ABOUT THIS EPISODE
In this episode of The Nearshore Cafe Podcast, host Brian Samson, founder of Plugg Technologies, chats with Amir Reiter, CEO of CloudTask, about how Medellín, Colombia has become a hidden gem for building high-performing global sales teams.
From building his first team in an Airbnb to scaling a $6M+ revenue operation with over 265 contractors, Amir shares how CloudTask evolved from a service agency into a full-blown B2B marketplace for GTM (go-to-market) talent and software.
They dive deep into:
- Why Medellín is ideal for remote-first teams
- How to scale with Latin American tech talent
- Contractor loyalty vs. W2 mindsets
- Navigating culture, compliance, and team-building in Colombia
- How AI is reshaping hiring and tech operations
- Lifestyle perks of living and working from Medellín
Whether you’re a startup founder, tech exec, or just exploring nearshore team strategies, this episode delivers real insights from someone who’s built it—on the ground.
🔗 Connect with Us
- Amir Reiter: linkedin.com/in/amirreiter
- CloudTask: cloudtask.com
- Brian Samson: linkedin.com/in/briansamson
- Plugg Technologies: plugg.tech
- The Nearshore Cafe Podcast: nearshorecafepodcast.com
🎧 Host | Brian Samson – Founder of 💻 Plugg Technologies
🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/in/briansamson/
🎙️ Sponsored by Plugg Technologies – Connecting U.S. companies with top-tier software developers across Latin America.
🌐 https://www.plugg.tech
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SHOW NOTES 🔗
TRANSCRIPT 🔗
00:00:34.756 --> 00:00:38.819
Welcome everyone to another episode of the Nearshore Cafe podcast.
00:00:38.819 --> 00:00:40.459
I'm your host, brian Sampson.
00:00:40.459 --> 00:00:50.307
If you're interested in doing business in Colombia, running a software company out of Colombia, wow, this is going to be an episode for you.
00:00:50.307 --> 00:00:53.554
I've got Amir Ryder, ceo of CloudTask.
00:00:53.554 --> 00:01:06.868
Before we officially welcome Amir, let me thank our sponsor, plug Technologies pluggtech Great way to connect talent, especially technical talent, from Latin America, to growing US companies.
00:01:06.868 --> 00:01:08.765
Amir, so great to have you on the show.
00:01:08.765 --> 00:01:10.811
Likewise, dude, appreciate the invitation.
00:01:10.811 --> 00:01:13.950
Amir, where in Colombia are you calling from?
00:01:14.180 --> 00:01:27.215
Yeah, I'm in Medellin right now, but I spend a lot of my time in San Francisco where we have an office in the headquarters, and then I sneak back near shore for the good food and the good weather and the safety and security and just loving it here.
00:01:28.460 --> 00:01:31.170
I've actually been in a lot of places in Latin America.
00:01:31.170 --> 00:01:33.727
I have yet to make it to Medellin.
00:01:33.947 --> 00:01:35.051
Oh, you'd love Medellin.
00:01:35.400 --> 00:01:39.284
I've heard it's like perpetual spring, but for those like me who've never been there.
00:01:39.305 --> 00:01:40.308
They call it the internal spring.
00:01:40.950 --> 00:01:44.364
Yeah, yeah, Tell me more about Medellin like quality of life, what it's like living there.
00:01:44.364 --> 00:01:44.745
Yeah, yeah, Tell me.
00:01:44.745 --> 00:01:45.787
Tell me more about Medellin like quality life, what?
00:01:45.807 --> 00:01:46.287
it's like living there.
00:01:46.287 --> 00:01:48.471
Yeah, I wrote an article called the new American dream.
00:01:48.471 --> 00:01:55.171
It's on substack and I just you know, for me it's 65 to 82 degrees every day.
00:01:55.171 --> 00:02:00.545
There's no daylight savings, so like you're not up at nine o'clock with the light, like I sleep at 830.
00:02:00.545 --> 00:02:11.885
And I'm like just on an amazing schedule which is, like you know, really underrated, right, the food itself is 75% cheaper and healthier, and then you know everything.
00:02:11.885 --> 00:02:19.199
The cost of living is just much lower and healthcare like my healthcare in America is like 900 a month for me and my family, and here it's 190.
00:02:20.020 --> 00:02:26.627
And I just you know, for me it's an amazing place that I just truly love and there's just an awesome entrepreneurial network.
00:02:26.627 --> 00:02:32.180
There's, like the CEO of Beehive Shout out to Tyler Dank, who just moved here and just a lot of tech people and a huge community.
00:02:32.180 --> 00:02:37.772
I'm in like a paddle group of like 100 like CEOs of tech companies that live down here, which is great.
00:02:37.772 --> 00:02:47.046
And then, you know, I go to San Francisco all the time for just my clients and just you know, meeting the people that aren't as fortunate to be able to just move back and forth.
00:02:47.046 --> 00:02:53.730
Right, I guess I'm very lucky to be able to just have that liberty to be in two cities and split my time right.
