On this edition of the 5 Minite Coffee, we’re sitting down with Anna C. Mallon, a well-known name that reaches far beyond the startup landscape alone. Anna brings 20 years of experience transforming global start-up innovation, education and marketing businesses across Europe and Southeast Asia. She catalyzes entrepreneurship and innovation. Here’s what we learned from her about the shifting startup landscape.

Disclaimer: views, opinions and recommendations are purely based on Anna’s personal experience in the startup ecosystem for 20 years and do not reflect that of AWS officially.

For the average startup, things move fast, and skills they need today may not be the same as what they need tomorrow. How do you see this further evolving and what role do startups play in this change?

I believe there will be a rising need for freelancers and the need to fill many specialized roles that do not exist yet. The fast-paced nature of startups requires agile staffing and the ability to add/remove resources as needed.

Following customer-driven innovation methods (design thinking, Lean Startup), commitments like salaries should be deployed when there is a confirmed business case and cash flow. As Ries summarized it, it is Figuring out what’s working before running out of resources: validate before scaling. Achieving success hinges on lots of testing, reiterating and pivoting. What this means in hiring is that specific skills needed in the beginning might drastically change as customer feedback and validation comes in.

Startups are leading the way for the future of work, triggered and sped up through the pandemic.

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Startups are often on the brink of innovation. What are some equally innovative resources that accelarate startups' growth and work?

Cloud computing to keep costs low, experimentation high, safe and be ready to scale. Startups can store, retrieve and transfer data in minutes with cloud computing providers like AWS. Besides technological shifts such as open source and horizontal computing, AWS cloud computing has made it cheaper to launch a startup. This also allowed investors to invest in the business rather than in hardware costs. Technology is also the key for startup growth. Startups want to build the foundations of their MVP quickly and efficiently, and with cloud computing they can launch faster, experiment at lower risk, and focus on core business value.

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“I believe there will be a rising need for freelancers and the need to fill many specialized roles that do not exist yet. The fast-paced nature of startups requires agile staffing and the ability to add/remove resources as needed.”

You’re very experienced with remote work. After leading a remote accelerator out of Singapore and guiding a team located across three continents, what can you tell us about the power of digital nomadism in work?

One person comes to mind when I think of digital nomadism. I outsourced my initial marketing research and digital campaigns to her. This person was living the REAL digital nomad life. She was working in a different city every month, and there was no difference in her Wi-Fi availability or productivity from the other team members who were sitting right in front of me. Time zones or meeting availability was no challenge either. The experience was superb. I had a happy, motivated team member who was living the life she wanted while being a top marketing professional, all remote and on-demand. Amazing for both sides.

My other team members were not digital nomads per se, just digital/virtual professionals living abroad, supporting me digitally and contract based. Project management tools kept us organized and collaborative. Slack contributed in building a very transparent and inclusive startup culture which kept us all connected and grateful.

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“Startups are leading the way for the future of work, triggered and sped up through the pandemic. Specific skills needed in the beginning might drastically change as customer feedback and validation comes in. ”

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How have you worked with flexible talent remotely in the past, ensuring the human, interpersonal, and casual aspect of teamwork be maintained?

Here’s what I have found creates inclusion, ownership and clarity for virtual or remote teams;

1. Transparent communication supported by tools like Slack where everyone can add themselves to a channel.
   
2. Video calls work best if they’re well prepared, instructed via an accessible and editable Wiki document.
   
3. As a team committing to doing some video calls with camera-on and other calls with camera-off - this ensures that people get the office-like vibe while still allowing for home days. It also ensures we use both visual and audio communication channels to solve problems, which is to the benefit of those who prefer one over the other.
   
4. Short personal video/audio messages add an emotional layer of communication.
   
5. Having a shared physical vision and goal like a yearly in-person meeting.
   
6. Using digital project management tools like Basecamp, Trello or Asana ensures clear collaboration and automation to keep everyone working towards the same goal.
   
7. Using a team development tool like Fingerprint for Success to better understand each other’s motivations, communication styles, but also team blind spots was impactful in getting the right people onboard and collaborating remotely.
   
8. I’m a big believer in thank you at the beginning or at the end of every call to add a human factor and give recognition.

We thank Anna for her time and for generously sharing her wise pieces of advice and insights with us, from which we can all learn a lot. Are you also a startup on the brink of innovation? Need agile resources to help take you to the next stage? Our talented pool of flexible, pre-verified student freelancers, or High-Flyers, is available to skyrocket your digital marketing, business development, research, data analytics or web development, so you can focus on growing your core business. Sign up and post a Task for free today - it only takes a Minite.

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