Welcome to Women Disrupting Tech.
My name is dear Kanupkas, and on this podcast, I give the women
who work in tech the platform they need to inspire and empower
each other. Join me on a journey into the
world of entrepreneurship, funding biases, and role models
to discover the strategies for success in the tech industry.
In other words, how women can disrupt tech.
Are you ready to listen? Hey, welcome back to Women
Disrupting Tech and thank you for tuning in to Episode 127.
When you're building a global company, you need global talent.
I mean, how else are you going to create products and services
that your audience around the world can relate to?
But how do you make sure that these talents feel at home when
they need to relocate to another country?
In this episode of Women Disrupting Tech, you'll hear the
answer to that question from Marika von Ipern.
Marika grew up in a hippie community where belonging and
giving back for part of daily life.
And years later, she discovered that those personal values and
community focused principles can be integrated into a fast
growing company, balancing growth with impact.
In this episode, Marik and I talk about what it takes to make
people feel at home when they move to a new country, and why
relocation, when done right, can become a powerful tool for
building inclusive teams. You also hear her stories about
bootstrapping, scaling, and learning to lead with intention.
And we'll explore how challenges around immigration and housing
can be turned into opportunities.
So when you're ready to listen and learn how to use relocation
to build inclusive teams, please welcome to Women Disrupting
tech, Marika von Epern. Before we start, I want to
highlight an event that embrace health organizers on the 3rd of
December 2025 at Equals in Amsterdam entitled Understanding
Women's Health. As you know, I'm really
passionate about the need for everyone to learn more about how
Women's Health works and how it is different from the health of
men. Visiting this event will help
both men and women better understand Women's Health and
how it impacts energy, mood, productivity, and overall
well-being at every stage of life.
For more information and for tickets, please check out the
link in the show notes or search for understanding Women's Health
in the Luma app. So Marika von Epperton, welcome
to women disrupting tech. Good to have you.
My first question is always how did you get into your current
job or current position? In your case, that's CEO of
Setly. Nice.
Well great first question. It was definitely never on my
list to become ACEO or founder. I simply wanted to travel the
world, learn as much as I I could.
I ended up working in HR recruitment, living across the
globe and literally feeling the pain myself of people moving and
not being able to to solve that. And an experience that I would
really stand by and, and, and help people feel at home.
So at some stage after I became a mum and, and life changed
dramatically and purpose became a little bit more important, I
was like, why not? Maybe there's a niche here,
maybe I can start my own company.
And that became sadly Fast forward five years later and
that led to me now being the CEO and and Co founder.
Yeah, so I read something interesting in your bio that you
were raised as a hippie, you grew up as a hippie.
How did that does that help you at all or does that actually do
the opposite? So does it block you from doing
things? Absolutely.
I was brought brought up in a in a community.
My parents were hippies and they travelled a lot and and we
worked together. So I think the importance of
shared values, giving back and always prioritizing the common
benefit of the personal interest and experience over money.
So I think it taught me a lot about life and, and what I stand
for. So it also showed a bit of a
difference going into the startup world because that was
very different and with its goals and its, its setup.
But I think we've sadly, ultimately, I, I was able to, to
combine the best of both worlds because the values the community
are still very much central in, in what we do and the giving
back peace. But yes, you can also achieve
growth and financial gain. So it was, yeah, it was
interesting to see those worlds come together.
Yeah, because how, how did you marry the two?
Because the start up world is, is like really more almost
performance oriented and also a bit about, well, not a bit,
quite a bit about money. Yeah, that's, it's an
interesting one. We started bootstraps I think
for that reason as well, because I really wanted to stay close to
the values what we stand for. And our mission was to create a
world where everyone would feel at home.
All of a sudden we were growing 200, three, 100% and we were on
the list of fastest growing company in the world, startup in
the world. And that's when we start getting
a lot of interest from VCs. And up until that moment, I'd,
I'd never considered it, to be honest.
But then when we started having some of those conversations and
learned that there's also impact VCs and you learn about, hey,
you can achieve impact at global scale if you link it to the ESG
goals. And you can get the best of both
worlds because you can grow, there will be more revenue and
you can make more impact. So for me that that felt like a
a good partnership and a good trajectory.