00:02:54.171 --> 00:02:57.841
But yeah, it's for me it's just a magical place.
00:02:57.841 --> 00:03:01.086
You know, I know that you were in BA right, buenos Aires.
00:03:01.086 --> 00:03:19.151
So I kind of look at it like a ba of buenos aires, that's like a smaller city that's just closer to the americas right, like when you have buenos aires is like maybe, like I don't know, eight hour, ten hour flight to the states yeah and, like you know, colombia is like three hours from uh miami, but it's just.
00:03:19.491 --> 00:03:20.275
I went to argentina.
00:03:20.275 --> 00:03:21.479
I fell in love as well, right?
00:03:21.479 --> 00:03:23.483
So like, yeah, like it's a beautiful place.
00:03:23.944 --> 00:03:25.007
yeah, awesome, yeah, awesome.
00:03:25.007 --> 00:03:25.788
Yeah, we'd love to.
00:03:25.788 --> 00:03:26.790
We'd love to check it out.
00:03:26.790 --> 00:03:29.647
Tell us a story Like how, how did you end up there?
00:03:29.919 --> 00:03:30.100
Yeah.
00:03:30.100 --> 00:03:34.448
So I had a advisory board member, eric Agmon, who was the CEO of Answers on Demand.
00:03:34.448 --> 00:03:40.206
It was a POC, erp, medical software and he sold it for a great deal.
00:03:40.206 --> 00:03:42.250
And he was like, let me, let's go to Columbia.
00:03:42.250 --> 00:03:47.436
And he was my mentor and I was like sure, you know, like like I'm learning, you know, like my, my mentor, I'll, I'll come with you.
00:03:47.436 --> 00:03:57.501
I was like the 32 year old at the time that was like gifted with the gift of gab and socializing, and he was the you know, 60 year old, recently divorced, you know, getting back into the game, type person.
00:03:57.501 --> 00:04:00.646
Sorry, eric, if I you know, he'll be fine.
00:04:00.646 --> 00:04:02.169
So I went there.
00:04:02.169 --> 00:04:05.294
And then I also had a team in the Philippines at the time, which was great, they're awesome.
00:04:05.294 --> 00:04:13.729
But I came down here and the guy at the hotel who is now our VP of global talent his name is Danny Agudela and I was chatting with him and this guy spoke fluent English.
00:04:13.729 --> 00:04:14.574
I was like yo, what do you know?
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What do you make a month?
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And he's like 700, okay, and I decided that it would make sense to.
00:04:24.874 --> 00:04:30.651
At the time I wasn't running a B2B marketplace, I was an agency and we got to about 265 employees.
00:04:30.879 --> 00:04:36.701
I really I kind of brought down like B2B SaaS outsourcing from a sales and customer success perspective.
00:04:36.742 --> 00:04:44.749
I had amazing customers like RingCentral, expensify, apollo, all SaaS companies that would hire CS, cx and SDRs and AEs through us.
00:04:44.749 --> 00:05:07.572
So that brought me down, was like the talent I met and just the you know the adventure of something new where, like I already knew what, like Home Depot, and I kind of knew the whole America story like the back of my hand and like you can close your eyes and basically predict the next 15 years of your life where, like in Columbiaia, just this cool stuff, like just random, weird things, and you're just like this is strange but cool.
00:05:07.572 --> 00:05:13.088
So it's also very mentally engaging, um, and just different cultures are great, right and uh.
00:05:13.088 --> 00:05:13.990
So that brought me down here.
00:05:13.990 --> 00:05:30.949
Just a random trip with an advisory board member and then at the time I had a you know an agency like a call center type of thing, and I built a team here at that time and and well, you remember what year this was, that this 2016, 2016, okay, okay, well, how time is flying.
00:05:31.331 --> 00:05:34.923
Yeah, I'll be 42 in june don't fucking ask me how?
00:05:35.865 --> 00:05:37.408
but fortunately I got married, I have a daughter.
00:05:37.408 --> 00:05:40.442
So you know I'm I'm not peter pan anymore.
00:05:40.461 --> 00:05:49.295
Yeah yeah, funny enough, 2016 was the year that I first went to Argentina, so we were doing it like the same year, just in different countries.
00:05:49.295 --> 00:05:49.860
That's awesome.
00:05:49.959 --> 00:05:51.485
Yeah, our energies connected.
00:05:51.485 --> 00:05:52.990
Eight years later for the podcast.
00:05:53.500 --> 00:05:55.086
Yeah, I like it, I like it.
00:05:55.648 --> 00:05:56.108
Small world.
00:05:56.880 --> 00:05:59.079
Did you meet your spouse in Colombia?
00:05:59.199 --> 00:06:00.903
Yeah, I was buying computers for my team.
00:06:00.903 --> 00:06:04.348
She was working at the electronics store outside and I said guess what?
00:06:04.348 --> 00:06:04.649
I said?
00:06:04.649 --> 00:06:05.471
I said hi, how are you?
