The Growth of Remote Work and Virtual Companies | with Sondre Rasch
GAIN Momentum episode #39 - The Growth of Remote Work and Virtual Companies | with Sondre Rasch
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Adam Mogelonsky: Welcome to the Gain Momentum podcast, focusing on timeless lessons from senior leaders in hospitality, travel, food service, and technology. Our co host today is Michael Cohen. Michael Cohen, how are you?
Michael Cohen: I am good. Appreciate the leadership and work on the GAIN Moment podcast and Sondre, you know that we have high interest in what you're doing and we look forward to understanding how that innovation is affecting travel, hospitality, fintech, etc.
Sondre Rasch: Great to be here.
Adam Mogelonsky: And of course, our guest today is Sondre Rasch, the co founder and CEO of Safety Wing. Before we drill into our four questions that we structure everything around. Our podcast thus far is really focused more on the hospitality side. Now we're getting into travel. And just so that we have a clear framework [00:01:00] for this discussion, Sondre, could you give us the elevator pitch of what Safety Wing does and what it's building and the key global mega trend it's feeding into?
Sondre Rasch: Sure. So what it does is it offers health insurance and travel medical insurance for digital nomads and remote teams. what it's building is to make a global social safety net and a country on the internet eventually. And, global mega trend it's getting into is remote work, digital nomadism.
Adam Mogelonsky: Okay, perfect. So Sondre, our first question is, when it comes to scaling a business, what is the single piece of advice you would give entrepreneurs from your perspective as a professional in travel technology?
Sondre Rasch: So, presumably an entrepreneur wants to grow. Okay, I have one thing to say here, uh, which is a little bit unique, but it sounds common. [00:02:00] so I did first, did one company and then did another, and there was a mistake I did in the first one that I tried to rectify in another, and I was very glad I did and kind of. got the fruits of that for a long time. And that idea is sort of to focus on things that grow exponentially, instead of things that grow from your efforts. people. When they hear exponential growth, they often just use it as a synonym for fast growth, but it is like a technical term. So it's like, if something grows as a function of itself, That's what makes it exponential.
So in, in a business sense, that's, it grows as a function of customers revenue in some way. If you need to, put in money from outside the customers to grow, that can grow exponentially because as a percentage terms, as you get more customers, which you're putting in is linear. The growth rate declines over time and there are some things that cause exponential growth like it's a particular, it's a narrow set of growth strategies that works [00:03:00] exponentially. Uh, there are many more that don't work exponentially. So, that's probably I mean, that was how it was formulated when it comes to scaling a business, that's probably that. The thing that I would suggest is to, to make a plan for exponential growth strategies, which often doesn't seem like they do so much in the beginning, but they increase the growth rate perpetually. And you'll be glad you did later. And I certainly was.
Michael Cohen: So interesting to that point. What you're talking about is that to understand trends, understand where there's, organic growth or customer needs that have suddenly been identified. And there's been maybe general technology or geopolitical or some sort of other, input that has driven this kind of momentum and identifying the momentum and identifying what your particular offering or, the better mousetrap, whatever the case may be, how it [00:04:00] overlays on this.
It's a tsunami of change and you, and potentially you want to be one of the authors of that change or a go to solution set, but you're not having to build or educate the marketplace that this is even important, which a lot of companies, you know, in our, all of our long experiences, you think you have an opportunity, you identify that it should be valuable to a certain marketplace.
And then you spend a lot of time educating the marketplace that it even, that this requirement even exists. Versus what you just said, which is leveraging, you know, this, momentum and change in a way that's efficient to grow the business.
Sondre Rasch: Yeah. I generally agree that it is good to be on a. Leveraging some sort of frontier, trend, but it is also, um, you know, it's, it's advice that can be misunderstood, and there is this, very similar looking behavior, which is It's sort of copying, like I remember when [00:05:00] we started Safetweening, it was sort of the year where everyone started parking apps for whatever reason, and I remember someone showed me that and they're like, there's 517 parking app startups in San Francisco on Crunchbase, I think it was, or, uh, And I think that a lot of them are applying, like, There is this like danger here, like when everyone jumps on the same thing, there's high
competition.