OK. So it was essentially about
finding the right investors, more of an impact mindset and
then money comes sort of along, but it's not the primary
purpose. And it still isn't, I shouldn't
say it is too, too loud probably for the investors, but it's not
for me. But for me it is the impact that
we can make at skill and, and, and money helps with that,
right? So getting the money in order to
scale to more countries and also to grow together.
Yeah. You also lived and worked
outside the Netherlands. And you said in the beginning
something along the lines of, OK, that I saw how that impacted
me, probably you, but also other people around you in terms of
feeling at home and becoming part of that society.
How did that did that weave into?
Certainly. Yeah, I think during my time
abroad which which initially started as one year abroad and
ended up being 15 years. Oh, OK.
Literally living everywhere from Greece to Latin America was in
China, Australia, Middle East. So incredible experiences to
develop and to learn and to really understand how different
cultures work as well. So if there would be one thing,
well, there's a few things probably, but never assume.
So always remain curious to other cultures and to other
people as well asking the why question.
So that's very much ingrained as well in in our culture.
I think the other thing that I learned a lot about is the the
impact again from, from community.
So if you can feel comfortable with yourself, you can feel at
home anywhere. And that could be in any
country. But a lot of that does link back
to community and and finding your tribe and finding locals
that you have a connection with and and can give a sense of
purpose. Yeah, So what?
What do companies get wrong? Because you worked in Ahr for
quite a while, I think. What do companies get wrong when
they hire, let's say, people from outside to country?
Most companies just want to get the people in as fast as they
possibly can, so they focus on getting the job done.
So what skills are going to be needed and don't really focus on
what does it take for someone to move to a new country, to a new
culture? Will they be able to to find a
sense of belonging away from their homeland?
So think about competencies like cultural intelligence or
resilience of awareness, resourcefulness.
Those are really critical pieces If you're moving someone to
another country alongside to being an amazing coder or still
said is that the the individual will bring.
OK, but does that go wrong in the selection process then?
Or is it more in, let's say if someone is already on board that
he or she is just let go? Like, OK, you're on, do your
thing, have fun. See ya.
Think a bit above. Depends really on the type of
company. Still, one 1/3 of moves goes
wrong or someone will leave within the first six months.
So then you need to work your way back.
A, Did I I select the right person?
Did I look for those signals already?
Because a lot of times they go home or they go to another
country or B, did I not have the right set up to give them a
sense of belonging within our company, within our culture?
Do we have a body system? Do we have someone actually
checking in with them beyond just their job scope, making
sure that they are lending well? So, So what does that take?
Let's say I'm a manager at A at a company and I have an expert
on my team or a multiple. Do you actually recommend having
multiple experts? Because the the reason I asked,
just for context, is that when I started interviewing for this
podcast, some one of the guests told me you never hire one woman
on the team. To change culture, you need to
hire like multiple women because then they also have a sort of
body they can act as, as each other's body and they will
change the, the culture, the team culture for you.
Does that apply also to experts? Yeah, I, I, I, I think so.
It doesn't have to be an expert. It could also be a Dutch person
who's lived overseas who understands the experience.
But I think it it starts with having people on your team who
value inclusion, who understand diversity and doesn't have to
have the title expect. But in general, having multiple
people with a diverse background together will definitely help
elevate and and drive change faster and get to results in a
in a faster way. Yeah, I want to just go back in
time a bit. You started set the about a
year, I think before COVID hit. What what happened and how did
you pull through? Because I think all of a sudden
everyone was hiring people from abroad, but they had to stay,
stay at home. So the whole let's say the
integration part, physical integration part didn't need to
happen. How was that for you?
How did you manage to get through that that?
Was a tough one. I think you start a business
with the idea that the world is opening up and then a few months
in the world just goes in absolute lockdown.
We literally just secured our first free customers at that
stage, even their people around. So we had them in Spain and
Italy and Asia all over the world and they couldn't move.
They had already resigned from the previous employer.
There was so much insecurity about could they still move?
When would they be able to move? When would they be able to
start? But also for us as a business,
right, we just started. We had hired our first team.
We had five or six people. How are we going to pay them?
So how do we going to get through this?
Yeah, a very grateful that we live in the Netherlands.
So there was a system rolled out quite quickly to help start-ups
such as ourselves that we can continue having, having our team
on our, on our payroll and really use that time to better
understand the client's needs. And because we had all these
people across the, the globe, we started talking to them about
their, their pain points and, and what's really important.
