The Asia Tech Podcast had the pleasure of catching up with Mat Ward, the Founder, and CEO at Workmate. I have now known Mat for almost a decade and first had him on the show back in February 2019. I had him on the show again almost a year ago, literally just before lockdowns due to COVID-19 began in his home city of Singapore and my home city of Bangkok. That episode was filled with optimism (Mat is an optimistic guy, but a realist as well.) and you could not hear a tinge of doom or worry in either of our voices. Neither one of us could have predicted how difficult 2020 would become.

I wanted to catch up with Mat because he has always been a voice of reason in a world filled with unnecessary noise and bluster. After the tumult of 2020, I wanted a real opinion from someone I trusted about the impact of COVID-19 on a well-funded and growing business.

Topics we covered in this episode:

We jumped right into a discussion on COVID
Who benefitted, who did not
Workmate grew a lot (doubled!) but not in the verticals that the team initially expected
How COVID impacted staff and management from an emotional standpoint
Face to face management versus remote work and management
How culture gets maintained
Managing through his first crisis
The impact on funding
Rolling out a significant new product

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