00:06:05.471 --> 00:06:06.012
What's your name?
00:06:06.012 --> 00:06:07.033
I'd love to take you on a date.
00:06:07.033 --> 00:06:13.307
Right, for anybody listening, that's pretty much all you need to say to get a date.
00:06:13.307 --> 00:06:13.829
Anything else is too much.
00:06:13.829 --> 00:06:14.855
Yeah, yeah, and we were like friends for eight years.
00:06:14.855 --> 00:06:21.324
She was going through law school and then, you know, we had a very mature conversation about building a family and she's actually our chief operating officer.
00:06:21.324 --> 00:06:38.629
Her name is Jessica and she's just great, you know, very fortunate to have a very traditional, non-traditional relationship where my wife gets to really focus on the family but also gets to, you know, be a part of every meeting in the company, and she's got equity in the company and she's smart, she deserves it, she earned it Right.
00:06:38.629 --> 00:06:39.901
So really lucky in that.
00:06:39.901 --> 00:06:44.451
I would bring the baby in, but too much time Show me a picture here.
00:06:44.651 --> 00:06:45.454
The picture.
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That's the wife and the baby.
00:06:47.745 --> 00:06:48.507
Yeah, I love it.
00:06:48.507 --> 00:06:51.166
Yeah, love the family.
00:06:51.166 --> 00:06:51.990
That's awesome.
00:06:53.980 --> 00:06:56.088
I'm a rebel so I was like we're going to have five kids.
00:06:56.408 --> 00:06:59.560
It's great, there you go.
00:06:59.560 --> 00:07:03.630
So was Medellin, the first city that you set up in.
00:07:04.220 --> 00:07:08.668
Yeah, and then I got an office in Bogota as well, but Bogota is a little bit cold and a little rainy and a little dangerous.
00:07:08.668 --> 00:07:10.786
Medellin is a sweet spot for me.
00:07:10.786 --> 00:07:12.767
I'm just really big into nature and hiking.
00:07:12.767 --> 00:07:18.750
On the weekends I go to a waterfall hike and I got a vishla, which is an awesome, very hyper dog.
00:07:18.750 --> 00:07:20.607
I got my dog in Argentina.
00:07:20.607 --> 00:07:26.641
We flew to Buenos Aires to pick him up.
00:07:26.641 --> 00:07:28.747
No kidding, yeah, yeah, the, the, the, you know from a champion breed and his little model.
00:07:28.747 --> 00:07:30.201
He like, he like, poses for pictures and stuff.
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It's in his blood.
00:07:31.122 --> 00:07:31.502
It's funny.
00:07:31.963 --> 00:07:33.607
Yeah, that's great.
00:07:33.607 --> 00:07:37.014
So talk us through that very first hire.
00:07:37.014 --> 00:07:42.293
Because there's people listening here they're like, wow, this is a really interesting thing.
00:07:42.293 --> 00:07:46.389
They're kind of hanging on every word of the VP of talent.
00:07:46.389 --> 00:07:49.862
You know the amazing arbitrage, like first hire.
00:07:49.862 --> 00:07:51.610
You know how did that all work out?
00:07:51.610 --> 00:07:53.619
Like, what did you do to make that happen?
00:07:54.040 --> 00:08:16.620
I, you know, I set up my job opening with my clear description of the job, my clear expectations and my salary range and I, you know, allowed people to apply to it and I reviewed the resumes and I interviewed people that matched that job opening and then I made an offer to the people that I felt were best fit and, unfortunately, the average the average everybody in my company now has been with me for eight years, which is awesome, and they're all contractors.
00:08:16.620 --> 00:08:30.725
So anybody who says they have to hire W2 for longevity is just not really thinking smart, because it really matters, you know, like your culture and your your, you know, payment structure versus the contract, right, Like the average two months.
00:08:30.725 --> 00:08:37.030
And you know I made friends with all the people I hired, 265 that were actively working and probably hire like 700.
00:08:37.030 --> 00:08:43.089
A lot of them have gone on to bigger and better things, the opening up agencies, and I just kept a good network of them and stay friendly with all of them.
00:08:43.649 --> 00:08:47.304
Yeah, and did you make that first hire?
00:08:47.304 --> 00:08:49.658
You were still living in San Francisco or you were already in Medellin by then.
00:08:50.019 --> 00:08:51.206
I was in Miami at that time.
00:08:51.679 --> 00:08:52.326
Yeah, I was in South.
00:08:52.368 --> 00:08:52.590
Beach.
00:08:52.590 --> 00:08:55.922
Yeah, and yeah, his name is Julian Moreno.
00:08:55.922 --> 00:08:59.580
He's now one of the VPs at Globalization Partners, which is a big company.
00:08:59.580 --> 00:09:05.586
He was one of my first hires out of Bogota and he brought someone else that he knew in his network and I flew to Columbia and got an Airbnb.
00:09:05.586 --> 00:09:08.931
We were all sharing it together and then I actually had this penthouse.
