5 years of Crossworks...
5 years of Crossworks...
Reflections as we celebrate our 5th anniversary doing Hiring-as-a-Service in Myanmar
Crossworks turns 5 today, a company that was founded to solve a personal problem of finding and retaining good talent without burning a hole in my pocket, that now impacts over 110 employees & employers in total (75+ employees & 35+ employers!). Much of the credit ought to go to the team, as I wasn’t in the country for most of the pandemic, skipping across the world and delving into new spaces like venture capital while the double whammy of a pandemic and coup ravaged the country. Taking a walk down the memory lane, here are some of my reflections from starting to scaling this unlikely company that has defied many odds to simply survive. Read more about ‘WHY Myanmar’ here.
September 2018: How it began…
Following an initial scouting trip in August 2018, where I found our first mini office location (a walk-up apartment near the train station 25 minutes away from downtown), I registered Crossworks online from my room in Singapore before flying off to Myanmar on the 13th of September. My trip was lined up with interviews with prospective candidates that I had only chatted with on Facebook, with my aim being to pick out 2-3 good ones to start with. The office was completely bare and furnitures were still being delivered and assembled whilst the interviews were taking place in the outside room- some candidates were visibly shaken by the rawness of the situation, while others saw it as a breath of fresh air and a challenge they would like to accept. Needless to say, these folks were the ones whom got the job: Moe, May & Vum- and along with that, a week long training/immersion in Singapore to better understand the company and nature of work.
While the company started out of needing to solve a problem with hiring that I faced personally, I soon realised that the brain drain was a huge challenge facing the country, and one that had been going on for decades since the mess in the mid 20th Century began. What changed was the country opening up, technology adoption going up and greater recognition of the opportunities abroad by the most well resourced and educated. I heard anecdotes of the passport office being full of young people and flights out being much fuller than flights in, received tonnes of ‘overqualified’ job applicants and realised that the country was in real need of more good job opportunities. It was imperative that the brain drain be stopped, for if all of the best and brightest were to head for the exit door, who will be left to develop the country and transfer much needed skills to the next generation?
The ride up…
It didn’t take too long into our operations before a couple of people in my network wanted in on tapping on Myanmar for manpower as well and offered to ‘tompang’ (hitch a ride/ride on) Crossworks’ to hire remote video editors/graphic designers for their businesses. We quickly outgrew the tiny walk up office and found a bare 1800 square feet space along with a pretty iconic address ‘54 New University Avenue Road’ (incidentally, Aung San Suu Kyi’s address was 54 University Avenue Road’). The process of buying furniture and turning the bare space into a mini co-working space was exciting and challenging as we were all literally figuring things out as we did it. I recall measuring out the table lengths and my colleague going to various curtain vendors to find suitable materials/colours and prices for the space whilst driving a hard bargain for the landlord to provide carpeting and air conditioning.
Things were also picking up steam for HEAR Myanmar, another company that I founded as I had realised there was such a huge information gap about Myanmar- one would simply need to google ‘Myanmar’ to find that most of the news coverage (then and still today) was centered around political and economic problems. We started hiring producers, social media marketers, cameramen and editors to work with little resources being put toward showcasing the people, places, culture and lifestyle there. By May 2019, we were up to 19 employees in strength and were also selected to pitch at Echelon’s TOP100 Startup stage in Singapore. This was the moment where things seemed to get ‘real’, as I had been to a tonne of startup events and tech summits prior but only as a vendor as part of my Startupmedia days, but never imagined a <1 yr old company not in technology getting recognised on this regional stage.
I would take 50 flights in 2019, effectively going back and forth between Singapore and Myanmar and around the country to film videos while working on my companies back in Singapore. Along the way, CNA covered Crossworks’ and my story during a national day feature and I eventually made it to every state and region of Myanmar, sharing my experiences on a TEDx talk at the end of the year. Things in the office were going well, with team members getting closer and more companies starting to tap on remote Myanmar talent to augment their business operations. One company even grew so quickly that they decided to establish their own office in Myanmar and look into the country for market expansion while we were also facilitating repatriates who wanted to relocate back from abroad into Myanmar. Little did I know that things would only be an uphill battle from this point on for the next two years…
Walking in the wilderness…
As we all know, a certain strain of Coronavirus shook the world as we entered into 2020. The first thing that caved in was business in the media and events space, which my two Singapore companies were directly impacted by, as well as a number of our clients who had been tapping on remote talent in Myanmar. The next thing that was hit was our employee base, given that some of them had opted to relocate to their hometowns for fear that the virus would hit them in the cities and others were afraid to leave their homes to work. I stayed on in Myanmar and even had the experience of getting quarantined for 4 weeks in a government facility before finally having to leave upon expiration of my Visa (and do another 2 weeks of quarantine in Singapore). The Crossworks internal team was also going through a shake up as some HR team mates had departed and folks like Christine were transitioning in to assist with things (including delivering salaries in cash when there were limits placed on withdrawals at the ATM’s and snaking queues).
