From GitLab To Building A Global Remote Workforce, with Job van der Voort, Co-Founder & CEO of Remote

“If you're not in a situation where you can safely take a year or two to start your own business, you probably shouldn't do it.”

In this week’s 40 Minute Mentor episode, we’re joined by the brilliant Job van der Voort, Co-Founder and CEO of Remote, the FinTech empowering companies of all sizes to pay and manage workers in 50+ countries all over the world. 

Having always had a desire to start his own business, Job joined GitLab early on in their journey and spent 5 years with them growing the business, before setting up Remote. 

And what an incredible journey Job and his Co-Founder, Marcelo Lebre have been on - having scaled from 2 to 800 employees in just 3 years, all of course, entirely remotely. 

Job gave us a real insight into his journey as a Founder, with all the ups and downs that came with it, in today’s episode. 

We chat about: 

➡️ What it was like to scale GitLab, before remote working was considered as a viable option in many industries [04:50] 

➡️ The challenges of being up against a much bigger and better funded competitor [07:13] 

➡️ Where the inspiration for Remote came from [09:47] 

➡️ Job’s advice for anyone thinking about starting their own business and how you can easily test your business idea, even today [13:07] 

➡️ How Remote evolved over the years and what some of the biggest challenges were along the way [17:08] 

➡️ Remote’s fundraising experience and Job’s advice for any Founders looking to raise investment [20:09] 

➡️ The lessons from scaling the team from 2 to 800 and why everyone in the room needs to understand how to interview effectively [24:57] 

➡️ How to build an effective and inclusive onboarding process [31:03] 

➡️ Why kindness sits at the core of Remote’s team culture [34:29] 

➡️ How remote work is really about the freedom to choose an alternative and what the future of work may look like [37:47] 

➡️ Why Job avoids meetings as much as he can [41:41] 

⛳ Helpful links:

➡️ More about Job: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jobvo/

➡️ More about Remote: https://remote.com/

💙A big thank you to our Sponsors:

Alchemist - an industry leading learning and development company, whose learning journeys and experiences help organisations who want to grow, change or transform by putting the learner first to optimise organisational performance.

To learn more about Alchemist and see how they work with some of the most innovative companies in the world, head over to https://thisisalchemist.com/40minutementor/  to find out more. 

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