So, yeah, you do want to leverage these sort of frontier technologies because they're, you know, percolating out. And what makes something a trend versus a fad is, can be hard to differentiate. And, uh, you know, one of the things that I've found, you know, in a way we are in this mega trend, you know, the shift to working on the internet. and the whatever is downstream of that. But at the same time, we do also find ourselves kind of without competitors and have since the beginning. and so it, yeah, like I think if you're able [00:06:00] to use, well one, differentiate between enduring trends and fads and then to kind of leverage those but think independently on top of that kind of, then, then I think you've got a good, good combo.
Michael Cohen: One, one quick follow up, Adam, before our next question is, again, my opinion, Sondre, you, you're the expert, you're the founder and the CEO of the company, but, as someone who's purchased travel insurance and, and all, many, many times over the last 30 years. The category has been around forever. historical players in that space have been around forever, and in some ways they've had to transition their business to the internet or transition their business to, you know, e commerce, whatever. I was buying those types of products from an individual. You know, when I, when I started doing international travel to make sure I had all the coverages and so on. And I think what you just said about, there's not a lot of competition. I think part of that is, I think that's a good, good, uh, principle.
If, a founder or a large organization or a global organization identifies an [00:07:00] opportunity is, you know, it's not just about innovation. It's about, as I said, differentiation From the historical legacy companies in that space who can't pivot, who have not been able to pivot successfully to take advantage of a new, a new, you know, megatrend.
And I think that's interesting to discuss maybe in a further question.
Sondre Rasch: I would agree. I mean, uh, so certainly travel insurance existed and, know, when we came up with the idea for Nomad Insurance, we, it was sort of thought, well, we wanted to make the step one towards this global social safety net. And then we imagined something like what a country offers as a membership, like
health retirement income protection.
Michael Cohen: As a resident or a citizen.
Sondre Rasch: Yeah, uh, yeah, but globally. And then the question was, well, what exists today? And it was actually day one where we realized, so travel, travel is already pretty global. Maybe we could make a travel insurance that just works anywhere and therefore becomes like global health insurance kind of, and that kind of worked essentially.
that's the genesis sort of to why we, we ended up in, travel insurance. and the way that that market [00:08:00] is, you know, it's, mostly this long tail where everyone kind of has some. local plan from their local bank or whatever. there were a couple like more global things like World Nomads was one, but they kind of stumbled into this. for remote health, when I made health insurance for, when I say we don't have competitors, I mean, for what we think we're trying to do in a, in a sense. So, uh, if you were to, you know, draw a circle around say that we do travel insurance, then. You know, we, we clearly have competitors, but, for us, uh, from internally, from the inside view, that's a, that's a means to an end in a way.
but it does have that effect. One reason it worked is, I think what you said, which is that, uh, there was this new segment, the nomads, and we knew them well because we, you know, from our point of view, they're like pioneers into this new world that we're building for. And so. That's why we can make something that to them look [00:09:00] pretty unique, not, not, not totally, but pretty.
And then our next product was somewhat more unique, the remote health insurance for remote teams. and then as we get to the membership in our next products, I think we'll look more and more, not like anything else, but it takes a while in this.
Michael Cohen: Of course.
Adam Mogelonsky: Well, speaking of things taking a while, maybe you had to pivot along the way and without getting too far into the weeds of things, we're going to move into our second question which focuses on this, which is, Sondre, what are some of the common pitfalls or failures you have witnessed that business owners should look to avoid when scaling their business?
