relies on a fin-tech platform called Payoneer, which is designed to facilitate these transactions. 'It's taken away some of the pain points centered around overseas payroll,' he said.
Pilgrim was one of 20 entrepreneurs who flew into New York City to attend the Ambition Hackathon NYC on Monday, part of Payoneer's 20th-anniversary celebration, Payo20.
Although the U.S. trade war is dominating the headlines, it wasn't in evidence at the event, where some entrepreneurs flew 17 hours or more to help each other brainstorm solutions to their business challenges in small groups of peers.
'Globalization and borderless businesses are more important than ever,' said Payoneer CEO John Caplan. 'Global trade powers the sharing of ideas and opportunities for entrepreneurs all over the world. If we retreat into tribalism, we actually prevent one another from experiencing the joy, learning and creativity that happens when people from all over the world get together.'
Payoneer also announced a $2 million donation to Endeavor, an NGO that supports entrepreneurship in emerging markets.
Linda Rottenberg, co-founder and CEO of Endeavor, said the network of 2,900 entrepreneurs has found the best way to build thriving entrepreneurial ecosystems is to back ambitious founders in overlooked places around the world.
'When we support a founder in an emerging market, we don't just fuel one company, we unlock their 'multiplier effect,' empowering them to train, mentor and invest in the next generation, ' she said.
Many entrepreneurs know there is a lot of opportunity in exporting and importing but struggle with one of the most important parts: paying suppliers and vendors or receiving payments from export clients. Solutions like wiring money can be costly for small transactions, and some countries have strict rules that make it impossible to use credit cards.
The growth of exporting by small and midsize businesses (SMBs) is fueling the GDP in many emerging markets. 'When you go global from day one, you're more likely to be successful and that's whether you're live in Ho Chi Minh City, Mexico City or New York City,' Caplan said.
In India, Caplan noted, close to 50% of SMBs export—currently the figure is nearly 46%, according to the India Brand Equity Foundation. That is contributing to a GDP the Indian government expects to grow 6.5% in 2024-2025.
SMBs are responsible for only 11% of the export value in the U.S., according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta said the GDP declined 2.7% in Q1 2025.
Microbusinesses find unexpected opportunities in global trade
Payoneer, headquartered in New York City, was an early player in facilitating transactions that support exporters, working with microbusiness owners not served by traditional banks. Many of its customers are outside the U.S. It powers payments on large freelance platforms such as Upwork and Fivver. While many entrepreneurs use platforms such as PayPal and Stripe for international transactions, these are not available in every country.
With demand high, Payoneer has grown into a publicly traded company over the past two decades with more than $1 billion in revenue and 3,700 employees in 35 countries, handling $80 billion in transaction volume in 2024. Now that more companies hire contractors overseas, Payoneer is expanding into related services; it recently acquired Skuad, a global workforce and payroll management platform.
'People think the whole world economy relies on the US, but there are 340 million Americans and 7.4 billion people on the planet,' Caplan said. 'There's a lot of trade of services and goods that never actually touch the US. People don't quite grasp how global we are, and how borderless ambition is.'
Geography is not as much of a determinant of what an entrepreneur can accomplish as it was in the past, according to Caplan. 'If you have access to technology, you can participate in the global economy regardless of where you sleep,' he said.
Complex business networks take shape
As international commerce among microbusinesses has evolved, and some tiny businesses have scaled up, Payoneer's team has had an opportunity to witness trends in their trading patterns. Caplan said trade is increasingly based on global networks and not traditional patterns such as 'East-West' or 'North-South.'
Even the smallest businesses are now capable of taking part in complex networks of buyers and sellers and using labor arbitrage, Caplan noted. Labor arbitrage refers to hiring someone in a country or locale where labor costs are lower than in one's own location to increase the profitability of a business.
For instance, a digitally-enabled startup in Chicago might hire software coders from Argentina; if it used Payoneer, it could pay the tech team through a credit card that works in their home country. The coders might, in turn, use that credit card to pay a virtual assistant in the Philippines.
Setting the stage for the billion-dollar, one-person business
Caplan believes the increasing ability of microbusinesses to hire contractors and use AI is likely to result in billion-dollar, one-person businesses.
'The global workforce, plus AI, makes it possible for a person anywhere to do business everywhere profitably,' he says. 'It really is only limited by people's imagination, creativity and product-market fit. Nothing is stopping a million-dollar business from being a billion-dollar business. It's just about the network they build and the product-market fit.'
Sudhir Gupta, founder and CEO of EAU Deluxe, a global beauty and fragrance supplier based in Northern N.J., came to the U.S. from India for graduate school, discovered he loved collecting rare perfume bottles became a perfume importer, based in Northern, N.J. around his passion. He grew the business large enough to make the Inc. 5000 five times. He has used Payoneer when sourcing niche beauty products from Europe, finding it makes it possible for him to pay suppliers.
Although Gupta never went on to pursue his master's degree, he believes that he's much happier turning his passion into a business. "I'm doing something I would have never done otherwise,' he said. Global trade has fueled it.