Iwo Szapar

Hybrid Work Expert

🚀 Remote-First Activist | Top 50 Remote Influencer | Since 2017, shaping the future of remote-first world

Aloha, I'm Iwo Szapar! Over the years, I've helped transform how over 3,000 companies approach work, leading to more efficient and enjoyable professional lives. 🌍

Key Achievements:

▪️Co-created the AI Maturity Index with Harvard researchers, democratizing access to enterprise-grade AI readiness insights
▪️Advised Ministry of Communications and Technology of Saudi Arabia on AI up-skilling for startups
▪️Launched world's first certification program for remote workers: Remote-how Academy, back in 2018.
▪️Established strategic partnerships with 150 companies, including Asana, Deel, Remote, and Safetywing.
▪️Created an expert community of 250+ consultants from companies such as GitLab, Netflix, and Hubspot.
▪️Co-organized 3 editions of Remote Future Summit, reaching over 11,000 attendees and featuring 140 speakers.

Born in Gdansk, Poland, I've embraced the 'slowmad' lifestyle, living in various countries while working remotely. This journey has enriched my perspective and fueled my passion for innovation. When I'm not working, you can find me reading history books, following international affairs, or indulging in my hobbies as a dog lover, amateur surfer, and DJ.

Connect with me to explore how you/your company can work smarter! 🚀

🚀Remote Work Advocate & Co-founder

Remote-how helps companies make remote & hybrid work, work. Since 2017. 

🤓 Remote-how Marketplace - the world’s leading remote & hybrid work experts marketplace. Work on your consulting and advisory projects with 200+ pre-vetted practitioners from top distributed companies. 

🚀 Remote-how Campus - a community where leaders of hybrid teams come to connect, learn and grow together with access to live leadership development programs, mentoring services, and more.

$50k revenue in three months from a side-project. Two other products in the making, while working my half-time job. 

No team. 
No VC. 
No startup story. 

A small, profitable product.

Just me + dozens of AI Agents, and an obsession of going AI-first with 99% of work tasks I do.

IE University's podcast asked what advice I'd give entrepreneurs. My answer surprised them. (I guess...😅 )

Forget the unicorn. 

Build small. 
Build profitable. 
Build alone if you have to.

Skip the unicorn obsession. 

The founders winning right now are the ones running lean, staying profitable, and using AI as their operating layer instead of a headline.

Now advantage goes to whoever moves before the playbook is written - right now, that's the lean operator, not the firm with 500 analysts."

Keep in mind that we're at maybe <5% AI adoption globally. 

Still the first inning. 

The window to figure this out before everyone else does is narrow.

Is the lean founder model genuinely better - or does it only work for certain product types?

Sooo... coming back to the interview: Ainhoa asked great questions, and our conversation went places I didn't plan for.

Enjoy tull episode in the video - link in comments.

Gracias Ainhoa for a super energising chat and Mercedes for the invite ❤️ 

Sending good vibes to my IE / South Summit friends and hope to see you in a few weeks in 🇧🇷 Victoria Juan Christopher Joe Francisco Geoffroy Nacho Liz João Camila Mateo Juan Andrea Emma María Maria Gabriela Fernanda

You read posts about AI every day. That does not put you in the top tier.

0.04% of humans use AI daily to ship real work. 

0.3% pay for any AI tool. 

The rest are observers.

Reading about AI, sharing posts about AI, attending AI workshops: none of that moves you up the distribution. 

Building something does. 

Running a model against your actual work does. 

Getting Claude Code to do a real task in your real environment does.

I deployed Second Brains for 85 people. 

The ones who moved tiers fastest did one thing differently: they stopped consuming AI content and started running experiments inside their own work.

The AI revolution people keep announcing has not happened. 

For 99.96% of people, it has not started.

You already know what to build. 

The gap is not ideas. 

Where do you stand with AI adoption?

Start here: https://lnkd.in/dgqpKJyd

AI Adoption Tiers among knowledge workers 2026 

I cancelled my ChatGPT subscription last year. Now OpenAI sees a mass exodus of users. Why? 

It’s following the deal with the Pentagon over AI military use, where Anthropic rejected the deal due to its firm position on AI ethics. 

The CEO Dario Amodei refused to accept the deal for two reasons: 
- the use of AI for mass surveillance of American citizens
- managing autonomous weapons.