Sondre Rasch: Yeah, uh, so one, I mean, mistake I did in my previous company, which was a freelancer platform was a scaling before the product was good. Um, so essentially, so we had gotten into Y Combinator and we sort of figured out how to grow [00:10:00] because we focused on that through performance advertising, we figured out how to grow. Before the product was good. And that turned out to be a very painful thing to do, because essentially for a while, we could grow very fast. So throughout those months, I remember we grew like, I think it was 20 percent a week. It was very fast from a very low base, but we were growing very fast. we focused on that. But then eventually, you know, we, started to learn that sort of retention was low. And eventually we reached this equilibrium where we couldn't, where the pace that customers fell off equaled the pace we could bring them in. And this took us so long to realize what had happened and like depth of tracking and just self understanding and all the sort of you know, misplaced expectations that was there. and it was only when I got like a long distance that I realized the mistake, which was this thing. It was that we, we scaled it before we made it work. So with Safeway, we sort of committed to this [00:11:00] preemptively and, um, it's essentially just to first observe people recommending the product to their friends organically before investing in. and growth and uh, I thought that was a really healthy thing to do.
Michael Cohen: interesting to that point and full disclosure to viewers and listeners, the reason why Sondre's here is because I'm actually a customer, incredibly satisfied customer, which is very weird and not normally talked about on podcasts and I don't care because it's true. And also you just mentioned that you have this real, your firm has been, I think, very um, efficient and elegant in how you're scaling based upon recommendations and organic and network, like the individual customers networking.
So I am actually also a safe viewing ambassador now because I am the Nomad Exec. That's what, that's my life, Sondre. Sondre, you're gonna laugh and it's not about me, but it's relevant to this conversation, so I'll say it anyways. I, starting in September of 2024, will be [00:12:00] continually a Nomad Exec. I will not have a residence. I will not have a residential country. I will be moving every three to four months in other areas. So I'm a digital nomad, but not, if you don't mind me saying it, there's just different levels of it. I'm not, uh, 23 going to Bali and trying to figure out how I, you know, cover my self, because if I get a hangover or fall off the scooter, I'm gonna be in trouble. This is more of a, that's a lifestyle, because you are a lifestyle services provider using amazing technology, and That's why we're happy to have you, frankly, and that's why we're interested, because as our organization and as this podcast, it's all about innovation and travel and hospitality.
It's all about engagement. It's all about scale. it's a little odd because normally we're not talking to CEOs of companies that we actually believe in, like, as a customer, but today it is, and that's why it's really interesting to hear you talk about the Starting and the, and how you identify the opportunity and how you're growing [00:13:00] sort of on people like me and others like me around the world are going to be, you know, lifting, uh, lifting for all,
Sondre Rasch: no, yeah, absolutely. It is exactly. People like you and, uh, and sort of word of mouth, the sort of authentic word of mouth is very sustainable, right? Because it doesn't swing up and down, you know, month to month and, sort of long term relationship building in some sense. And, that's maybe slightly harder to get going, but it's so pleasant in the long run because it has a sort of self perpetuating momentum.
Michael Cohen: but you're a travel tech company. I mean, that's, that's also who you are. I mean, this, this is because you have either proprietary and or proprietary and licensed technologies where you're built this platform. And I think as you know, FinTech. Now, we have travel, almost travel fintech, if you know what I'm getting at.
Maybe I'm, it's a misnomer, I'm not sure, but that's why we were interested in having a discussion with you, because again, we're all, we're in the travel, hospitality and mice industry, all about innovation, and we identified your firm as a really interesting [00:14:00] play in that, you know, that safety net, or enabling efficient travel for mid to long term stays.
And that's a really interesting, and it's obviously, back to the trends, a huge trend that's only going to Keep going.