Eventually, I had to lay off a few people from the HEAR Myanmar production team whom we could not find new companies to place them in, as work slowed down before we eventually indefinitely paused operations in December 2020. We didn’t go down without a fight though, filming and releasing videos during the pandemic (and at an even greater velocity), even raising more than $20,000 for two different causes: Mae Tao Clinic & toward PPE for front-liners in Myanmar’s healthcare system. The 120+ videos that we created still live on and act as a time capsule for this meaningful season/chapter in my journey, also documenting many of the ‘last’ cultural festivals that were celebrated in various states/regions of the country. We probably ended 2020 with under 15 employees, barely surviving with a founder who had just taken off on a one-way ticket to Africa…
Our two year lease for the co-working space was up in January 2021, and we (thankfully) let it go, becoming fully remote before the next wave was going to hit the country. I still remember the fateful day when I was in Egypt and news of the February 2021 coup broke out- it seemed like a nightmare, except that it was true- and one that dozens of folks I cared about was living through. The country was set back by a decade overnight as the democratically elected government was put behind bars and protests erupted on the streets and international confidence in the country tanked. It was also at this point where I adopted a ‘just save one’ approach, knowing full well that the brain drain situation would only be exacerbated with those who had come back in the last decade thinking if they’d made a mistake and many more finding every and anyway to get out of a country they deemed as having a bleak future.
Scrolling back on our telegram group chat, I found way too many screenshots of computer screens- safe to say that most Crossworkers were sheltering in place, staying home amidst the chaos induced by the coup and the delta wave of covid19 (we no longer require team members to take pictures of their screens today, with a more elegant HRM application for check in’s and check outs). A handful of our team members also immigrated to other countries while international companies started making a dash to exit the country amidst the deteriorating situation. For me, our vision had become so much more important and relevant, yet at the same time seemingly getting more and more impossible to see come to pass. I couldn’t blame young people who saw little to no future in their country at the same time, and despite my attempts to try to get a visa through 4 different embassies, I wasn’t successful. It took a rare breed of people, led by Christine (wearing red in the photo below) who took over as HR Manager in late 2021, who still held on to Crossworks’ vision and mission and had faith in me/each other that the company managed to survive this ‘rough patch’…
Bouncing Back
Amidst the disruption, we started noticing that more talents started knocking, as international opportunities were now only available through remote hiring outfits like ours, or a physical relocation- there was a global technology talent shortage as well. The covid19 pandemic also meant that we were no longer ‘selling’ remote work to startups and SMEs, instead it became the default, with the question being WHERE they should tap talent from rather than if they should hire remotely. As things stabilised in the country and fatigue and a stalemate set in and people started to realise that they could no longer put their lives on pause indefinitely. We started to see a trend reversal from 2022 onwards, as things began to ‘thaw’ and people were starting to embrace a post-covid19, post-coup reality. We grew almost 4x in 21 months, almost consistently (save for a small dip due to one of our clients going bust in Jan 2023 as the NFT bubble popped and they didn’t manage to secure their next round of funding to keep building).
I finally managed to return to Myanmar on 18th May 2022, post the covid19 restrictions being relaxed slightly in Singapore and 18 months on the road + Visas being made available again (today, Singaporeans no longer require Visas for trips <30 days). Stayed for a couple of nights in our storage facility before heading up to Mandalay to visit one of the first Crossworkers’, Vum, who today manages his father’s trucking business. It was quite a frenzy interviewing job applicants at cafes, viewing properties for our new office and ensuring that our operations carried on as usual.
June 2022 marked the beginning of rebuilding our internal team and opening office 3.0 (pictures in the link of our current space).
With the new team in place and the interest in tapping on Myanmar’s outlier talent amidst the disruption picking up steam, the growth continued whilst I took my leave again in July to visit India for a month before returning to SG again. I would make a trip once every quarter just to meet new Crossworkers’ and visit my ‘second home’. I had in fact calculated that the total amount of time I spent during the pandemic in Myanmar exceeded every other country including Singapore- and would likely have been even more if not for Visa issues. As the pandemic restrictions faded away, Christine would come and visit in December 2022, meeting employers new and old, many for the first time. Some employers also started visiting us in our new office or flying their team members into Singapore for team bonding or training activities.