Is this a temporary problem for OpenAI or a part of a bigger trend where they might loose the pole position in the AI labs competiton? 

PS. Have you cancelled your ChatGPT subscription - what was the reason? Have you joined the Claude Code family for good?

Thank you IE University for having me ❤️ Muchas gracias! 🫡

The latest episode of Venture Ahead explores the future of work with Iwo Szapar, an entrepreneur, writer and speaker and the founder of the AI Maturity Index.

From the rise of remote work to a world shaped by automation, augmentation and distinctly human skills, this conversation, recorded during South Summit Madrid, dives into the profound shifts redefining how we work and how we live. As AI agents move from prediction to reality, the question is no longer whether change is coming, but how we adapt to it.

For founders, leaders and professionals navigating this transformation, this episode offers a sharp look at what’s just beginning.

Watch now and #VentureAhead: https://lnkd.in/edN3fx8V

Ainhoa Valencia | Victoria Pérez Jiménez | Juan José Güemes | IE Entrepreneurship & Innovation Center | IE University Lifelong Learning

I built a tool that grades AI Second Brain setups. It gave my own setup a 76% 😅

Everyone assumes the person who builds the grading tool at least passes their own test.

Overall: 80% - Grade A. 

But Setup Quality scored 76%. 

That's a B.

397 out of 499 points across 140 automated checks.

Here's where it got embarrassing:

1. AI Fluency: 93%. Five checks scored perfect. Reference Integrity: 60%. My files point to things that don't exist. Embarrassing when you're the one who wrote the scoring logic. 

2. Setup Quality: 76%. Model Configuration scored 0%. Sandbox scored 13%. I literally skipped the config I tell other people to set up. Progressive Disclosure: 98%. 

3. Self-Correction and Compound Learning: both under 60%. The system I built knows I'm not using half of what it checks for.

The tool placed me at COMPOUNDING - fourth of five levels. 

Not yet Production-Grade. 

Which means there's a ceiling I haven't hit yet.

Three fixes would add 14 points:
- Auto Memory (+5)
- Quality Tracking (+5)
- Growth Log (+4)

Fifteen minutes of work I keep putting off.

The tool is Open Sourced - it's free. 

If you want to be publicly humiliated by your own setup, install it in one line:

claude mcp add second-brain-health -- npx second-brain-health-check

Read more: https://lnkd.in/dqnjpsrd

Full breakdown in the carousel.

What's the one part of your setup you know is broken but keep ignoring? 

Mine was Model Configuration. Scored 0%.

Second Brain Health Check Iwo Szapar 2026

AI tools made my clients productive. Then they asked me to remove every single one.

Not because the tools were bad. 

Because every tool came with the same trade-off: someone else owned the intelligence.

Notion AI? Your data on their servers. 

ChatGPT? Zero memory between sessions. 

CRM automations? Break the moment your workflow changes.

After building 81 Second Brains across 12 industries, the pattern is always the same. 

People start with tools. 
Then they want a system. 
Then they want to own it.

What they actually want is a fourth category that nobody talks about.

A system built to their exact workflow. 

Running on their own infrastructure. 

Vendor-independent. Claude today, GPT tomorrow, Gemini next month. 

You own it. Completely.

The discipline behind this is context engineering: managing what the AI knows, when it knows it, and how that knowledge compounds across sessions.

The industry default is renting intelligence from a vendor. More and more people want to own it instead.

Does that gap feel real to you?

I'm packaging v2.0 in the next 7 days.

Comment below what an ideal Second Brain should do for you 👇

AI is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get, but it will absolutely be confident it gave you exactly what you wanted.

Albert A.

The CT Engineering Group

· Designing and deploying end-to-end data pipelines to support automation initiatives within the People & Culture department, integrating data engineering principles with strategic HR operations.
· Automating repetitive workflows using UiPath (RPA) and Power Automate, significantly improving process efficiency across departments by reducing manual effort and human error.
· Leveraging HRIS platforms and Nailted for advanced employee analytics, engagement tracking, and interactive data visualization—delivering actionable insights to stakeholders through dashboards and reports.
· Applying Natural Language Processing (NLP) to extract insights from unstructured text data (e.g., feedback, surveys), enabling smarter, faster decision-making within organizational processes.
· Supporting data-driven decision-making by integrating machine learning models (Random Forests, Logistic Regression, etc.) into analytics workflows, including churn prediction and risk scoring.
· Using R and Python for statistical analysis, data wrangling (dplyr, tidyverse), visualization (ggplot2, plotly), and model development, all within a reproducible ML pipeline structure.
· Collaborating cross-functionally with software engineers and stakeholders to deliver scalable solutions aligned with digital transformation objectives.