Sondre Rasch: Oh, no, absolutely, I mean, uh, and, you know, we have been observing that since we started. Out that more and more of the travel industry notices this opportunity and sometimes that's helpful for us. You know, mostly we're kind of like a bit along for the ride, but, uh, you know, when it comes to, for example, we, this Nomad visas,
you know, that's now, I think it's 85 countries implemented it. We didn't invent the idea, but we certainly popularized it and were, you know, there in the beginning when Barbados implemented theirs and now, and that's kind of, the motivation of the countries we talk to are always the same, uh, which is that they're implementing those for sort of the same reason as tourism, which is that they just see sort of nomads as these [00:15:00] kind of knowledge workers, like they're almost, they're better than normal tourists and they stay much longer.
so it's, seen as like such a clean win in a way. and, uh, the fact that they're growing, there's a lot more of them now than there was, and there might be a lot more in the future, as well. I saw, so like since 2019, I saw one stat, it's sort of 3x the number of US people who see themselves as, nomads.
And, I think that was like 16 million and then there was like another 3x, like 72 million, I think, that said that aspirationally they would like to, if they can, do that in the future. so yeah, no, I do think that is a great thing about, it's downstream of remote work. But the possibility to, if you can earn an income on the internet, you can live abroad or you can, yeah, and there are, there's a host of different lifestyles potentially that you can, yeah, like you said, it's not just the sort of stereotypical one you listed there.
There's, there's a range of them. but the point is just, [00:16:00] it's just the whole world opening up as opposed to you being stuck in wherever commuting distance to your work, which used to be the case.
Adam Mogelonsky: So one final follow up before our next question is, it's a question for the two of you, Sondre and Michael as a NOMAD executive, is we're talking about this global change in knowledge workers and what are some of the unique things that knowledge workers want to where and when they travel and I'm talking about this, let's draw a psychographic customer persona.
What, do knowledge workers want when they are living abroad and working abroad?
Sondre Rasch: like our customers kind of, um,
hmm, well, what do they want? So one is they like to talk, literally talk to each other. when you have like. community building things, co working spaces, things that say that they're for that segment specifically, that tend to be attractive, not [00:17:00] because it's so unique, the service, but because they expect to meet other people like them. its own little kind of community, right? So it's like they're more technical, they're more creative, uh, there there are, uh, you know, some aspects, but also just a shared lifestyle, right? So it's like, it's something similar. so that's one thing I noticed. So if you can provide that sort of community space or just like, or even just say, Hey, this coworking space is for that, or this, yeah. Uh, other things, I mean, co working, co living, I mean, that's, that's tried at this point, but it continues to be a rising thing. And, I still see a future where this trend can go a lot further than it does today. so, uh, you already have in Asia, I've seen some, you know, hotels being for this purpose, some resorts, but I think this can go much further where it's not built for leisure, but it is built, it's kind of like, They have one more community, two better working spaces, [00:18:00] in the hotels, right?
I mean, that's the key difference between the sort of digital nomad traveler and is that they work more, right? I mean,
Michael Cohen: Wow.
Sondre Rasch: that's the key, uh, difference. So you, if you want, if you have something that used to work for tourists and you want to you gotta, you gotta, there's gotta be some good working
But, but Sondre, this is a great segue to a lot of our viewers and listeners who are in, you know, in the airplay hotel industry, right? So, for example, you know, we have relationships. I have been a customer of Selena Hotels for a long time. You know why I just brought them up because I think they're one of the top tier, best breed, you know, from execution for that kind of lifestyle.
So, that's really important And.
also what you just said is that there's now a trend for, as there always is a trend in hospitality side of the travel and hospitality industry, for a refresh, for what's the next renovation. A lot of it used to be purely technologically oriented, high speed internet, you know, IPTV, streaming, etc.
Now it's, you know, these, creating these environments where they can capture, you know, the [00:19:00] business traveler, capture the tourist traveler, but also in the right locations capture these longer stay. You know, uh, working traveler, let's put it that way, you know, and to that point on your question, which is for both of us, you know, in our world, our pure play world, they, so I said, they want a great bed and the wifi has got to work. Like that's the hotel, you know, that's what they want a great bed and the wifi has got to work and it's got to be for a reasonable price. That's actually not that different in some respects for what, what, what a digital nomad is looking for. They want a hub, they want a community, but they want stuff that just works, and they want to on board and off board seamlessly and quickly.
