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.

🚀 Our AI Maturity Index got acquired by ISG (Information Services Group).

Didn’t think a random virtual coffee with a stranger would turn out this way...

18 months ago, Eryn and I started talking about AI adoption chaos.

Everyone had opinions.
Nobody had data.

We launched this as a research project.

It evolved into a diagnostic tool.
Using AI to assess… AI maturity in under 15 minutes.

Our system interviewed 6,000+ professionals across 75 countries.

The data was clear:
• 92% of companies are increasing AI investment
• Only 1% consider themselves AI-mature

Companies weren’t struggling with AI tools.

They were struggling with knowing where to start.

ISG noticed.
They partnered with us.
Then became our biggest client.

Today, they acquired us.

That’s not how acquisitions usually work.
But maybe it’s how they should.
They knew the product deeply.
We knew their vision.
The fit was obvious.

ISG brings research capabilities we couldn’t build alone.
Global reach to take this from thousands to millions.
Resources to turn our platform into enterprise infrastructure.

I’m genuinely excited about what we’ll build together.

Now, zooming out for a second.

It’s been 8 years of building.

First Remote-how.
Then Remote-First Institute.
Now AI Maturity Index.

Many mistakes.
Many lessons.

And now — first exit.

I’m relieved before I’m excited 😅

Eryn — you made this possible.

That “virtual coffee stranger” became an incredible co-founder who pushed me, challenged me, and helped me grow fast.

Thank you. Truly. ❤️ 

Fun fact: we met only twice in real life. 
Once in Lisbon (where we decided to launch the company together - see picture), and second time in Saudi Arabia.

This entire journey was 100% remote.

To the 6,000+ people who took the assessment and trusted us with their data:
You made this possible. Every benchmark came from you.

To Steven, Hannah, and the entire ISG team: You believed in the platform long before the acquisition. That partnership gave us confidence this would work. Thanks a bunch!!!

And to everyone who thought:
“Just another AI survey” — fair skepticism.
We had to earn trust with data quality.

Now we close the 92% / 1% gap.

At scale.

With resources that matter.
Companies investing in AI need to know where they stand.
We’re building the infrastructure to show them.

PS. Yes — I am VERY excited. Like… a lot.

PS2. Full press release → link in comments 👇

Co-Creator of AI Maturity Index (Acquired by ISG) 🤙 Vibe Worker

Helping small businesses gain traction through brand, model and operations optimization. 

The Bill Kerr

I'm a guy who works in tech, is building with AI, and writes a weekly newsletter on the topic. Yet, I can't explain it as well as Ben Affleck.

Bill Kerr

Hire top global talent with Athyna. AI-powered. Human-led. 👾 237,455 founders, investors, and leaders read my newsletter Open Source CEO 📚

Remote work = better life.
Better life = happier person.
Happier person = better employee.
Better employees = winning business.

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"AI is going to be the end of us."  

Also AI:

🌎 Helping companies hire global talent at Athyna 📚 237,455 founders, investors, and leaders read my newsletter Open Source CEO

I don’t usually write about myself.

But this week on Open Source CEO, I’m doing it anyway.

It’s a short personal piece about sliding doors, dumb luck, and a handful of moments that quietly changed the direction of my life.

Missed opportunities.
Unexpected wins.
Sickness, travel, a house, a backflip.
And a recommendation that altered the plot.

Check your inboxes on Sunday: 

https://lnkd.in/dhQtg84z

If you’ve ever watched a marketer come into an all-hands, you know the drill.

Product has dashboards. Finance has models. Sales has pipeline.

Marketing has… a meme, a dream, and a Canva export.

Tracksuit fixes that.

It gives you an actual weapon:

Real-time brand data that doesn’t require a PhD or a séance to interpret. And honestly? I freaking love it. Not because it’s flashy. Or because it’s slightly AI-infused. 