Associate Data Scientist

CT SOLUTIONS

BI (Business Intelligence): 

- Data base management and data modelling techniques.  
- Creation of dashboards.  
- Data visualization and creation of business reports.

Data Science: 

-Programming languages: R and Python. 
-Data visualization: ggplot. 
-Machine learning algorithms for predictive analysis. 
-Forecasting and data mining.

Data Analyst

- Supporting the HR department in both internal processes and outsourcing for clients in the Industry and High-Tech sectors.

- Conducting language assessments as part of the recruitment process.

- Performing psychosocial assessments to evaluate candidate and employee well-being.

- Managing administrative documentation related to HR and recruitment processes.

- Utilizing HRIS platforms to track and manage talent data, improving operational efficiency in HR processes.

Senior Consultant Advisor

Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC)

As part of the studies in CSIM, started in September 2020 to 2021, I am involved in on-going research evaluating innovative design and assessment methods for exploring the potentialities and affordances of new technological applications and its development regarding Digital Phenotyping at SPECS lab, merging Human Computer Interaction, UX and Cognitive Sciences. The project relies in the development of a mobile app (with Unity, C#) in order to prevent and detect cognitive emotions or states that could be starting point of potential mental health diseases with Python.

Project Researcher · Data Analyst

Advantek Group

Employment ended due to COVID-19 layoffs.

As a supplier of technical services and resources to the Oil & Gas market in Norway, we have been a stable actor in the market since we started in 2008. In recent years we have expanded our operations to the Danish and Swedish market while opening up new business areas within Automation and Industrial Digitalization.

- Recruitment & Onboarding
- Market Research and Analysis
- Employer Branding
- Account Management
- Data Management

Talent Acquistion Manager

Nexer Recruit

(Project for Sigma IT - Master Thesis Worker) 
- Translating data into great value to the company. 
- Data management from database queries. 
- Creating new insights about the company. 
- Use of Excel Statistics and PowerBI,SQL. 
- Use of research through research of social inquiry.

Data Workforce Analyst

- Recruitment
- Market research and analysis
- Administrative tasks

IT & Engineering Recruiter - Recruitment Associate

CT Solutions Group

Employment ended to pursue my education in Sweden.

- Recruitment
- Language Assessment
- People analytics

HR Specialist · People Analytics

Global Talent Managers

Handled the entire recruitment process from start to finish (selection process, phone interviews, interviews, references, administrative work and continuous contact with the client.)

HR-Global IT Recruiter Consultant (Temporary Assignment)

Jobs in United Kingdom

Right after completing my studies, I decided to pack everything up and move to the United Kingdom with the main goal of becoming fluent with the language. I had several customer service jobs in London and Bristol that helped me to succeed in this matter.

International Experience

HR Consultant Advisor

With over 3.5 years of hands-on experience in Data Analysis, Data Science, and Business Intelligence, I specialize in turning complex data into actionable insights that drive business growth and decision-making. I’ve worked across diverse industries, leveraging R, Python, SQL, Power BI, and machine learning to deliver data-driven solutions that optimize operations and enhance performance.

Starting in 2016, I built a strong foundation in HR People Analytics, using data to shape talent strategies. From 2019, I expanded my expertise in Power BI and SQL, creating powerful business intelligence tools that empowered teams to make data-backed decisions. In 2020-2021, I combined data science, UX research, and digital phenotyping to explore innovative applications in mental health, applying advanced Python analytics.

Currently, I’m focused on predictive modeling, business intelligence, and data-driven strategy to help businesses unlock new opportunities. With a solid HR background, I bring a unique approach to data-driven business optimization that ensures results. Also, I keep studying to expand my knowledge, involved in a Databricks course.

Ready to take on the next challenge? Let’s connect and explore how I can drive value for your organization.

Senior HR Consultant Advisor

As Consultant Advisor I support the HR and Recruitment department for internal purposes and outsourcing for different clients in the Industry and High-Tech sector. 

- Market Analysis
- Recruitment 
- Language assessment
- Workforce HR Analytics

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Iwo Szapar

Albert A.

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The Battle

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Albert A.

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