And one thing I, why we're interested in talking to you, Sondre, is that the whole side of logistics, you know, security, comfort. I'm not talking about comfort in regards to luxury or, uh, comfort in intellectual or emotional comfort. So that when you're traveling, either as a digital nomad or like some people like myself as a nomad exec, [00:20:00] you don't have to spend cycles or mental bandwidth on certain things that are mission critical that the right technology or company or service can provide. I think that's huge because there's so many other moving parts as a Nomad, uh, Nomad Exec, a Digital Nomad, that you want to have the core components as streamlined as possible. You can focus on the challenges you're going to get anyways every day, but those are micro challenges, not macro challenges.
And I Sondre, what you guys are doing is eliminating a lot of the macro challenges.
no, I very much agree. I think that that's, it is certainly in this time, but maybe Timeless, as you said, uh, in the intro, simplicity in product, reducing friction and simplicity, is definitely the way this kind of person, even, yeah, likely less tolerant than someone who's like not working that day, I guess. and also because they're used to US and internet products, right? [00:21:00] So, uh, internet products are. You know, a lot of them are from Silicon Valley, but they're just gotten really good at being low friction and simple to use where, uh, so yeah, I completely agree. Like minimizing, the checking, maybe keeping the card info so they can just do things without, just, yeah, just removing the friction steps, wherever they are.
I think that's, that's, that's a good point. You're not going to be wrong there. Like that's such a safe product strategy.
Michael Cohen: it's a safe product strategy, but it's interesting is that in the global hospitality and travel world, it's always about guest experience, passenger experience, you know, a patron experience, right, on the front of the house perspective, as we would say, you know, we're at the back of the house or the or in the behind the scenes of, you know, The machine of SafetyWing and all the, you know, insurance machinations and regionalities and legalities and delivery and the network of, you know, how a person would interact, gosh forbid, with [00:22:00] the healthcare system or service that you're providing or providing an innovative overlay for, is how I see it, as a consumer, you're providing an innovative overlay to, you know, the blocking and tackling of, you know, This important, mission critical part of my life or someone's life, family's life. And yeah, we'll talk about it in the next question, I think, but we should really focus also, I think, on the whole expansion of remote, organizations, virtual global corporations, and so on. I think that's really interesting for this conversation as well, but Adam, I'll let you move on to the final question.
So,
Adam Mogelonsky: so we've talked about the present and now let's focus on the future. So, Sondre, what do you see as the key opportunities and challenges for travel technology companies in 2024 and beyond?
Sondre Rasch: And, uh, so to, to kind of angle that into what you said, Michael, virtual companies, There are opportunities here actually in virtual companies, uh, some of them, that I would love to share because I'm in this segment myself and I would love [00:23:00] more offers, but I also think it's smart. the internet economy is growing. there is already a significant part of new startups are. sort of virtual companies, meaning that, which is like, safe doing is like that, right? Which is
that we sell our product on the internet and we work remotely, meaning it's all happening on the internet. Right, both buying and selling and hiring. So, and there's a lot of unique things about virtual companies. One, they, you know, they want more tools. They're definitely more flexible. You know, one curious thing, I'm, you know, just wonder how this is going to play out, is how, where they're going to, uh, register and stuff. I
mean, this is already contemplating a little bit, like a Belgian entrepreneur who's starting a virtual company isn't necessarily doing that in Belgium that
they might set up in another, you know, You know, easier to deal with jurisdiction and location in a way, it doesn't matter because it's a virtual company anyway. uh, that's one little tidbit [00:24:00] to think about. and then of course, there's the fact that people tend to be a bit spread out. And so if you look at someone like, say the gatherings become more important relatively speaking. So a lot of companies will have sort of offsides. but if you're a virtual company and you have a gathering, well, one, you tend to have a little bit more, and two, they tend to be more invested in.