And I think that really LED us to find out, yes, you can get
everything right in relocation. You can get the house, you can
get the pyramids, but ultimately, if you don't have
connection and you'll feel lonely, it's, it's not going to
be successful. So I think in hindsight, it was
a blessing in disguise for us because prior to us coming in,
we are a digital relocation. Everyone was why do you need a
digital relocation? I think within COVID people
like, ah, that's quite handy. Yeah.
The relocation because they can go to all of these offices and
also it it really helped us to start creating events and
communities. So on our platform at that
stage, we would host events about the Dutch culture in a fun
way, like a pub quiz or so for everyone being stranded across
the globe. And there was actually more to
keep us busy at that stage as well.
But it was such a success and people failed it so much that it
actually became a, a feature on the platform that we still have.
And that's that's used a lot for people moving to a new place.
Yeah, that's cool. But it's also good that you
managed to get through. You've also scaled to a couple
of, well, a couple of a lot of other countries.
Meanwhile, what is the biggest challenge you ran into doing
that? Getting people or.
That's an interesting one. It's one I I didn't think about
before. It's geopolitics.
When we started our our company, I think I was aware of the focus
on immigration. And.
Immigrants and experts and how rapidly that changes as well the
sentiment in certain countries around that.
So I think that was something initially I didn't, I didn't
think through. We had one go to market plan
that we would then do in different countries.
But I think gradually we figured out that Spain has a very
different situation than that Germany is and also that the
legislation in those countries is very different as well.
So even within the country, sometimes there's regional
differences in how you need to approach immigration and
relocation. So I think that was a yeah, a
major learning and, and also hurdle and, and how do you then
make that scalable? So I think definitely with that
came team and people because you can scale so much with tech, but
there is an element of people wanting to help people and
having a critical Fender network in all of these markets and
countries that we go into. Yeah.
Do you have local vendors in every single marketing?
Yeah. And then that, that's also to
accommodate, let's say for the for the differences in culture
and that they can actually lend properly locally, let's say.
And and to your point, I think Germany is a big country.
So there's big differences at least in culture between East
and West. I've experienced that myself.
So yeah. Shall we switch to what Setly
brings? So maybe we can start by?
You can start by describing what set lead actually does.
Set Lead is a digital relocation platform helping companies move
their people across the globe and making them feel at home.
So we've built 2 platforms, 1 is for the employer.
So we work for a lot of start-ups, scale UPS, but now
also multinationals. Think in the line of of Binder,
Presonio, Muse, Data Sniper. They have a platform then that
integrates with their HRIS. So they can say for every
international hire that we have, we want to give this particular
package that comes with either a lump sum or housing or shipment
of goods or immigration. So the company determines what
the package will be and then employee gets an app and a
personalized service that takes them through a checklist step by
step for all the services that are provided by their by their
company. And then on top of that, they
get access to community events, lots of information as well
about culture, just to make it a fun experience to land well in a
new country. OK.
But do you then or does Setley then take care of of let's say
the the lending part of it or is that still the employer?
It's always a partnership. So I think This is why we love
to work with employees that take this job very serious.
We can do an amazing job having them land in the Netherlands,
but if the company is not focused on employee experience
and learning them well in the company, then you have a have an
issue, right? So to go hand in hand and having
an aligned vision on employee experience and we look after the
the country elements, everything that's needed for instance in in
the Netherlands and the company looks after everything that's
needed to land well within that culture and that.
Yeah. So in the Netherlands we had, or
we just had a pretty far right government with pretty, let's
say relatively, at least for the Netherlands, extreme views on,
on immigration. How did, how did that impact
your business? Because if it's, I can imagine
that if it's outside the, if it's another country, you, you
sort of have in the back of your mind like, OK, that's another
culture, but now it was coming here.
I'll be really honest, I was in shock.
And it starts with our own team. We, we have 20 nationalities in
our own team. So waking up that morning and
speaking to my own team about what does that mean?
And, and seeing the questions and seeing the fear in their
eyes, what does that mean about me?
What does that mean? Am I no longer want it?
It's a place I want to be living in.
So yeah, it really it, it, it hit home initially and it, it
also created some doubts like are we, are we in the right
place? Are we in the right country?
