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:

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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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