When 25-year-old Greg Caplan left his job at Groupon recently, he really wanted to spend some time traveling and working remotely, but ran into a few problems.
I was able to find remote work, but its difficult to find friends to travel with, he says. The biggest issue is traveling alone. I thought itd be lonely. I wanna go travel but I wanna do it with a community and in a more structured way.
This predicament prompted him to launch Remote Year, which offers 100 remote workers an opportunity to travel together to 18 different locations over the course of a year.
Remote Year handles logistics like itinerary, lodging, and activities. And if participants dont already have a job that allows them to work outside the office, Remote Year will help them find one. People really, really want to do this type of program, Caplan says. Indeed, just three days after the site went live earlier this month, Remote Year already had more than 3,000 inquiries from potential applicants, and 15 companies expressed interest in hiring workers that they may never actually meet in person.
In the past, taking a year to travel around the world might have also meant taking a year off work. But as digital tools make long-distance communication and coordination easier, location becomes less important. And many companies already encourage remote work, like Sawhorse Media, the technology company behind MuckRack and the Shorty Awards.
Of its staff of roughly 20, just half of those work in the New York headquarters. We have people working for us from anywhere from LA to North Carolina to Canada and even Poland," says CEO Greg Galant. "Some of them we never see. Its an increasingly large trend because of the challenge of both finding the right talent and also the nature of work becoming easier to distribute. Half the tools were using didnt exist just five or 10 years ago.
Remote Year says it will help participants find a job in virtually any field and for any level of experience." By working with companies to find openings for people with specialized skill sets as well as entry-level employees, Caplan says he "will help ensure there is an opportunity that fits any background and skill set." Caplan says Remote Year will organize local adventures in each country on the trip, as well as a designated work space at each location.
In return for serving as a de facto travel agent / employment agency, Remote Year takes a cut of its participants paychecks twice a month to cover the travel costs. It keeps some for itself, too, but Caplan is coy about just how much. "Remote Year will earn a small profit on the program, but the dollar / percentage is not set," he says. "The fees will be stable for participants but costs might fluctuate." In other words, participants will pay the same amount each month, but Remote Year's cut of that amount will vary depending on travel costs.
While it seems like a cool idea, there are a lot of gaps that need to filling, and the Remote Year website contains almost no information about what is a hugely ambitious project. Indeed, some of the most important details for potential applicants are unclear and it seems that Caplan doesn't have the answers.
For example, how much will the trip cost? Caplan wont say, but claims the minimum salary a traveler might need in order to pay Remote Year and have some leftover cash hovers around $35,000. Theres gonna be people who go way outside that range, he says. People on Remote Year are not working for Remote Year. Theyre a direct employee of a company. Therefore, ones pay will vary based on experience and type of work.
See the rest here:
Want To Work While Traveling The World For A Year? This Startup Might Be Able To Help