Jack Thorogood: How We Started With Native Teams

Jack Thorogood is the founder and CEO of Native Teams, the payments and employment platform for freelancers, remote workers and their employers. He is an experienced entrepreneur and has been running businesses with products focused on remote work, fintech, and wider knowledge management for more than a decade.

Even though the idea of offering solutions to help people work remotely existed for quite a while already, he officially founded Native Teams in July 2021.

Native Teams is Jack’s biggest project to date, offering its services in more than 35 countries and employing more than 70 team members from all around the world.

Let’s learn more about where the idea for Native Teams came from, what problems it solves, how the platform developed over the years and what are the plans for the future.

Where Did The Idea About Native Teams Come From?

The first idea about offering payments and employment solutions for remote workers appeared already a few years ago. There are really two sides to the story of how we started the business.

First of all, we were a global team working together on a few projects and we kept on having the same problems.  Many of us were working remotely without having an in-country employer and we didn’t really know how to make sure everyone would be properly employed in their own country. Additionally, we didn’t know how to pay our team members, so the funds would reach them quickly enough and they would be able to access them without the (unnecessary) fees. This is how we built the product and infrastructure, and we didn’t really think of starting the business out of this product (yet).

After that, more and more people were approaching us as they knew we’d created the infrastructure to solve this problem and wanted to use it themselves.  And that’s when we realized we could start building a business around this.

So long story short, Native Teams was created based on our own internal needs. And we all know what happened during and after the pandemic – the whole world of remote work and freelancing basically exploded and we realized that our services could help many, many more people (as well as companies) in other countries around the world.

When Was Native Teams Launched?

We officially launched Native Teams in July 2021, when we started offering our services in North Macedonia, Serbia, Greece, UK, USA, Slovenia, Armenia, Belarus and Ukraine.

What Kind Of Solutions Does Native Teams Offer?

We have two main groups of services – payment tools and employment options.

Payment tools

We provide global payment services for freelancers, remote workers and their employers. Our users get access to the Native Teams dashboard with their payments overview in a multi-currency virtual wallet. They can send money transfers or payment requests, use our invoicing tool to invoice their clients, get wallet statements and receive a Native Teams ATM card to withdraw their funds.

Everyone who’s part of our platform can manage their finances with ultimate flexibility where they can select their preferred way to get paid from one easy-to-use, centralized platform.

Employment options

Our users can get a local employment contract issued in any of the 35 countries where we offer our services. This employment contract is increasingly standardized within the local rules and regulations and across all of our geographies, making it much easier for employers to manage international teams fairly.

In addition to these two key planks to our business, we also offer related services such as visas and work permits, and premium employee benefits (for example health insurance and private pensions).

What Pain Points Is The Platform Addressing?

Fundamentally, we try to make work payments as simple as possible, especially the ones which are usually more complex – like international payments.

For employers, we provide a simple way to pay employees where they don’t need to worry about taxes, contributions, compliance or social costs. We provide a single invoice which makes paying employees as easy as paying any other bill.

Moreover, we also provide access to talent on a global basis and make it easy to “hire like a local” in all the countries we are active in.

And for the employees, we offer empowerment in terms of how they’re paid for their work. The employer sends them the ‘lump sum’ for the work undertaken (for a project, or a regular monthly salary) and they can then access that from their Native Teams wallet in a variety of ways including via a Visa card, via the payroll system in their home country, or even as tax efficient employee benefits.

What are the short-term and long-term plans for the future?

We have some very clear goals. In the short term, we’ll be rolling Native Teams out across more countries: We plan to have full African and South American coverage by the end of 2023. We will also keep developing our product to make it relevant to ever more sectors and potential users.

Our long-term goal is a truly global service and to make people with ‘regular’ non-complex employment choose Native Teams as the way they want to be paid for work.

Start exploring the world of Native Teams!

Native Teams offers all the tools you need when you freelance, work or employ remotely. We provide employment options, payment solutions and invoicing tools to give you a smarter way to work. You can sign up completely for free and explore your options.