So we, for example, do gathering three to four, two to four times a year, and, uh, we invest quite a bit in them. They're important for the company. We had the last one in sort of Iceland, previous one in Bali, your, uh, uh, your, uh, stereotypical place. But, It was very nice.
Michael Cohen: it's beautiful there, of course.
Sondre Rasch: yeah. I think that there is, for example, a potential market and some companies do this, but not a lot, right?
So we still figure out this stuff mostly on our own, but we're not alone. So I think that, a potential new growing market [00:25:00] is, team gatherings for remote teams
Michael Cohen: 100%. Yep.
Sondre Rasch: yeah. And you can be much more flexible with locations, so you can find, you know, it's the same with the nomads and in the remote teams. like we went to this Northern Iceland place. we're more flexible on location. So the benefit for being like close to London or something is
Michael Cohen: Right. Because it's more about the experience and the gathering than it is about, you know, we're meeting in Paris or Barcelona or London, because that's where you got to go. And also it's where people want to go. Whereas you go, you actually want to have an offsite be an offsite in many ways, because you're not around each other ever, or three or four times a year.
So that totally makes sense. And by the way, just again, back to what we talked about on this podcast a lot in the general travel industry. MICE, so Meeting Incentives and Conventions and Events. The MICE industry, which is a, you know, a subset of the travel industry. What you just talked about is a huge topic.
We're involved with different MICE industry. Uh, Oh, it's a, it's [00:26:00] Sondre, we'll talk about that offline. Maybe we can do something together, but it's, it's evergreen for them because they're like, wait a second. This is a whole new, these are virtual organizations, could be new clients. They're not the traditional type of clients.
They're not looking for just brick and mortar around a convention that's already happening. We're going to do like a one day off site. This is how they actually create the stickiness between the humans and the organization and virtual as we're doing now and, even VR, which we're also a big proponent of immersive and spatial technology, it's getting better, it's more interesting, but nothing, you know, I'm going to say nothing replaces breaking bread, sitting down, shaking someone's hand and looking them in their eyes in the real world. So you're absolutely right from the, this kind of remote gathering, you know, events space is a, there's a lot of interest.
Sondre Rasch: yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, look at, just look at us as a case study, like us as a company. So we, one, we had these gatherings and said, we also have a budget for, ad hoc, uh, sprints. So like every quarter, like a team who wants to like finish a project. [00:27:00] They can, like, use that budget to sort of fly into somewhere and work together for a sprint.
Michael Cohen: Very smart.
Sondre Rasch: Yeah, and we just, like, we actually, we have, like, it's an example of a company who does this. It's a company called Outsight. So we have, like, one agreement with them. But still, that's one of the few companies who kind of discovered this. But mostly we have, still have to just figure everything out by our own from beginning to end, and It is slightly different, like a lot of the infrastructure made for normal off site seems very odd to
us. Like it's kind of this like midway between the airport and the city in a like a mid size or larger city, just like everything is average. Like it's, it says that that's just not going to work for us because this event
is doing much more.
So, the typical, uh, place for, an offsite is not relevant. You want it to be more special, basically. It has to be more special, because [00:28:00] it's carrying more, much more of the company culture
Michael Cohen: Exponential, memorable, and also technologically feasible, financially feasible, efficiencies, and that's where all the other travel tech kicks in because you know, like you just said, it's kind of a pain in the ass to organize these things and if you don't have, you know, if you don't have a dedicated staff, and uh, that's interesting.
That's good, very good feedback.
Adam Mogelonsky: Well you mentioned mid sized places and of course the financial feasibility. A lot of these mid sized places have gone by by reducing costs to offer that incentive for I'm not going to mention any specific cities or localities. And as a business owner, yourself, Sondre, how do you decide to devote budget to somewhere that is more experiential or for a sprint to allocate that line item and have that budget set aside versus really tightening the purse springs and, you know, You know, focusing on pure product development or [00:29:00] sales, uh, you know, staffing up, increasing head count.
how do you justify that expense for these experiential get togethers versus other things?