We began 2023 fielding many more inquiries as the tech bubble burst and many companies were looking at ways and means to extend their runway. The resourceful companies opted to look beyond typical remote hiring destinations such as India/Indonesia/Philippines & Vietnam and explore Myanmar through Crossworks. At the same time, Crossworks started to become more and more recognisable with our growing EUM (employees under management) and being one of the rare places that talent can avail international job opportunities without leaving the country. What started to deteriorate however, was the power situation - given that many of the new power generation projects had been put on hold since the pandemic began and the dry season at the beginning of the year typically meant that the hydroelectric dams would not be operating at full capacity. Our operation had to extend to provide battery and inverters to over a dozen employees who were neither using our co-working space nor living in apartments with backup generators.
It is my firm believe that in 2023, no one should be denied working opportunities owing to reasons as lame as not having consistent or stable electricity or internet connectivity. And to that end, I told the team that we will stop at nothing to ensure that logistical challenges and hurdles do not become a stumbling block to good and skilful talent finding job opportunities and staying employed. When there is a will, there is always a way- as our very existence had proved up to this point. We also started an entirely new employee engagement department to put even greater emphasis on post-hiring and retention. Given that remote working can get lonely at times, the whole idea of Crossworks was to provide a conducive environment and inclusive community for these top talent to support and challenge each other. However, since the reality post-pandemic was that the majority of the employees were no longer coming to a physical office, we needed to double down on being intentional to create additional touch points with each and every person- online or offline!
A personal highlight for me was the team retreat that we managed to pull off in May 2023, taking off on a 8 hour & boat car ride to GYG Resort for 4 days and 3 nights. It was a much needed break for the entire team as well as a great occasion to get to know each other better outside of the office. Was great to see team members overcome their fear of boats, heights and having some fun after the tumultuous recent past. We learnt more about each other’s strengths and weaknesses and also resolved to overcome the challenges that will undoubtedly come our way together. What I felt we also achieved, aside from the physical time away and bonds that were forged, was to shatter the notion that Myanmar was one big war zone or hell hole, a place with tanks on the street and where stepping out of one’s home was unthinkable and unsafe. The truth was very much otherwise as I visited 4 states/regions in 2023 alone, and Crossworks had hosted more than 5 different employer visits with more being planned in the near future.
In June 2023, we also hosted 2 of our former interns from Singapore and 1 new intern in Yangon. I had also managed to catch up with three former Crossworkers’ in the States in April-May before the retreat and it felt good to see many things coming full circle from our humble beginnings almost 5 years ago. Raymus represented us at MyRepublic’s Support SMB 2023 challenge, where we won the top B2B Solution (Startup) award, and the trip to Myanmar was our way of thanking him.
Following the interns visits and festivities, the work goes on as we continue matching top Myanmar talent to startups and SMEs in Singapore and beyond. In the last one month, we also onboarded our first US and Malaysian clients, with interest coming in from places such as South Korea and Hong Kong simultaneously. The team also successfully conducted our first in-person networking event for developers with more lined up for designers, creatives and other professions too. As if things weren’t busy enough, we have launched the first three mastermind groups where Crossworkers who are in a similar field can meet and discuss solutions to problems that they are facing at work. The mentorship network for 1-1 targeted coaching/mentorship was also recently started and counts over 50 experienced professionals from 5 different countries already onboard the initiative. Not to drop the ball, I also conducted an in-person training session for about 20 Crossworkers during my last trip in July to share my thoughts on how we can all stay relevant in the age of AI.
This newsletter would never end if I were to include details of every single activity that we’ve done in the past couple of months alone, and we’ve so many more exciting plans in the pipeline toward the mission of community and capability building. Has it been difficult? Is it tough? For sure- but it is the tough things that are worth doing to me, and the growth pains in the scaling process is surely equipping us well to tackle whatever lemons may be thrown our way from here on out. The adaptability and resilience of the team as well as vote of confidence from each and every Crossworker and employer never fails to humble and inspire me, serving as a reminder that Crossworks has a unique role to play as a bridge builder. What has to be built up goes far beyond skills and finding the best and brightest talent, but it’s really faith that no ‘situation’ is hopeless, no country is ‘finished’ until and unless every living and breathing citizen resigns to that fate.
Despite things being in a much better place than in 2020-2021, the ‘just save one’ mindset and approach is very much still relevant as we’re still not completely out of the woods, and the work in some ways feels like it’s just begun. 75+ Crossworkers’ and 35+ employers is a significant, memorable and important milestone to celebrate, but the vision and mission is far greater and it still weighs heavily on my heart to see this good work being carried out to completion- to the day where Crossworks no longer needs to exist. This ain’t the easiest thing to do, mission/vision to believe in and I’m far from the easiest or best person to work with. Hence why I can’t sufficiently thank the team, the talent and the employers who have been with us on this journey, be it from the very beginning or as recent additions. This anniversary belongs to you and I hope we all keep growing and adding to each other along this exciting adventure!