At the Virtual Communication Mastery event on May 26th, 2022, Oscar Jofre, KoreConX President, CEO, and co-founder, was invited to participate in a talk on the importance of building a team from a distributed workforce and how to trust your employees. He spoke about the company culture at KoreConX, which is based on trust and empowering employees to make decisions and how it benefits operations, and how we are seeing more companies embrace the remote model of working.
During the interview, the Virtual Communication Mastery hosts spoke to Jofre about how the crowdfunding concept in the US changed how fundraising works and who stakeholders are. “Venture capital is not the only way, there is nothing wrong with not being a venture, and because of COVID, online crowdfunding investment in the US has grown and has become more popular than ever,” said Jofre. He reiterated how there is lots of money sitting available, over $30 trillion, waiting to be invested, but it was difficult for people to support companies they believed in. Now with the JOBS Act regulations, KoreConX does everything compliantly to empower the private capital market so everyone can invest in innovative private companies.
This idea of inclusion does not only apply to its investors but also to the company’s employees. KoreConX is seeing companies embracing the distributed model “because it is about productivity.” You want your company to have the best product possible, and by getting the best people to believe in and execute that vision, it does not matter if they are in the same room as you.
In fact, nearly 61% of Americans choose not to go into the workplace, a stark change from earlier in the pandemic. “In 5-10 years,” says Jofre, “offices will not be the major hub for where people work.” He continued, saying that “with distributed working, we will see more small communities becoming hubs of people working remotely, and we are seeing more traveling because of remote working. Remote work is a very different environment where you do not lose things when you leave.” This allows a company and its employees to stay connected no matter where they are constantly.
A significant concept Oscar believes in is providing to all employees is trust. He believes that “for a distributed team to work productively, there must be trust” between the employer and the employee. The employer trusts that the job will get done, and the employees trust that they can do their job without being micromanaged. By trusting your employees to make business decisions, you empower them to be as invested in the company as you are and improve productivity.