She designed software the whole world used. Then she went looking for the people the software forgot.
Co-Founder & CEO, Paismo · Founder, First Milli
Right now Rebecka Zavaleta runs Paismo, a people-automation company that does the unglamorous, load-bearing work of payroll, benefits, attendance and onboarding for small and mid-sized businesses. Not in the markets that already have ten vendors fighting over them. In the markets that have none. Paismo's pitch is four blunt words: made in Pakistan, for the world.
It is a strange place for a University of Pennsylvania political-science graduate to end up. Zavaleta spent more than a decade as a product and design leader on software that touched Google, TikTok and Meta - the kind of resume that usually ends in a comfortable VP title and a calendar full of reviews. Instead she co-founded a startup, with Usama Mahmud, aimed at the employers whose HR processes, in her words, "are not streamlined or do not even exist."
That is the tell. Most founders chase a market that is crowded because crowds prove demand. Zavaleta went the other direction, toward the empty room, because an empty room is also an unmet need. Somebody in Lahore still has to be paid on the first of the month, and the spreadsheet that does it is somebody's unpaid second job. Paismo wants to be the thing that ends the second job.
Paismo is not just another software. It's a product-led company, providing a customizable, user-centric solution.
In 2020, before Paismo existed, Zavaleta started First Milli - a platform built around a single, slightly audacious idea: help people reach their first million in net worth, regardless of where they start. It is finance written for first-generation earners, the people who did not inherit a brokerage account or a family CPA. Investing for beginners. Roth IRAs. Credit, real estate, high-yield savings, the boring mechanics nobody explained to them.
NextAdvisor, in partnership with Time, named her a top money expert in 2020. The recognition matters less than the timing: she spent years coaching other people through the discipline of building from zero, and then turned around and did exactly that with a venture-backed company. She had read her own manual.
We are building for markets where HR processes are not streamlined or do not even exist yet.
First Milli exists to help people reach their first million in net worth, no matter where they start.
Most HR software is built for companies that already have an HR department. Paismo targets the opposite - small and mid-sized employers across MENA, South Asia and Southeast Asia, where the "system" is often a spreadsheet and a prayer.
A seed round that came in oversubscribed - roughly $1.3M of a $1.5M total - led by Indus Valley Capital, with Antler and Jedar Capital joining. Early commercial signals included names like Adamjee Insurance and MCB Islamic Bank.
Co-founded with Usama Mahmud, a fellow Penn alum who had previously helped raise tens of millions for public-sector education reform. Two policy-shaped minds building payroll software. It fits better than it sounds.
The phrase Zavaleta keeps returning to is "made in Pakistan, for the world." It is a statement of pride and a business plan at once. The bet is that software hardened against the hardest, most under-served markets travels well in every direction - that if you can make payroll reliable where the infrastructure is thin, you can make it reliable anywhere. Paismo registers in Dubai and builds with a team rooted in Pakistan, which is exactly the kind of cross-border arrangement its own product is designed to manage.
Roughly 41 countries visited. Her social photos lean toward windbreakers and waterlines, not conference lanyards - the founder is happiest where the WiFi gives up.
English, Spanish and Portuguese, plus elementary Hindi/Urdu picked up around the Paismo team. Useful when your company spans Los Angeles, Dubai and Pakistan.
CFO of the Penn alumni club in Los Angeles and a member of the Entrepreneurs' Organization. Even her volunteering involves keeping the books straight.
She called a wealth-building brand "First Milli" - shorthand for your first million. It is the rare startup name that tells you the goal, the audience and the attitude in two syllables.
Lists hiking and fitness among the obsessions. For someone who builds tools to track other people's attendance, she spends a lot of her own time off the grid.
She could have optimized a button for a billion users. She'd rather make sure one shop in Lahore makes payroll on time.
Reporting drawn from public sources including ProPakistani, TEC Spectrum, Muck Rack, First Milli, Crunchbase and Rebecka Zavaleta's own profiles. Funding figures and affiliations reflect publicly reported information and may have changed. Where the record was thin, this page sticks to what is verifiable and qualifies the rest.