What does that mean? There was a lot of unknowns and,
and insecurity in the beginning. And, and you also saw that
within companies focusing on, hey, we just want Dutch people
first before we go to internationals.
And I think quite quickly they noticed we simply didn't have
enough local talent to fill the roles.
So the business for that reason wasn't, wasn't impacted much.
But of course it is it is a narrative that is impacted as
well. And our job became a lot more
policy and comps driven and I ended up in conversations that I
I never government affairs that I was never close to before.
But yeah, we're also really interesting to to understand
that the sentiment of, of why we are where we are.
I think it, it also, yeah, creates a lot of opportunities
for us to, to enter those conversations and to, to get
closer to, to one another and, and now particularly at the EU
level, collaborate. So how did you manage that team
wise? Because I can understand that
all of a sudden you have this government and then everyone is
feeling like, OK, do I still belong here?
How do you deal with that on a personal, on a personal and team
level inside the inside the company?
Different for everyone and this is where you see that, that
people coming from Latin America respond very differently than
those from the UK or from Asia. Some you open it up and you have
conversation within a group and some it is more one-on-one.
It is, it is really making sure we have the time to, to have
those discussions and, and to also focus on, hey, what can we
now do as a team to turn this around and, and to make the
impact. Because if we're feeling a
sentiment in our own team, does that mean for all of the users
on our platform, for all the internationals working at the
companies, for all of the, the clients we're working with?
So I think quite quickly we, yeah, we also proactively
reached out to all of our clients just to better
understand, hey, what does this mean for you?
What is the sentiment? How can we help in any way,
shape or form? Which I think it, it helped a
lot. Also again, through, through
events and, and getting together and seeing, hey, we're not the
only ones that are thinking like this.
Actually, there's a big portion of the Dutch people that do not
fully stand by what's happening and, and how can we change that
narrative and make sure that they also hear those voices and
that they start feeling at home again and getting that sense of
belonging within the team first. But then beyond that and how can
they also help share that narrative with all of our
customers? So one one thing I picked up on
in our conversation so far is that every time there's sort of
a, let's say, negative event, you manage to take that as an
opportunity. Do you know where that comes
from? Is is that something that you
learned or? It's a good one.
I hadn't thought about it, but I do.
I do. I think being being brought up
in an environment with a single mom, welfare money wasn't there.
There were a lot of hardships. There were a lot of ways that
you just had to turn them around in in the positive.
And maybe initially that just came a coping mechanism.
But I think I really like that coping mechanism and it suits me
well and it really helps me understand the world and
continuously have hope. Because with every downside
there, there's always an opportunity to come out stronger
if you pause to reflect and and try and take the learning side.
Yeah. Is it also about having a
purpose? Yeah, absolutely.
I think that's the the centre of of it all.
And and for me with with founding sadly as well, that to
me was combination of of all the aspects, travelling, living
abroad, community and and giving back again and doing something
where I feel I can make a meaningful impact to this world.
Yeah, that's beautiful. Hey, I want to shift back to
immigration for a bit because we had, we talked about government
and the impact it had in preparing for this episode.
I had, let's call it a brain wave for, for lack of a better
word, that we live in a country where we see or we live in a
broader society, the EU, where we see immigration as a problem.
On the back of what we just discussed about seeing things as
an opportunity. How can we turn this around in
our thinking to make it an opportunity and to get the best
out of these people? What do we need to do?
I think everything starts with with understanding and awareness
and and what you see happening. It happens across the globe, not
just here. When people are insecure and
they're financially impacted in their own wallets than anything
that's different or odds that behaves different or things
different may become the reason. And that doesn't just impact
immigrants. It's LGTBQ.
It is it is a wider issue that we're seeing as well.
And I think it starts with understanding why they're
feeling this way about immigration and are people
looking different and feeling different and then asking the
questions and, and having conversations and, and always
fall back on the numbers. Because if we look the numbers,
we'll see why we need immigrants and why we need highly skilled
migrants. We, we've got one of the lowest
unemployment rates in the world. It's, it's 4%, yet we have
400,000 jobs open. And unfortunately, even if we
would up or reskill any single person in this country, there
won't be enough for, for, for, to fill the roles that we have.
So I think sometimes that the real issue and, and maybe the
underlying issue is, is more in regards to housing because
that's what people, again, they feel they see.
