Profile: Ariel Fu and WorkAnywhereGo

What is WorkAnywhereGo?

WorkAnywhereGo is a venture that helps people transform from a fixed-location 9-5 to a remote work & travel life. It's also a community where aspiring digital nomads can connect with members from the WorkAnywhereGo Nomad Expert Network.

What was the insight/inspiration that led you to launch it?

Before the pandemic, I found myself working all year just for that 4 weeks of vacation when I could finally go explore the world. Then the world did a great experiment with remote work, and I think people should have global mobility right when it's technically viable to do so. But when I was going through my transformation to become a nomad, I experienced the lack of work anywhere jobs in the market, lack of digital nomad information in the Canadian context, and the complexity of managing all the remote logistics.

Looking back at the time when I yearned to become a digital nomad, I wish I could get advice from a nomad in the same field and the same nationality as me. As I was traveling through the top nomad cities in the world, I met a great number of nomads from different fields, and I thought I could connect aspiring nomads to digital nomads who have already gone through the transformation. To my knowledge, we are possibly the first venture to bridge this gap in the remote workspace.

How has it been received by the market? Why do you think it has been so well received?

Most people are thrilled by the idea of being able to work and live anywhere, because growing up we all have a dream of traveling the world, though work has tied us down in one location, so we started to forget that ambition that we once had. From the survey, we found that not every aspiring nomad wants to become fully nomadic, most people like the idea of maintaining a home base and then traveling when they want to, and younger people are quite keen on becoming fully nomadic. People love the idea of being able to connect with someone in a similar situation but have made the transformation, and the decision to go down with this model is again based on our member survey.

How did you know you were ready to found a company?

If you asked me 3 years ago, I would never think to become an entrepreneur. Though I have been frequenting tech events in Toronto for years and always try to keep up with the new trends in the startup world.

After studying the end-to-end business flow of companies in the remote workspace, I started to gather insights and became confident about establishing a business of my own.

How did you meet your founders/know they were the right people to start a company with?

Throughout my entrepreneurial journey, I proactively reached out to my network for feedback and advice. I actually met my Technical Advisor Ankur Taxali at a Travel TechTO event about 6 years ago! At that time, he was representing his company G Adventures at the booth, and we ended up having an hour-long conversation. At that time I was happily living my corporate life, but we kept in touch, and when he learned that I was working on WorkAnywhereGo, we kicked off the discussion. Since he's been working in the travel space at a technical level and is passionate about the work & travel lifestyle, it became a natural fit.

What has been the most pleasant surprise?

The amount of interest from LinkedIn and the media.

Who is the unsung hero on the team? Why?

All the advisors that had helped out as a pro bono gesture.

What are you trying to achieve over the next 12 months?

Automate all the business flows and scale up the market to be more international.

What advice do you wish you had been given prior to launching?

Who are the Canadian startups you like in your market?

There aren't many digital nomad startups from Canada, but if I expand the scope to a broader scale, I would say Venue.

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Quick Takes: Quick hits from the past week

A couple of stories from the past week include Shopify's next investment in tech and the New School Foods recent round. Let's dive in:

What is the Shopify news?

According to Betakit, Shopify has made an investment into United States-based Triple Whale’s Series B round. This shows that Shopify's app ecosystem continues to grow as they continue to invest in other startups.

What does Triple Whale do?

Triple Whale’s data platform allows Shopify store owners to unify their business metrics into one dashboard.

Why is this interesting?

Despite the drop in valuation, Shopify is still investing in technology it wants to see available to its merchants and is still picking favors that it hopes can be champions on its platform.

Their investment in Triple Whale is also equally beneficial for Shopify as it becomes an exclusive piece of a segment within their business.

What is the funding news?

According to Techcrunch, New School Foods has closed a $12m USD round led by Lever VC and Blue Horizon.

What does New School do?

High-level, it produces whole-cut fish alternatives that look and cook just like ordinary seafood.

Why is this interesting?

The founder Chris sold his last startup to Instacart so he knows the food space.

Despite the downturn in the alternative protein space, this company raised a pretty large seed round.

The other interesting thing is how New School developed its technology. Chris put out a call to universities for their proposals and he funded six projects from that call out.

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