The modern business world requires an innovative approach in workplaces; we have witnessed the change from cubicles to open workplaces; however, work culture demands another change. With a perception to bring the following desired change to workspaces, Katerina Trajchevska co–founded Adeva, enabling companies to work remotely by creating various solutions based on years of experience in the field.
As the CEO, Katerina strongly advocates that the future of work is not about where you work from but what you deliver. Adeva’s efforts hit the nail on the head in the unprecedented pandemic that allowed businesses to operate remotely, expand their roots globally, break traditional methodologies’ barriers, implying Adeva’s concept of Work Without Boundaries.
Below are the highlights of the interview.
Brief our audience about your journey as a business leader until your current position at the company. What challenges have you had to overcome to reach where you are today?
Back when I was starting my career, my country didn’t offer too many opportunities to work on exciting projects. The outsourcing industry was on the rise, and most of what we saw were legacy projects and unexciting work. The startup world was out of reach, together with all the fun challenges that came with it.
I started freelancing in search of more interesting work and instantly loved the flexibility it offered. The challenge was, though, to keep the work supply steady – it was too risky and unpredictable. That’s how Adeva was born. Searching for ways to improve our own freelancing experience together with my business partner, we realized that we could do the same for everyone who wanted the flexibility of remote work without compromising on the stability of regular employment.
There were plenty of challenges on the way, especially because the companies that could provide a more stable workload were the ones that were more inclined toward the traditional way of work. Educating enterprises about the benefits of remote work is a major task. Now with the pandemic, we faced a massive shift in the industry, which accelerated the adaptation for many companies and enabled us to grow much faster.
Tell us something more about the company and its mission and vision.
Adeva is a remote tech professionals’ network driven by the purpose of enabling work without boundaries for tech professionals worldwide. We’re passionate advocates for remote work, and our network is distributed in over 30 countries across the globe.
Using a community-driven approach, we engage some of the brightest talents in the industry, enabling organizations to scale their engineering teams fast. By cutting out unnecessary expenses and minimizing fees, Adeva helps companies reduce their hiring costs while providing long-term, remote opportunities for tech talent worldwide.
Enlighten us on how you have made an impact in the industry through your expertise in the market?
We’ve been fully remote for five years, and over the years, we dealt with most of the challenges companies are faced with now, having to adapt to the new normal quickly. Our approach has always been to work out our problems, find a solution and once we’re certain it works, offer it to our customers to facilitate their work with distributed teams.
Whether it’s by educating companies on implementing strong processes for remote working or providing infrastructure for easier management of their remote contractors, we’ve always used our expertise to enable companies to work remotely without limiting themselves to a certain geographic location.
Describe in detail the values and the work culture that drives your organization.
We stand behind the premise that it’s never about how much you work but what you deliver. What value do you create. That’s the main thing we want to pass on to every member of our community and each one of our clients.
Being a people-driven company, we measure success in the opportunities we create for people to enjoy life more, to live the lifestyle they always wanted. For some of our colleagues, that means to live and work from a different location every couple of months; for others, to surf or climb mountain peaks because all they need to do to afford it is pack their laptop and hit the road. For most of them, though, it’s the flexibility to balance their personal and professional lives, to spend more time with their families, or move to a more peaceful location without worrying about the commute or lack of work opportunities.
Those are the experiences that drive us. Knowing not that you helped someone make a living, but that you helped them live the life they want.
Undeniably, technology is playing a significant role in almost every sector. How are you leveraging technological advancements to make your solutions resourceful?
Technology is imperative to our ability to grow and serve our talent and customers. We completely rely on our platform for achieving that. On one side, we have people interested in remote jobs who can apply to join regardless of if they’re actively looking for a job or not. On the other side, clients can easily sign up and post their job requirements to start the hiring process.
The magic happens in the back office, where we have a smart search and matching process to find the best fit for a given position and make an introduction. We’re increasingly automating the repetitive steps of our manual processes to be able to focus more on creating value for our clients and our network.
Where do you envision yourself to be in the long run, and what are your future goals for the company?
Our mission is to enable work without boundaries for 1 million people by 2030. To support companies and individuals untap their full potential and remove borders from work by creating an infrastructure for everyone who wants to work remotely.
With more and more companies opening up to working with distributed talent, a completely new set of challenges will arise dealing with fake identities, the inability to stay compliant with local laws, the overhead of managing and paying people across borders. Utilizing our experience and the obstacles we’ve overcome to get where we are today, we aim to solve each of these challenges for companies across the world and enable more individuals to access opportunities that never existed before.
What would be your advice to budding women entrepreneurs who aspire to venture into the industry?
The glass can be half full or half empty, depending on how you look at it. We’re far from having a favorable environment for women entrepreneurs, but just because of that, there are so many communities and networks that support women and create opportunities that would be hard to get otherwise. Make it your strength to use them.
