Meltem Kuran Berkowitz: evaluation

Transcript context

…Yeah, so I'll explain the ironing board first. So that was because I was actually visiting my family in Istanbul, and in the setup that we have, there's one desk. So my husband and I go rock, paper, scissors, and we'll see who gets the desk and who gets to come up with a secondary solution. And he won the desk, so I had to come up with a creative solution. And because the view behind me was stunning, of the Bosporus, every meeting I joined, people were like, "Wow, I love your view, this is amazing." And I was like, "Oh, no, no, you guys, I'm sitting on an ironing board right now." And to me that was both funny, and I wanted to do a reality check with people to be like, "Come on, this is not as glorious as it looks." But at the same time, it really in that moment I was like, "This is awesome, I work at Deel." Previously when I wanted to go visit my family in Istanbul, and I live in Canada, I would have to use my days off to go. And for me it just meant a lot to be able to do my work regardless of where I am. I had a full day of work and meetings and everything. And my work just continued and I was also be able to be with my family. So it was a moment of Deel's promise coming true in a very real way in my life. And I thought it was hilarious. My dad thought it was so unprofessional that I shared that with the public then. He hasn't fully wrapped his head around the startup world. So it was just one of those moments of sharing that, yeah, work can be remote and it can be whatever you want it to be. So that's the the story behind it. In this moment as we're recording this, I am in a proper home office with a desk and a back supported chair. It changes all the time. And in terms of, going back to your second question of, early days not meeting the team members. As I said, I joined Deel in July, 2020, pandemic was at its peak, me being based in Canada, Canada had very strict restrictions of, you can't leave the country, we won't let you back in. So I had to stay put. And I worked for a year and a half at Deel before for the first time where I met our team members was at a conference in Lisbon. And I showed up and it was this surreal moment because I've worked with them for a year and a half, we'd accomplished so much. Our revenue was already way past $50 million and I was seeing these people for the first time. So that was very funny. But if I look at the early days of Deel, there's a lot of little stories like that, where we forgot to create swag until we reached a billion dollars. And it was actually when our photo was going to be on the NASDAQ and we wanted to take a team picture that we were like, "Guys, we need to have t-shirts. Can someone please run to a store in New York and print our logo on something?" So a lot of those things just by the nature of being a pandemic business came a little bit later. need to have t-shirts. Can someone please run to a store in New York and print our logo on something? " So a lot of those things just by the nature of being a pandemic business came a little bit later. But the thing that allowed I think for me in Deel to build the culture early on was, because we all work from home, we've been like that from day one. We have the option to go into WeWorks and co-working spaces if that's something that you choose. But we all get to show up as our very authentic selves. So people have met my pets and my partner well before they would have if I was showing up to an office. So there's that sincerity that comes with being in someone's home that we really relied on early on. And as a company, I never felt the pressure to show up in a certain way or dress up for meetings or anything. So just being able to show up as yourself, and whether you're an introverted person who never likes to turn on their camera or you're someone who's going to be like, "Here, meet my dog." That just naturally built a team culture and comradery well before we could be together in person. Clearly it has worked out. Meltem, is there anything else that you want to share before we get to our very exciting lightning round?…

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