00:09:08.931 --> 00:09:12.342
That was huge, that I actually had Some of my founding employees lived with me.
00:09:12.342 --> 00:09:27.110
One, eddie Bejo, who was my co-founder, actually married Maria Sanchez, who was like the lady, who was like my CFO and did all the government's passports, and they ended up getting married and having a kid and it was interesting.
00:09:27.110 --> 00:09:28.092
It was like a work frat house, but a good time.
00:09:28.092 --> 00:09:29.577
I like to live life a little bit, you know.
00:09:29.778 --> 00:09:35.317
Yeah Now California, miami these are places where Spanish is already prevalent.
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Did you have to worry about like?
00:09:36.761 --> 00:09:38.547
Did you have to become bilingual to do it?
00:09:39.195 --> 00:09:40.120
No, I barely speak Spanish.
00:09:40.875 --> 00:09:42.039
I had handlers the whole time.
00:09:42.039 --> 00:09:45.903
So I've just been handled Like Maria was my initial handler, right?
00:09:45.903 --> 00:09:48.620
So just take me to all the banks, I'm signing things, I'm stamping things.
00:09:48.620 --> 00:10:01.855
So everybody I hired spoke English and I was like friends with them, kind of so like I constantly just had handlers and like now my wife is my handler, um, so she does all my visas, she's a lawyer, she takes me to the doctor's office, tells me to shut up and not be rude, you know things like that.
00:10:01.855 --> 00:10:10.527
She's happy I don't speak spanish because, you know, I got a little bit of a gift of gab and I just, you know, I I talk a lot, so she thinks it's good that I don't speak spanish.
00:10:10.567 --> 00:10:17.408
But in tienda son poquito, like, like I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna continue learning, but I'm an anomaly, like for some of those who speak spanish.
00:10:17.408 --> 00:10:25.822
I met like the coolest people in medellin the business owners, the private families, like the founders, so like all my friends are just like top top performing people.
00:10:25.822 --> 00:10:27.917
So I guess that's like who I want to hang out with anyways.
00:10:27.917 --> 00:10:34.058
Yeah, but I'm also, you know, I'll admit that it's a little bit embarrassing that I don't speak spanish fluently, but nobody's perfect.
00:10:34.058 --> 00:10:41.201
You know I got areas of unity and uh, gotta work on it I think that gives a lot of people from the state's confidence.
00:10:41.482 --> 00:10:47.243
You know that you can not only you go around to miami, and they don't speak english yeah, yeah like miami.
00:10:47.263 --> 00:10:48.186
They're like how about it's just different?
00:10:48.186 --> 00:10:50.900
Because you're like you should speak english right here.
00:10:50.900 --> 00:10:52.225
You're not like you should speak english.
00:10:52.225 --> 00:10:53.616
You're like should I should speak spanish?
00:10:53.616 --> 00:10:58.889
Yeah, um, but like a second Google like translates language in real time.
00:10:58.889 --> 00:11:00.158
I don't know if anybody saw that update.
00:11:00.158 --> 00:11:01.922
Sorry, no excuses now.
00:11:01.922 --> 00:11:02.943
Yeah.
00:11:03.085 --> 00:11:04.388
Yeah, for sure, for sure.
00:11:04.388 --> 00:11:06.643
You know what you know.
00:11:06.643 --> 00:11:11.621
What's funny is, when I was in Argentina, absolutely, but I live in Hawaii.
00:11:11.621 --> 00:11:19.923
I really don't get a chance to practice it and, just like you, amir, everybody that I work with speaks advanced English.
00:11:19.923 --> 00:11:21.654
So, like you know, their English gets better, my Spanish gets worse.
00:11:21.654 --> 00:11:25.020
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:11:25.241 --> 00:11:31.642
And I was like, like I think having respect for the culture and the people on the land is equally as important as language.
00:11:31.642 --> 00:11:34.556
Right, like I don't come here and try to like, push my.
00:11:34.556 --> 00:11:44.379
I try to push my ambition and my speed and things that will help people get to the next level, but I embrace the culture, embrace the people and have a lot of respect for it, and it's a journey.
00:11:44.379 --> 00:11:59.705
Right like now that I have a daughter, I'm sure that she's going to be learning how to speak and I'm going to be learning how to speak spanish with her right yeah life's a marathon right, so maybe in like 10 years, me and you will be in medellin speaking spanish together love it, love it.
00:11:59.804 --> 00:12:00.645
Yeah, you never know right.
00:12:00.645 --> 00:12:05.979
So cloud task tell the audience a little more about, yeah, what it is, what does it do?
00:12:06.259 --> 00:12:13.325
yeah, we're a b2b marketplace that's focused on gtm services, full-time candidates and software.
00:12:13.325 --> 00:12:21.267
So we're kind of bringing together um, the account executives, the sdrs there's almost 120 positions that are just, you know, customer facing roles.
