From left to right – Jack Thorogood and Alexandra Mitrevska, founders of Native Teams.
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Written by Daniel Tomov, Roberta Tihomirova and Nikola Yanev.
The founders of Native Teams, Alex Mitrevska and Jack Thorogood, started working together six years ago, creating a video software for marketing sector clients. The business was growing and so was their team when they faced a problem common to many international companies: Everyone was effectively a “freelancer” working on a self-employed basis.
Jack and Alex saw firsthand the importance of being properly employed locally. Without it taxes cannot be easily paid, pensions are not contributed to and even health care provision can fall short. So they tried to create their own solution to these challenges. The challenges became features, the features then became usable functionalities…And this is how Native Teams was born – revolutionizing the way people are employed and paid for work.
Native Teams removes the fundamental barrier between amazing local talent and global opportunity.
It provides the ability for international workers to have local employment contracts and benefits, by being a legal intermediary between them and the company they work for. Native Teams makes payments for work as simple as a wallet-to-wallet transaction and takes care of everything else in the background.
The world is experiencing a remote work revolution.
Remote and hybrid working have become the new normal for many companies which didn’t use freelancers before. Globally, there is a growing population of freelancers, gig-workers, and self-employed who represent the Great Resignation trend and the evolving concept of the future of work. More and more people see freelancing as a long-term career path and the field is expected to continue to grow as a younger generation enters the workforce. Skilled workers among generation Z are the most actively involved in freelancing – in 2021, 53% of them provided services such as programming, marketing, and IT. In Europe, over 22 million workers are classified as self-employed. This includes many different types of professions ranging from manual work (drivers, farmers, etc.), to doctors, lawyers or consultants and experts in the digital field like developers, data scientists or designers (according to the ‘’Freelancing in Europe’’ 2021 report by BCG and Malt).
At the same time, employers who hire remotely are faced with the challenge
of having to manage tax, legal, and administrative matters in many jurisdictions. Some of these problems are solved by the fast rise of tech-enabled companies like Remote.com and Deel, which step in as an intermediary. Other employers boost their global presence and decrease HQ costs by keeping their workers as contractors (for instance, over 130k contractors work for Google, which is more than their regular workforce).
On the other hand, freelancers and gig workers have limited access to welfare benefits, pension, bank loans, if they don’t possess regular employee status. Many of them go to great lengths in establishing their own companies and hiring an accountant just to handle payments and tax.
Native Teams solves these pains by offering an employee of record (EOR) service,
as well as a digital payment wallet that facilitates the relationship between companies and the freelancers working for them. Through its subsidiaries in the various jurisdictions it acts as a local employer, drafting and filing all employment related paperwork and taking care of tax and social insurance payments. Unlike other competitors, Native Teams caters also to single freelancers, who can choose to handle their existing income through the platform and obtain employed status.
Currently, the company supports such working in a growing number of countries (30+ across Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas), with a particular focus on Europe. Within the next year, the team is planning to continue its expansion and serve freelancers in India, as well a full rollout across South America and Africa.
Native Teams was founded in 2020 by
Jack Thorogood (founder and CEO) and Alexandra Mitrevska (co-founder and COO). Jack splits his time between London and Skopje, but for more than a decade he has been involved with digital businesses in the Balkans, where he met his co-founder Alex. Since then, they became (as they like to joke), Batman and Robin – Jack is Alex’s Robin and vice-versa, being always there for each other. Sharing the same belief that talent should be unlocked for everyone and everywhere, they embarked on a journey to build the world’s best payments and employment platform.
Curious to learn more? Head to Native Teams’ website for more details, a product demo, or exciting blog articles from their team.