So it's like, oh, the immigrants are here to take up our housing,
but what if we would just solve the housing crisis, which has
been there for 10-15 years and they keep being initiatives, but
they're not being resolved. So really working with our
government as well to, to raise awareness on all of these topics
and, and to make sure that we start with an angle in mind and
that we really look at the numbers because we're only
talking about 16,000 highly skilled migrants last year.
It's not a big group, but if we would lose that group, what
would that mean for our innovation?
What would that mean for our growth?
What would that mean for our tech ecosystem?
Is that something we want to jeopardize?
Yeah, there's, there's a lot to be missed.
Then I think what would you change in, in the way we
currently approach these these files like housing, like
immigration? A by coming together and and
starting with the end goal in mind, other would call it
vision. But you think about where do we
want to be as a country in in 20 years?
What do we want to be known for? Is that indeed innovation?
Is that sense of belonging, making people feel at home?
What is it? And, and work your way back from
that. And that means, yeah, figuring
out housing, that means figuring out jobs, that means figuring
out social healthcare system, that means employment laws.
That means a lot of other things that will come into play.
I wouldn't tackle it as a siloed topic.
Do you think it gets tackled as a silo in silos at the moment?
I do, particularly around the election period.
It's, it's, of course it's, it's a nice topic to win your votes
with, but when you look at the numbers, is that really the
topic we should be talking about?
I don't think so, but I I understand why we are.
So it will probably be a topic again at the upcoming elections,
but once the elections are then done, not much actually happens.
No, that that we've seen for the past.
What is it a year? Do you, do you think we can
borrow anything from playbooks of other countries or other
societies there? Absolutely.
There's a, there's a lot to be borrowed from, from Scandinavia,
I think when it comes to the system and labour market, the
employment system, but also and how they, they dealt with
immigrants. I think Spain at the moment,
good example as well where they're really saying if we do
not get, I think they just had a million refugees signed and,
and, and given them local status because they can see the country
in 10-15 years. We need talent and we don't have
this in our own country. It's mainly blue collar workers,
but also for the Netherlands, it's not just highly skilled
migrants, it's it's healthcare, it's education, it's blue collar
workers where, where the need is.
So I think looking abroad and, and, and also seeing how we can
collaborate more within the EU is, is, is super important in,
in figuring this out the right way.
Cool. I want to shift a bit.
You talked about getting investors on board and initially
you bootstrapped. At what point did you discover
you were ready for investors? You mentioned that you were
growing like 3-4 X with what else?
What makes what what? What made you ready for to get
investors on board? Not sure if you're ever ready to
be really honest. And I wasn't like I wasn't in
the in the mindset. We need to get investors at some
stage. I, I honestly wasn't looking
until indeed we, we got that, that nomination of, of fast
growing company that we had lots of, of offers all of a sudden
in, in our inbox. That just got me curious about
that world 'cause I had it. I had a very predetermined view,
having worked for Uber as well in, in Hypergrove.
So knowing what that can mean positive, but also what the
downside could be in working with, with VCs.
But it got curious and like, why not maybe, maybe we should just
take 10 calls and then see if what it does to us.
Does it confirm our assumptions that we have about the, the,
the, the world? Or does it indeed open things
up? And if when we started having
those conversations and we actually felt a click with a few
investors, it, it opened up this whole new world that we didn't
know even existed where there was care about values and how
you do things as well as the the results and how you direct them.
Because ultimately 1 needs to go hand in hand with the other.
So I think it, yeah, it, it, it wasn't like a moment that we're
ready now, but hey, these guys are really great.
How cool will it be to partner up with them and then increase
the impact that we can have on society, on the world with the
insights that they bring. And to our board members, they
have skilled start-ups, scale UPS to multinational level.
So just having those insights and partnering with someone.
Yeah, it really felt like a like a good value add alongside to,
to money being nice. But it was also the the
partnership with the with the VCs.
Yeah, looking back with you on board investors earlier, if you
had to redo the the whole thing? No, but what I would do is
probably Angel investors. We didn't do that.
So we we were already so big by the time we started looking for
investors, the ticket size was no longer interesting for Angel
investors. And looking at other founders
and see how much value they get out of those early stage angels
that support them and help them grow.
Yeah, I think in hindsight, I would have probably explored
that avenue a little bit sooner. Yeah, but then really targeted
at at the Angel part and not the big VC world.
