We asked a question of our readers last week about remote work and if people can really be happy and productive working remotely. You can find it here.
The response from the startup community in Singapore and Malaysia was swift, mostly positive and insightful for us. Especially, now that we realise the sheer size of the remote worker community in just these two small countries.
Rather than us discussing the topic over and over again, we thought we’d share some of the more interesting responses (both positive and negative) with you. We’re sharing the details of the entrepreneur and their business with their permission, except for a few that did not get back to us in time.
Kevin Wu, Founder & CEO
Ant is an alternative protein startup that farms crickets and is based in Malaysia.
I agree with the perks of working remotely and the most important perk to me is that I am not geographically restricted. I can work from anywhere based on my appointments during the day. It gives me great flexibility to travel during off-peak hours, allows me a diverse range of environments to work in etc. But from my experience, this ‘freedom’ truly depends on the stage of the company and the position of the individual.
Terng Shing Chen, Founder & CEO
SYNC is a PR and content marketing startup built for the startup and SME community. It is based in Singapore and Malaysia.
Remote workers and the culture of remote work has helped me scale my business faster than I thought possible. Being able to hire experienced people based anywhere in the world at a reasonable price is great, especially in the communications space and in Singapore and Malaysia.
Read what Terng Shing had to share about scaling communications in startups
Name redacted, Co-Founder & COO
A fintech startup based in Malaysia.
Remote workers, for the most part, don’t fit into a structured working environment like a fintech company, where we require a strict regulatory process to be followed. Our experience with remote workers has been poor and we’ve spent more resources managing them than we would have spent if we bit the bullet and hired them in-house.
David Bobis, Head of Digital Marketing and Partner
Studio Culture is a Brisbane-based marketing agency that has worked with multiple global and local brands in Australia and Southeast Asia.
The concept of working remotely is a great thing in this globalised economy. As long as there are systems in place to ensure that high-quality work is always delivered, remote working can be highly beneficial, if not sometimes necessary, for companies, employees and contractors alike.
David shared his thoughts on why startups get digital marketing wrong
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Tech Collective Talks is a new segment where we discuss matters that our partners, startup founders, and staff feel is important enough to spend time around it. We discuss it as a group and from it, we craft a story to share with our readers.
If you’ve got something on your mind, drop us a note here and we’ll see if we can include it in the next session.