Sondre Rasch: I think that if you imagine like what makes a company work over time, of driving things underneath this sort of joyful and productive team, if that isn't there, then. Like if people are intrinsically motivated because it seems worthwhile, right?
And this is special and unique in some ways, then you can tolerate not everything else being perfect. If that isn't there, then it's just like an auction almost. So, so it's like, it's kind of like you have to choose which, which place you want to be in. And then, you know, we're firmly in the, This is not an auction, right?
this is, uh, a unique, company with a profound, you know, mission and a different way to, to operate. And, uh, that has, if you can achieve it, that has a great benefit. [00:30:00] Obviously, that's a great output benefit. It means people don't, you know. quit it means they do more than they have to right and so so that's like underneath And we track that and in some sense, it might be the thing we do best, actually, in the company. we track it in the same way. Would you recommend working here to a friend? So last month, like that's always like above nine for us out of 10, like, almost everybody would in the company do that. So that's probably where, like, in terms of like, how do I just write that? that's how I do it.
There is also, of course, this. It's logic about the higher utility in organizing and the quality of the ideas are affected by the spaces that you're in a little bit. you know, it's kind of like Tesla having like their kind of QA going over the car on like a bamboo floor. It's a bit easier to see the faults in something when it's on like a very beautiful surface.
So you are affected by the space that you're in. I mean, I certainly think so. One last thing though, and that's a quibble [00:31:00] with the premise of the question, because I do think that you can have bad taste. So spending a lot of money isn't
like,
Michael Cohen: hmm. Mm hmm.
Sondre Rasch: when we do these things, it's the taste. That's the major difference. It's 10 times more.
Michael Cohen: It's, it's the curation because of, you know, other Silicon historically, you know, it's kind of cliche or trope, you know, throwing big money at fancy events or fancy destinations just to sort of impress or create some sort of, we're cool, we're better than, but one thing you said, Sanjay, that's really interesting.
And it's funny how it's, Universal, even with this whole new world of virtual organizations and, you know, travel tech and everything else. Business is about people. It's not about products and services. Of course, it's about products and services, but I mean, really business, all businesses are about people.
It's either the inventory goes down the elevator at night, virtual or traditional company. You know, you said, Basically what I [00:32:00] think you were saying, if you don't want me paraphrasing, was motivated, positive, secure, and happy employees or happy partners produce great work. And creating environments even in a virtual organization, which is now, and more and more will become, I don't know if it'll ever become the predominant, but it's going to become a significant minority of organizations moving forward are either going to transition to virtualized organizations or they're going to be virtualized organizations. It's still about creating environment through technology, through security, through, you know, environments, curation, like the right kind of location, the right kind of experience for the physical gatherings as a complement to the virtual engagement.
Sondre Rasch: Yeah. Something like that. And, uh, uh, and no, no, I mean, that was, yeah, it definitely you're, you're, uh, that that's, that's fair. and by the way, I just recalled our Iceland gathering,
which is such a clear example of the taste versus cost thing. And what's really needed is, is a care is [00:33:00] that we had a new person coming in and she made a bed and she, she did it.
Then she did the one where she kind of didn't, So she kind of, she actually first proposed the, kind of the, you know, this sort of boxy three star halfway between the airport and Reykjavik hotel. And we're like, no, that, that's not, that's not what we're about. I mean, it was just, you know, she just proposed that, she had previously worked at Hilton. This is a normal thing to propose when someone's booking outside, I suppose. but the cost per night that we ended up at, at this amazing experience, at this beautiful hotel, we had the whole thing, it's like on the edge of this like fjord where there was nothing else, and there's like mountains up in the northern ice, and we flew our own plane up there. The cost per person was the same,
Adam Mogelonsky: Whoa.
Sondre Rasch: in the end, in those two options.
So the thing that makes the other one, it's more like, in that specific case. It was definitely not the cost that was the difference. It's more like the curiosity or the something like to find that [00:34:00] more experiential thing. Sometimes it's cost.