But because it finally gives the creative side of the company the thing they’ve always wanted:

**Receipts.**

“We’re growing. Here’s the proof.”
“We’re losing share. Here’s the proof.”
“This campaign slapped. Here’s the proof.”

For the first time, brand gets to sit at the adult table.

And if you’ve ever been the marketer trying to justify a budget while performance fluctuates like a crypto chart… this thing feels like vengeance.

P.S. This is no hate to my marketing team, Tracksuit just makes them superstars.

https://lnkd.in/e7379vjs

This landed in my email inbox from PostHog this week. 

Another clear example of how far ahead they are of every other tech company when it comes to brand.

If you want to see the best example of successfully building a career, see the example of Yamini Rangan, CEO of HubSpot.

It's actually very cool to read through. 

Consultant at Lucent Technologies 🌱 
Manager at Oracle 🌈
Senior Principal at SAP 🙌🏼 
Director > GM at Appirio 💥 
Director > VP at Workday ✨
VP > Chief Customer Officer at Dropbox 💫 
CCO > CEO HubSpot 🔥 

Next stop, President. Final stop, Supreme Emperor of the Known Universe.

But seriously, how great is that?

"He's a draft dodging white boy." 

One of the best riffs I've heard in a long time by Jesse Ventura.

If you are hiring remotely and you don't wanna get absolutely dunked on use Athyna.

I'm not gonna lie. Hugh Jackman as some sort of Wolverine come Gandalf hybrid in the new Robin Hood movie might make me come out of the closet.

It's official. My ChatGPT is getting a little too comfortable with me.

I’ve burned through more CRMs than I care to admit.

Every quarter I’d swear one would finally match how we work…
and two weeks later I’d be back in a cursed Google Sheet with 17 tabs and a prayer.

Attio was the first one that didn’t fight me.

No bending our process to fit its worldview. No pretending our GTM is linear. No RevOps priesthood required.

It just made sense.

Flexible objects, real visibility, AI that actually works. 🤦🏻‍♂️ Basically just a CRM that can match the reality we live in.

If you’ve ever rebuilt a pipeline at 1am, you get it.

https://lnkd.in/eG3ENbyZ

Gotta love it when your readers compare you to your favorite thinker in the world.

Subscribe: https://lnkd.in/dhQtg84z

Everyone has an AI strategy deck.
Very few have an AI operating system.

I sat down with Bryan Murphy, CEO of Smartling. Former eBay VP, ex-founder, now running one of the most quietly serious AI companies in enterprise.

We talk about:
– Running an $8B business at eBay
– Throwing out an entire roadmap after ChatGPT launched
– Why enterprise AI is expensive, messy, and nothing like the demo
– Shipping 3,300 production releases a year without breaking the company

Possibly one of the most useful AI conversations I’ve had.

One piece of advice I give founders a lot: If your website is slow to change, your company feels slow, even if it isn’t.

Too many teams move fast internally, while their site stays frozen for months because every update needs a handoff, a sprint, or a dev favor.

That disconnect shows.

Every team I know that gets this right treats their website like product.
Something you ship, iterate on, and improve constantly.

That’s why Framer is dominating.

They collapse the gap between design and shipping, and give the people closest to the message real control.

When your site can move at the same speed as your thinking, it's an absolute flow state. 

And when it can’t, no amount of internal speed really matters.

https://lnkd.in/egDzyb6B

Most startups don’t fail because they picked the wrong idea. They fail because they stop listening too early.

This week’s edition is the zero-to-one story of Hyperbound.

Two Stanford grads.
19 pivots.
2,000 customer interviews.
A category that didn’t exist before 2024.

I watched this company go from scrappy YC experiment to enterprise sales weapon used by IBM, LinkedIn, and Bloomberg.

This isn’t a hype piece. It’s a breakdown of what actually worked, what didn’t, and how they found the one problem worth obsessing over.

If you’re building, pivoting, or questioning whether you’re 'there yet.'

Well then, don't forget to check your inboxes on Sunday.

If fumbling the bag could be summed up with one image. 

This would be it.

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