Bootstrapped startup meetergo hires developers abroad with Remote

As a 100% bootstrapped startup, meetergo understands the complexities of scaling. A lead generation platform for business and sales professionals, it’s struggled to find the right talent in its native Germany — and hiring internationally can be a challenge for a small business with no overseas legal presence.

To find and compliantly hire this talent, meetergo needs a global HR partner that provides the right support. Here’s why it trusts Remote to help scale and manage its globally-distributed workforce.

meetergo at a glance

• Headquarters: Germany

• Founded: 2021

• Size of company: 10

• Employees via Remote in: Europe and Asia

• Industry: SaaS

Founded in 2021, meetergo allows users to quickly and easily schedule meetings, and enable a more efficient — and effective — lead funnel.

The app has many use cases in multiple sectors, and to build the best product, deliver a seamless user experience, and grow the business, the company needs skilled developers.

However, in Germany, this is a challenge. The country is currently in the middle of a tech skills shortage, with qualified developer talent both rare and costly. For Richard Gödel and his meetergo co-founders, the only solution was to look for talent further afield. 

How can a bootstrapped startup hire internationally?

When Gödel and his colleague founded meetergo, they understood that the budget would be tight. Their plan was to bootstrap the business — but this was making it difficult to hire new talent and scale up.

“We’re young founders,” Gödel explains. “We’re not coming from a background of ‘hey, we have a couple of million to spend on starting a company and setting up global entities.’ That business model just isn’t possible for us.”

Gödel and his team wanted to hire permanent talent rather than contractors, but finding local talent with the required level of developer skills was difficult and expensive.

As a result, meetergo started to look outside of Germany, but this approach presented new challenges of its own. The company couldn’t invest in creating a local entity elsewhere, leading Gödel and his co-founders to research employer of record (EOR) providers. 

“We assessed both Remote and Deel,” Gödel says. “And we found that Remote’s pricing structure was the best option for us."

Remote was invested in our success, and the partnership felt more trustworthy overall.

The first international hire

After partnering with Remote, meetergo found a talented developer in India who was a perfect fit for the company. Remote took care of all the background checks, contracts, onboarding, payroll, benefits, and taxes, ensuring that meetergo was compliant with local labor laws at every step. 

“We’d never hired people internationally before, so I didn’t know what to expect,” Gödel says. “But with Remote, it was much simpler than I anticipated. We found our candidate, made the offer, and Remote handled the rest. We could see the onboarding progress, and check which actions were still outstanding.”

The process was also simple for meetergo’s new hire, which was key in getting the relationship off to a good start.

“Our employee had a dedicated person at Remote to answer questions,” says Gödel. “That was great, because we’re obviously not experts in Indian labor law. The whole process was just really smooth.”

As a small startup, Gödel believes this level of support and expertise is invaluable — and the partnership has opened up doors for future potential hires.

“Hiring internationally gives us a definite advantage from a skillset and cost perspective,” he says. “For example, if I go to the German market and advertise for a TypeScript developer that knows Nest.js and AWS Cloud, we’d maybe get three applicants — and their salaries would be above €120k.

“Recruiting abroad gives us more options.”

Through Remote, we now have a world of talent open to us. We know we can get the right people in place to help us build the business.

Managing an international team

As well as allowing meetergo to hire from a much larger and more cost-effective talent pool, the partnership makes it easier for Gödel to manage his team. As a remote-first company, this is especially convenient.

“Remote is easy to use and we can see everything in one place,” he says. “We can see contract information, and approve things like holidays and expenses with a few clicks. It saves time so we can focus on building the business.”

For Gödel, this last point is an important one.

“We’re doing a lot of sales. We’re trying to drive revenue. International hiring isn’t our area of expertise,” he says.

“We don’t want to be under paying, missing benefits, or having problems with compliance. Remote handles all of this for us. We had many questions in the beginning, and they were always answered by Remote.”

It’s very beneficial having Remote as a partner. We share many of the same values.

What’s next for meetergo? 

With its core team now in place, meetergo is thoroughly focused on the next steps: building more revenue, finding new customers, and creating the best platform experience for its users. Gödel believes that a global hiring approach is key to this.

“When you’re a startup that cares about efficiency and burn rate, and you don’t want to throw money out the window, you need to hire internationally,” he says.

Partnering with the right global HR provider helps, too.

“Remote makes it easy to be compliant,” adds Gödel. “They’re a real enabler for businesses.”

It’s only been a couple of years since Gödel and his team were co-workers with a big idea, and so much has already changed. Unsurprisingly, he’s excited to see where the next few years take them.

"We’re just two young guys and Remote has enabled us to grow our business internationally,” he concludes. "That's pretty amazing, and we’re really excited about the future."

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