In October 2014, Dutch recruitment startup Vicancy made a bold move by relocating half of their team to Bali, Indonesia. Was it worth it? Now, six months later, it’s time to find out. Pieter Moorman, CTO at Vicancy, shares his experiences.

Can you shortly explain how you and your team ended up working here in Bali?

We believe that it’s the people that determine the success of a company. A half year ago Vicancy was in need of two highly skilled software developers. But the demand for these guys is high, which makes them really hard to find. We figured that if you want to hire exceptional people, you have to run your company in an equally exceptional manner. We didn’t have a lot to offer in terms of payment, so in May 2014 my co-founder Loet Rammelsberg and I came up with the idea of relocating to Bali. We decided to just give it a go, posted the job on a landing page and and see who would apply. We ended up getting a lot of attention and a lot of skilled people applied for the position. Only after that did we realize that we could actually pull this off. So we did some testing to select the best two freelancers and after a lot of Skype-calls, we invited them to visit the Netherlands to meet the rest of the team. That was a final check to get everyone on board before the three of us moved to Bali in October.


How long did it take you to make the transition?

Creating the landing page was the easiest part. We wanted to be sure it would be a good fit for both sides, so the actual hiring process did take some time. We needed a few weeks to filter through all the applications and get in touch with high potentials. Overall it took about two months from posting the job to actually hiring people. We found it important to bring the team together beforehand so they could get to know each other in person. If you include the meetings before and afterwards, then it took us about three months to set the whole team up. Perhaps some companies could do it faster, but again; it pays off to be thorough before hiring someone.


What happened when you first arrived in Bali?

Before we actually moved half the team here, I went to Bali in the summer to prepare and check for basic things, such as internet, housing, visa’s and legal stuff. My main learning was that most are easy to fix or will work out once you are over there.


Where would be a good place to start from if you are running a startup?

We live in Ubud, which is in the centre of the island. Because it is higher above sea level, it tends to be a bit cooler and more humid than the rest of Bali. The reason we set up shop here, is that this is the place where the most interesting people are. Not only entrepreneurs, but also artists, hippies, and all breeds of ‘digital nomads’.


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