00:12:21.267 --> 00:12:38.488
Obviously, you know we partner with you guys on the development side, right, and then lots of software like Apollo, clay, wormley, all the technologies that people use for go to market functions and in GTM you got sales, marketing operations, customer success, customer support, right.
00:12:38.488 --> 00:12:47.433
And then with agencies, think about, like all the call centers, telemarketing centers, inbound centers, lead generation agencies, seo agents there's almost 50 types.
00:12:47.433 --> 00:13:00.381
So we basically help buyers know what they're buying and not have buyers remorse, because it's such there's like 40,000 call centers and 40,000 agencies, 1,000 GTM softwares right, thousand call centers and 40,000 agencies, thousand GTM softwares right.
00:13:00.381 --> 00:13:05.119
So we really make sure that people know what they're buying, like what the business challenge really is, so that they don't have buyer's remorse.
00:13:05.379 --> 00:13:10.979
And you know, think of it like a Upwork or you know an Airbnb or an Uber.
00:13:10.979 --> 00:13:16.917
But just for GTM functions, right, for sales support operations, cx, which is big right.
00:13:16.917 --> 00:13:21.801
So we're focused, but focused on a very big part of the market and that's what we do right.
00:13:21.801 --> 00:13:22.482
That's what we do.
00:13:22.482 --> 00:13:25.924
We help people find the right sellers and the right partners.
00:13:25.924 --> 00:13:39.306
We might even get you listed, because we have a business challenge called building teams and then website development, and that's where you're going to be in, because that's the business challenge you solve for right, that's right, that's where you're going to be in, because that's the business challenge you saw for.
00:13:39.326 --> 00:13:40.187
Right, that's right, that's right.
00:13:40.187 --> 00:13:42.071
We'll talk more about that, oh it's Don.
00:13:42.071 --> 00:13:42.572
Sorry, you're in.
00:13:42.591 --> 00:13:43.274
You opted in.
00:13:43.274 --> 00:13:45.140
Yeah, I appreciate that.
00:13:45.140 --> 00:13:52.201
Yeah, what I'm really interested in, amir, is the scale that you got your team to I mean phenomenal.
00:13:52.201 --> 00:13:57.243
And how did that maybe intersect with the original vision of CloudTask?
00:13:57.243 --> 00:14:02.674
Yeah, and where CloudTask evolved to, and scaling around that, yeah yeah.
00:14:02.674 --> 00:14:03.466
The energy of doing that.
00:14:04.095 --> 00:14:14.586
We scaled the 265 contractors, we were about $6 million in revenue, and in America you wouldn't be profitable with the math there, but because the cost of goods is 75% lower, we were very profitable and successful.
00:14:14.586 --> 00:14:21.528
And I really pivoted because I saw an opportunity to solve a big problem and to build a billion-dollar company.
00:14:21.528 --> 00:14:28.861
And, depending on how I stick the landing, I might be like, oh, that was a great idea, pat on the back, or I'd be like you're an idiot, right, because I took a very profitable business and ripped it apart.
00:14:28.861 --> 00:14:31.206
But it was, you know, for me.
00:14:31.206 --> 00:14:35.846
I just, you know, I saw myself kind of stuck with success, which is not a bad thing, right it just.
00:14:36.115 --> 00:14:45.581
I really saw the fact that buyers didn't know what they're buying and that the status quo like someone had to take a chance to like really help the industry because people just wanted to hear.
00:14:45.581 --> 00:15:04.668
If you came to me and you're like, hey, I want to hire some sales development reps, we need to generate meetings, and I told you, hey, it would take 90 days because there's no market validation and I can't promise you 15-minute meetings, the person would go to the competition who lied to them, and I felt like that wasn't the way people should buy right.
00:15:04.668 --> 00:15:07.883
So by being a marketplace, I got 5,000 options.
00:15:07.883 --> 00:15:15.168
I could really pay attention to your real business challenge and give you options and not sell you because I got it all.
00:15:15.168 --> 00:15:20.927
So it's kind of like if your car is a BMW but I got all the brands, I'll give you the right brand.
00:15:21.174 --> 00:15:36.184
Because I just didn't like the fact that status quo was telling people what they want to hear and that was the normal right and at the same time, like from a capitalistic like I wanted to fix a big problem and I wanted to do a good thing, but I also wanted to be rewarded for doing that right.
00:15:36.184 --> 00:15:51.849
I don't want to state that, like you know, I wanted to build a billion dollar company by doing that and also, at the same time, helping people getting out of the call centers, like you're doing right, which is a noble thing because you're helping young professionals that work very hard, just access jobs and opportunities they didn't have a chance to before, right.
00:15:51.849 --> 00:16:00.942
So that was why I did the pivot and, you know, hopefully partnerships like ours or you know make it worthwhile in the long run yeah, yeah just different business model.
00:16:00.962 --> 00:16:03.275
Right one birds cash, one makes money love it.
00:16:03.316 --> 00:16:11.567
Yeah, tell us more about, um, the actual scaling of your company, because I'm just like super impressed that.