Correct. No, I, I actually really, yeah,
liked that we've grown this much bootstrap.
So by that time we were really solving the problem that our
clients were facing and it drove us to have a business model that
was effective and that was working and that was profitable,
which post COVID became quite of an important piece many startups
and scale UPS. Yeah, but also for investors, I
think. Yeah, that wasn't before, but it
became one of the the criteria as well of a sudden money.
Wasn't free anymore. So, So what happened to the
company as a result? Did it, what did it change?
Having investors on board, positive and negative?
It's definitely a big. Shift that I underestimated for
contacts. My Co founder is also my partner
so a lot of decisions were made at the kitchen table or with the
team in the office. We didn't have a board.
So with getting investors on boards, he had to set up a board
and all of a sudden I was a chairman of the board and all of
a sudden I had to run effective board meetings without actually
having been to one prior to that.
So I think that was a, a steep learning curve, a nice one.
I got to speak with a lot of amazing founders and clients who
run board meetings and, and, and learn from them.
Mathais Wella is a perfect example from you.
He helped me a lot with his, his insights and learnings along the
way. But once you get there and, and,
and you know how to run them effectively and, and prep your
prep your meetings and, and what to do and, and what to not do,
it is absolutely such a game changer in a positive way.
Like being challenged at the moment that you really need that
challenge going to someone who actually knows their stuff to
help and advise you and and quickly get the company in the
right direction. Yeah, it it really helped us
fast track a lot of decisions did it make.
It easier to make decisions because usually if you you
broaden the group of decision takers it slows down the
decision taking process. But how was that for you?
Yes, it slows it down. But ultimately the decisions are
better and more effective. So in the past we would just
make decisions on our own and run and and we would make a lot
of mistakes and we would experiment a lot.
And then that also takes time. And I think now by having a step
where you get to learn from others and get that input and
then make a decision based on that in combination with data
takes a few more steps, but not that much longer.
And we we don't have a big board.
It's just that the five of us. So it's it's still very
manageable. Yeah, but what I'm also.
Hearing you say is that it's more in, in terms of processes,
it's more efficient because you have less rework, less decisions
that you have to revisit in this case, yeah, yeah, because we're
first time founders. So we learn a lot along the way,
but that takes time as well, right?
Learning. It's fun, but it's not always
the best for your business. Sometimes it's good to to get
some outside input and make sure you learn or you you do the
right experiments at the right time, because then you get to
yeah, the next steps faster. OK, so out of.
Curiosity. Yeah.
How did you? Because you talked about Mathias
Vella. He was on the show 2 episodes
ago. How did you get into contact?
Did you know him already or the were you linked by investors
they're a client of? Ours, so I didn't know who was,
but we've never actually connected because we worked
directly with with their HR and their their mobility team.
It's actually through tech leap. So tech leap has events and I'm
part of their community and one was around running an effective
board and it was a small session and it was held at the at Muses
office with, with Mattice. So that's how I how I got that.
OK, OK, I understand. Let's go to the to the future.
Let's say that every company would do one thing that is
necessary to make people belong in their team, whether they're
from outside the country or that's a not your stereotypical
hoodie guy. What's one thing companies can
do to make people belong? Sounds simple but.
It's not. It's creating a safe space
because ultimately you want to create a space where people feel
safe to give feedback and to ask questions and to challenge the
status quo. So I think that's, that's the
key piece. And what does that mean it it's
probably a little bit different for everyone, but for every
founder to, to ask themselves that question.
What's needed to create that safe space in my company?
Because then you can ask your your team the questions about
belonging because they will be eager to help if you have an
engaged team. But then I'd be more than happy
to help you out. Like what can we improve?
What's really happening and what's working well and, and
what isn't? But it starts with a yeah, a
safe space. Yeah.
What do you consider? A safe space for me, it's
something. Where people can be themselves
and can bring their authenticity to work.
Where they're not afraid to ask questions, where they can give
their candid feedback and actually rewarded for making
mistakes and having that culture of it's a good thing.
Let's share learnings and let's build something together where
you can challenge your leaders and where you can give feedback
360 without there being a form. Oh, that's important.
Without there being a form, because I used to work in a 360,
but that was form based. Yeah.
I just still go to pick who in the 360 was giving me feedback.
