From startup to success: Insights from tech pioneer Steve Papa

From the 2025 Technology Finance Symposium - West

Travis Drouin of Baker Tilly hosted an insightful fireside chat with Steve Papa, founder and CEO of Parallel Wireless. The conversation traced Papa’s entrepreneurial journey from launching Endeca in the late ‘90s to his current efforts transforming the wireless infrastructure industry.

Papa opened by reflecting on his early career influences and the foundational lessons that shaped his approach to building companies. His first job out of college left a lasting impression. “First day, [my manager] said, ‘Read all this stuff,’” Papa recalled. “The next day, I said, ‘OK, what do you want me to do?’ He said, ‘Look, I'm not going to tell you what you need to do. Figure out what needs to get done.’” That mindset, he explained, shaped how he built Endeca, a company that introduced guided navigation technology and ultimately sold to Oracle for more than $1 billion.

Much of the conversation centered on product-market fit and the importance of listening to customers – a theme that Papa credited for the success of multiple ventures, including restaurant technology platform Toast. Early on, Toast struggled with its original concept, but founders pivoted by carefully listening to customer frustrations. “What they realized is: None of [their customers] wanted to talk about their app. But if they somehow started talking about the point-of-sale system, [customers] would spend two or three hours talking to them about how much they hate it,” Papa said. That insight led to Toast’s breakthrough and its now-dominant market position.

Papa also detailed the operational challenges of running a global business like Parallel Wireless, which operates complex infrastructure projects in far-flung markets. He highlighted the inefficiencies of traditional enterprise software stacks and explained why he’s turning to AI-powered tools to rebuild business processes from the ground up. Rather than relying on conventional B2B SaaS applications and lengthy IT projects, Papa’s teams now prompt AI systems to generate customized workflow applications in minutes.

He emphasized that finance functions need to evolve from transactional reporting to business enablement. “We’re not in business to close books,” Papa told the audience. He urged finance leaders to embed themselves in core business operations, manage risk proactively and design processes that reflect how work actually happens – not just how enterprise software dictates it.