00:16:11.687 --> 00:16:12.969
Yeah, yeah.
00:16:14.596 --> 00:16:18.312
So we scaled from zero to six million in like three years.
00:16:18.312 --> 00:16:18.894
Yeah.
00:16:19.014 --> 00:16:52.818
And a lot of it had to do with getting in a plane and meeting everybody face-to-face and driving Like some of our biggest clients I like land in New York City and then I drove to Boston seven hours and they're like, yeah, you won the business because you're the only ceo who got in the car and like drove seven hours and like looked me in the eye, yeah, so I built really strong relationships with people who you know it's required when they're trusting you to build and manage teams and, um, I treated the employees with more of a sense of entrepreneurship, where I was like teaching them like you know the world is and like they kind of saw me cold calling and like doing like whatever I asked them to do, I do myself, right.
00:16:53.179 --> 00:17:09.596
So I think in this culture there's more of like I'm the boss, you're the employee, and if they called me the boss, I'd be like I'm not your boss, I'm the chief, right, like I might be side with you, versus putting my feet up and bossing you around.
00:17:09.596 --> 00:17:12.592
And I think that was a big part of the reason why I scaled fast.
00:17:12.653 --> 00:17:34.537
It was because the culture was more like a San Francisco startup versus you know, like, like, yeah, like I was less like this is your job, more like you know this is your career type of thing, right, and and really, just, you know, I think that it was natural because I really felt that way and I think people can tell right that I was just ready to like get down and dirty with them, you know.
00:17:34.737 --> 00:17:36.000
Yeah, yeah, I like it.
00:17:36.000 --> 00:17:41.580
Can you you walk us through maybe even how you set up the org, Like did it mirror what?
00:17:41.580 --> 00:17:44.407
Like the type of titles and positions and departments?
00:17:44.407 --> 00:17:47.361
Did it mirror what you might see in San francisco?
00:17:47.521 --> 00:17:51.237
or yeah, yeah you know, like, had a coo.
00:17:51.237 --> 00:17:56.815
You know I had a uh, three account executives, maybe five account managers, a vp of operations.
00:17:56.815 --> 00:17:58.378
Very similar, no different.
00:17:58.378 --> 00:18:03.666
Everybody spoke english, everybody worked for american companies, most of people I hired already working for at&t and cricket.
00:18:03.666 --> 00:18:10.592
And you know the big organization, yeah, you know my co-founder, eddie bejo, was working for Fitbit customer support.
00:18:10.592 --> 00:18:12.819
So yeah, same title, same structure.
00:18:13.000 --> 00:18:18.018
The only difference was like, hey, there's 22 holidays on a Monday in Colombia.
00:18:18.018 --> 00:18:20.123
They're not for you, they're against you.
00:18:20.123 --> 00:18:23.077
So you could be lazy, you're going to work on this holiday.
00:18:23.077 --> 00:18:36.298
It's a different mentality of, like you know, I said I like drinking on a Monday because, like, think about it, right, they have 22 mondays off, okay, well, china's not taking off on monday, all right, and you're competing against the global stage.
00:18:36.298 --> 00:18:44.035
So I just kind of like showed them that like, hey, you're kind of being duped by your government into thinking that these holidays they didn't even know the holidays.
00:18:44.035 --> 00:18:45.397
They didn't even know the holidays.
00:18:45.397 --> 00:18:46.480
What is the holiday?
00:18:46.480 --> 00:18:47.163
They had no idea.
00:18:47.163 --> 00:18:47.383
No idea.
00:18:47.383 --> 00:18:49.208
Multiple saint days, right, but they don't know.
00:18:49.208 --> 00:18:57.424
All they knew is they had a long weekend and they couldn't go party and it held their career back and it was a way for the government to keep the poor poor right.
00:18:57.976 --> 00:19:04.098
They think you're giving them something, but what they're giving you is a way to just climb the ladder and fall back down, yeah, right.
00:19:04.098 --> 00:19:08.262
So I kind of came in and said I want to work for a plumbing company, go, do that.
00:19:08.262 --> 00:19:09.002
You want to work for us?
00:19:09.002 --> 00:19:18.612
You're going to get education, exposure to tools, exposure to AI, which is not even now, but you're going to work in the American days, right, so it's a given again, right?
00:19:18.612 --> 00:19:26.484
Yeah, I think you know, you've probably seen that in Latin America they're more trained on, like, how to sue the employee than they are how to make a lot, because that's what they get.
00:19:26.484 --> 00:19:29.471
They're given they're not given the opportunity to move up the ladder.
00:19:29.471 --> 00:19:36.635
They're given opportunity to sue the employee, right, and and I was like yeah, you can't sue me, I'm an american, you know, like, like, you know like I'm not.
00:19:36.635 --> 00:19:42.545
You know, I'm not hiring an employment contractor, independent contractor, and you're gonna have to work hard and and earn skills.