So that's that way I would create sort of my own safe
space. But yeah, yeah.
It becomes quite biased, yeah, because you.
Get into your own echo chamber, indeed.
I know, I know. I'm.
A I'm a firm believer in in having conversations with your
team. Yeah.
How? How do you do A?
360 without forms Just really curious because I I have a
problem imagining this in. I understand the concept but I I
just want to pick your brain on this.
How do you do that? Is that sort of 1 moment every
month, quarter that you sit as a team?
Yeah. You.
You ingrain it in your culture. And we're only just just setting
it up so that I can actually explain it as well as part of it
as part of the process. But every time you have a
one-on-one with your team, you, you give them feedback and vice
versa, they give you feedback. The same with projects.
If you're working together on a project in the moment, ideally,
ideally the same day, even if possible, if you see something
happening, you create that culture to share that feedback
positive or area of improvement. And then it doesn't become this
big thing that has to happen once a quarter or once a year,
but it's it happens every day, but you record it and you make
sure that it it does link to performance ultimately by and
and that part you do twice a year in our case, some companies
do it quarterly. OK, so.
You really make it micro moments, almost feedback.
Yeah, I would. But we have a small type team,
so you can you have that culture where you can give people
feedback and people appreciate it as well.
And we've had training sessions around, OK, so how do you give
feedback? What's the best way to share
when something has happened? And always start with how does
it make you feel? Don't point any finger so that
there's certain techniques to help people feel comfortable
with giving and receiving feedback, particularly across
all cultures. Because again, working with
people from countries where it's really not done to speak up to
your boss because you will lose your job to the continents that
we employ. So in the, the Dutch directness,
they will say anything and everything at any given moment
of time. You don't have to ask them a
question. So it's it's it's just figuring
how how that is combined. Yeah.
And also. Giving indeed the the safety for
people to understand each other's perspective on how that
could work. So how how can men help and
contribute to this, to making teams more inclusive, making
creating safe spaces? Are there specific things that
white men like me take myself as an example or can do?
I was just going to say everyone needs to be a little.
Bit more like you because that's that's where it starts.
It's it's asking these questions.
Bias is in everything. It's in everyone starts by
asking these questions. What is your role in educating
yourself and reflecting and surrounding by people who are
different than you, whether it's females or whether it's people
from different background or different skin colour or the
LGTPQ. But making sure you have a
collection of people around you that will then become the the
the catalyst for growth, I think sounds like a great.
Place to move to my last question.
Thank you very much for the conversation.
Really enjoyed this. I hope you did as well.
If people want to connect with you, learn more about Setly,
where do you want to send them? And also please tell us about
your new upcoming or maybe even already live feature that you
have on the platform. Nice, but everyone's always
welcome. To add me on on LinkedIn and to
follow me there, we have a website that explains everything
and anything about what we do. And indeed, we have a very
exciting new feature because I think we spoke a lot about
immigration and integration as well.
And it's super important for us to create a world where everyone
feels at home to not just solve that for the international
talent, but also the local talent.
And what we were saying is that with the housing crisis, it's
very difficult to find a house if you have a lower budget.
So for the early to mid career. So we created something called
Tenant Help, and that's our latest feature where people can
find each other within the app. It's completely free and then
together they can have a higher budget and therefore increase
their their likelihood in finding a home and that is also
part. Of making people belong in a
society that they have a roof over their head, Yes.
Foundational to me, yeah. So, Marika.
From the Thank you very much for an amazing conversation.
We'll mention those links in the show notes, and we'll also link
to the new functionality with that.
Listeners, thank you very much for listening, and until the
next episode, keep being awesome.
Well, that's it for episode 127 of Women Disrupting Tech with
Marika von Epern titled How to Use Relocation to Build
Inclusive Teams. Marika, and I hope that you
found our conversation as purposeful and practical as we
intended it to be. And if you have any questions
for Marika, please share them in the comments on Spotify, Apple
podcast, or YouTube. When you want to connect with
Marika, learn more about Setly or get free access to tenant hub
for your company, please check out the links in the show notes.
As usual, you can find the show notes at Women Descriptive Tech
dot Blog, and you can find that link in the caption there.
You can also find more information about the Embrace
Health event that I mentioned in the intro.
If you've enjoyed listening to this episode, please consider
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