Michael Cohen: Of course. What is this?
Adam Mogelonsky: So one final question here, Sondre, and little bit of, um, hypothetical, but. You're speaking to two believers here. One is your customer, a nomad executive, and we're talking about the future, which is to say this whole idea of virtual companies is going to grow. How much? Based on all the travel trends and research you've read, it is where it is today in 2024 as catalyzed by the pandemic.
for listening. Where is it going to be by 2030 in terms of just a broad multiple based on your litmus test thinking? How much do you think, how much is it going to grow do you think? You
Sondre Rasch: I'm not able to do it on the fly, but I do think that you can answer that pretty realistically [00:35:00] in the following way. So there are two segments, the nomads and the remote teams or virtual companies. So that's, that's two different segments and that's who we sell to and that's, the areas. When I think I mentioned this earlier, but like when you, the nomads, it was accelerated. Remote work is accelerated about 5x to where it would have been on trend. Uh, so if you, some things during COVID, it went sort of up and down. E commerce was one, like it went back to trend.
So it didn't fall like below trend, but it sort of went back to where it would have been. You just squint at the graph to where it would have been. But not remote work. That was like 3 percent kind of growing like this. And then it went up, you know, peaked at like 30 and then down again to 18, but it would have been at like, uh, like four, between four and five at trend. So it's way above trend.
So remote, yeah.
It's one of those lasting things, but it has over the last couple of years, like we're in a way past the post pandemic, re reversion, uh, and we've now kind of just, you can see it [00:36:00] just basically continuing creeping upwards. by 2030, you know, we'll be six years into whatever that, transition number is. I would guess if that number is accurate, that it's 18 percent of overall workforce being remote. I guess I would guess, maybe, it certainly is between 25 and 30 percent, um,
yeah,
Michael Cohen: it's one
in three organizations. I mean,
that's, that's,
what, that's that's, people, some people are sleeping at the wheel on this, and you know that, Sondre, like, there are some folks who understand. Yes, people are working, WFH, and they just call it work from home, they just think it's, they oversimplify it, whereas, this is a legitimate, obviously, legitimate corporate strategy.
it's not because of reaction, it's a proactive strategy, for the right businesses, obviously, and, and the right types of, um, employees, the right types of markets, et cetera, but yeah, uh, one in three.
Sondre Rasch: One in three by that point. And when you have, what [00:37:00] you also see, of course, where it will end up. Uh, so the driving force to, with the increase does happen in some industries more than others. You know, when you look at tech, so if you look at like tech only to work, job sites. So there's one called Hacker News.
quite popular in Silicon Valley. It's only for, for, for tech jobs. And, I saw this graph, which was that pre pandemic, 20 of the jobs there had location remote. And post pandemic, it was 80. But it, that went up to 80 during the pandemic. That never went down. That's still 80%. So So that sort of tells you what's happening in the, in the professions that are, where it's clearly possible to make a virtual company.
And there it's just like, it's 80%.
Michael Cohen: And, and again, to wrap it up to, for wrapping up our podcast, but what's it, why we reached out to the first place is because travel and hospitality is a huge part of not only what you're providing to your travel and hospitality, like customers who are consuming those services, just in general as a virtual organization, travel and [00:38:00] hospitality, destination, whatever is a huge part of a virtual organization in many ways as well.
So it's kind of like you're, you're living it and you're providing for it at the same time.
Sondre Rasch: Totally, uh, basically the whole office budget goes to travel. That's basically it. So, I mean, it's a huge opportunity for travel. And I think the virtual organizations is going to be a big, growing market, in the future.
Adam Mogelonsky: Well, Sondre, it's been fantastic having you on and I really hope that listeners and viewers really take your company seriously and the trend behind it in terms of remote work and nomad executive ism. It is an ism now. Sondre, thank you.
Sondre Rasch: Thank you both. Really enjoyed the conversation. Thank you.
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