00:19:42.965 --> 00:19:52.557
People are given things that distract them, right so I felt like the government was pulling the shades over the eyes of the general population.
00:19:52.557 --> 00:20:06.057
While the top 1% working and crushing weekends, the average person is partying and taking off and right, like, okay, if you're, you know, and it's backwards In this culture.
00:20:06.057 --> 00:20:08.023
A lot of the kids are taking care of the parents.
00:20:08.023 --> 00:20:09.355
The parents don't retire at 50.
00:20:09.355 --> 00:20:15.462
The parents get supported by the kids and there's one way to break that trend by somebody saving money and investing, right.
00:20:15.462 --> 00:20:27.281
So some of the guys I'm working with now have stock portfolios, they have Bitcoin, because I talked to them about that right, and I would say stuff like hey, it's not fair that now that you make more money, you give your family more money.
00:20:27.281 --> 00:20:28.403
And they retired at 50.
00:20:28.403 --> 00:20:30.605
Like like, where does it stop?
00:20:30.605 --> 00:20:32.949
Right, it's a never ending vicious cycle.
00:20:32.949 --> 00:20:35.218
And I just kind of like told them the truth.
00:20:35.218 --> 00:20:41.742
It hurt their feelings, but they could see that I kind of meant it from a point of like, empowering the next generation.
00:20:42.002 --> 00:20:42.324
You're right.
00:20:42.324 --> 00:20:43.507
Yeah, I like that.
00:20:43.507 --> 00:20:45.278
I think that's really good advice.
00:20:45.278 --> 00:20:49.030
Is there any other advice that you'd give maybe US CEOs?
00:20:49.030 --> 00:20:50.315
Yeah, yeah, if they were trying to build-.
00:20:50.335 --> 00:20:54.521
Fly down, meet your team, take them out to dinner, like I have, a company called Expensify.
00:20:54.521 --> 00:20:56.622
They had 48 account executives for five years.
00:20:56.622 --> 00:20:57.284
Well, guess what?
00:20:57.284 --> 00:20:58.178
They flew out.
00:20:58.178 --> 00:21:04.765
They met the team, they took them and they're still there, right, everybody who flew out to visit their team still has the team.
00:21:04.765 --> 00:21:10.564
Anybody who just hired it like an outsourced third party, fire them.
00:21:10.564 --> 00:21:11.712
Treat them like they might work with you for eight years.
00:21:11.712 --> 00:21:14.279
Get to know them and build real relationships in person.
00:21:15.040 --> 00:21:16.124
Yeah, that's great advice.
00:21:16.124 --> 00:21:19.199
I want to talk more, amir, about AI.
00:21:19.199 --> 00:21:22.105
You're very well versed in your company.
00:21:22.105 --> 00:21:23.186
What do you see?
00:21:23.186 --> 00:21:27.080
What are some of your predictions, and then maybe even how it might impact nearshoring.
00:21:27.863 --> 00:21:29.586
Yeah, faster, cheaper, more efficient.
00:21:29.586 --> 00:21:37.690
I see it making everything faster, cheaper, more efficient, and I see the fact that companies are going to have could probably be able to be leaner on the headcount and achieve more.
00:21:37.690 --> 00:21:38.615
But there also might be more startups, right?
00:21:38.615 --> 00:21:44.155
So instead of having bigger companies, I would predict that there's going to be many small, specialized companies, right?
00:21:44.155 --> 00:21:50.102
So if you need a million people employed, and that was in 500 companies now, it might be a million across 2,000.
00:21:50.501 --> 00:21:54.986
And I think that what I'm trying to do is just get the hands, get the tool.
00:21:54.986 --> 00:21:55.926
I have an example.
00:21:55.926 --> 00:21:57.048
I got this guy, danny Nadella.
00:21:57.048 --> 00:22:01.551
I joked around because on LinkedIn, I put some posts about how he didn't speak English when I met him, which is not true.
00:22:01.551 --> 00:22:09.346
He did, and now he programmed a candidate assessment of lovable and just letting and just like letting people know that, like you got to break things.
00:22:09.386 --> 00:22:17.894
If you want to learn something, just start using these tools use madnessim, use lovable, use chat, gpt, use Gemini, use perplexity and ask it questions.
00:22:17.894 --> 00:22:19.461
It's about the questions you ask it.
00:22:19.461 --> 00:22:23.175
If you ask it, how do I improve my career and protect myself for the next five years?
00:22:23.175 --> 00:22:28.547
It'll give you an answer that can help you If you ask it, you know who should I bet on in the next basketball game.
00:22:28.547 --> 00:22:30.529
You might get some good information, but it's not going to.
00:22:30.730 --> 00:22:32.880
So it's like anything is as good as the questions you're asking.
00:22:32.880 --> 00:22:35.202
We're just getting information faster, right?
00:22:35.202 --> 00:22:54.287
So just make pretend that you're using the tools the right way, and then there's going to be a big opportunity for you to be a transform agent, meaning like, hey, I'm going to come to your company and share everything I know with AI to make you do things faster, cheaper, more efficient, versus being replaced by it.
00:22:54.287 --> 00:22:57.663
So if you don't want to be replaced by it, you should be using it.
00:22:57.663 --> 00:23:00.960
If you're not going to use it, expect to be replaced by it.
00:23:00.960 --> 00:23:06.676
And I sent an email to my team basically saying hey guys, we're going to grow to a billion dollar company with 12 employees or less.
00:23:06.676 --> 00:23:11.320
You have a choice you can either use these tools and I'll pay for them, or you can resign.
00:23:11.320 --> 00:23:15.545
Nobody resigned and everybody's using the tools Awesome, I love it, I love it.
00:23:16.705 --> 00:23:17.507
And that even goes for me.
00:23:18.126 --> 00:23:19.409
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:23:19.409 --> 00:23:25.395
I'm sure you saw the email from, I think, the Fiverr CEO, right Like even even the CEO.
00:23:25.415 --> 00:23:26.057
Yeah, that was something similar.
00:23:26.057 --> 00:23:31.840
I saw that and it's true, right, because it's like you're not, like you're just, you're like telling them the truth, and it goes for me, too, right.
00:23:31.840 --> 00:23:47.807
Like like as a CEO, like there might come a day like a year from now, or like I can get replaced by AI right, I might own that AI in that point, right, which might still be beneficial is safe from innovation and change, and it's not a you versus them type of thing.
00:23:47.807 --> 00:23:52.002
It's like we're just innovating fast and you could be a leader or a laggard, right.
00:23:52.002 --> 00:23:53.018
What's your favorite?
00:23:53.097 --> 00:23:53.579
AI tool.
00:23:53.579 --> 00:23:57.826
Yeah, I've been having a lot of fun with a caption app.
00:23:57.826 --> 00:24:00.621
You know, where you can kind of grow your own avatars.
00:24:00.621 --> 00:24:02.005
Are you vibe coding?
00:24:02.005 --> 00:24:02.767
You vibe code?
00:24:02.767 --> 00:24:06.540
I'm not a vibe coder, but I'm seeing a lot of this vibe coder trend.
00:24:06.540 --> 00:24:07.442
Are you All right?
00:24:07.442 --> 00:24:10.048
No, I don't know.
00:24:10.048 --> 00:24:12.941
Maybe, yeah, I'm seeing the trend.
00:24:12.941 --> 00:24:15.118
Maybe, maybe I'll I'll become a vibe coder.
00:24:15.118 --> 00:24:20.303
It seems like, yeah, I think there's a lot of FOMO right now around vibe coding, so we'll see.
00:24:20.522 --> 00:24:22.288
Yeah, I'm like you know it's.
00:24:22.288 --> 00:24:33.480
I wouldn't say I vibe coded, but for me, to communicate with my CTO, my dev team, I was able to use Manus to get this prototype on a website, so it's technically vibe coding.
00:24:33.480 --> 00:24:34.738
So, yeah, I guess I am vibe coding.
00:24:35.200 --> 00:24:35.621
There you go.
00:24:35.621 --> 00:24:37.686
There you go Good, good stuff.
00:24:37.686 --> 00:24:40.682
Well, as we start to wind it down, I just want to ask a fun question.
00:24:40.682 --> 00:24:46.803
Yeah, what are some of your favorite must-go-to restaurants in Medellin?
00:24:46.843 --> 00:25:00.419
Favorite must-go-to restaurants in Medellin Somebody visit, yeah, don Diablo, best steak yeah, and then I go to Hakanami, which is the best sushi yeah, el Cielo is like a five-star restaurant, which is awesome, yeah, awesome.
00:25:00.439 --> 00:25:00.739
Awesome, cool.
00:25:00.739 --> 00:25:02.700
We'll definitely put those in the show notes for everybody.
00:25:02.740 --> 00:25:03.121
Yeah.
00:25:03.401 --> 00:25:06.182
Yeah Well, Amir, this has been super fun.
00:25:06.182 --> 00:25:14.267
I'm just really impressed with how you took the risk, built something really special, did it all in Colombia and embraced the culture.
00:25:14.267 --> 00:25:15.147
So kudos to you.
00:25:15.387 --> 00:25:16.249
Likewise to you, man.
00:25:16.249 --> 00:25:18.869
You did the same thing, so I'm also impressed.
00:25:19.109 --> 00:25:20.171
And I appreciate you having me on.
00:25:20.171 --> 00:25:23.353
Absolutely Well, you're listening to the Nearshore Cafe podcast.
00:25:23.353 --> 00:25:32.057
This is Amir Ryder from CloudTask.
00:25:32.057 --> 00:25:35.151
This podcast is sponsored by Plug Technologies pluggtech Great way to connect talent from all over Latin America to growing US companies.
00:25:35.151 --> 00:25:37.840
We'll see you next time on the Nearshore Cafe podcast.
00:25:37.840 --> 00:25:38.765
Thanks for listening.