How do you start a virtual agency?

Enter Ken Leaver, founder of agency End Game.

In this edition, he is kindly sharing some of the lessons he’s learned along the way in building a virtual agency.

Today in 10 minutes or less, you’ll learn:

• 🚀 How Ken Went From London Strategy Consulting to CEO of Groupon Ukraine to Bangkok-Based Virtual Agency Founder

• 🤔 ELI10: What is a Virtual Agency? Who is a Good Fit for Starting One?

• 💼 How Ken Hires & Onboards His Remote Team and the Exact System and Tools He Uses

• 🤯 Why Ken Cut Down His Interview Process By 80% and Swears By Upwork Contractors

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FROM OUR OFFICE

💪 Go from stuck to breakthrough in your career transition

❌ Feeling stuck in your current role?
❌ No idea how to make your career change?
❌ Dreamed of working abroad, but don’t know where to start?

I know how it feels.

Waking up on Sunday and feeling that rush of anxiety that Monday is around the corner.

I’ve personally made 4 major career changes in my life, each time shocking my system:

✅ 2014: Marketer → Product manager
✅ 2019: Moved from US to SEA, started coaching business
✅ 2020: PM → Product leader
✅ 2023: Product advisor, started Money Abroad

I love working with clients who—like me—feel restless in the status quo and seek to make bold career changes.

For example, I’ve worked with new moms getting back in the workforce, non-profit workers breaking into tech, and a US techie transitioning to a unicorn in Mexico.

As a coach, I help you with navigating your transition end-to-end.

From strategizing and clarifying your end destination to executing the job search process itself, together we’ll help you accelerate your growth.

Sounds intriguing? Book a free discovery call now.

🧑‍💻 Building a remote Upwork agency | Ken Leaver

Ken is a Solopreneur who operates his own ‘Virtual Upwork’ agency, End Game, that utilizes freelancers to perform projects in tech, content creation, and SEO.

He has held senior product positions at companies like Lazada, Wayfair and Pomelo Fashion. And contracted for a range of companies like Branded, Ozon, Shipper, Wayfair, Rainforest Life, Yandex and others.

He’s part entrepreneur, part product guy, and part writer. But mostly just a “structure & process freak.”

Tell us about your career journey from consulting to startup founder to tech agency owner.

I graduated Cornell back in 1999 and back then the sexy thing to do was either investment banking or strategy consulting. I chose consulting.

Consulting took me from Boston to Tokyo to Kuala Lumpur to London to Moscow. Over seven years I met some amazing folks and got to the point that I could do PowerPoint in my sleep.

But in 2007, I had reached the point where I was supposed to sell work.. and I realized I’d hit my limit. I just couldn’t sell things with six-figure price tags. It was too much of a step up from my previous selling experience of selling lemonade on the corner as a kid. LOL

So in 2008 as the Russian economy was tanking along with the rest of the world… I moved to work for my client, Visa Inc. And did the whole corporate thing for a few years... managing first thier Russian acquiring business and then their regional Issuing Products business.

But when a friend came in early 2011 and said to me, “Ken… I want you to run Groupon in Ukraine,” I was like “Hell Yeah! This is my chance to become famous!” At the time… Groupon was pretty sexy.

And Groupon was an amazing ride. We grew from a ~10 person office to over 100 employees…. and something like 50x’d the revenue. But as they say…. all good things eventually end. And in 2012 as we were losing money still, I was asked to start cutting the team.

Groupon would continue to decline in the ensuing decade…. so in hindsight it was a wise decision to move to the next shiny object ‘startups’. In 2013 I joined the leading startup accelerator in Ukraine, “Eastlabs”, which was funded by one of the wealthiest businessmen in the country, Victor Pinchuk.

Ever since moving to the region I’d always wanted to try working for an ‘oligarch’ so finally I got my chance. And while that part was far less sexy than i thought (ie. I never even met Victor haha), the accelerator part was actually pretty awesome.

We invested in ~16 companies and several success stories were created like Preply who I believe is valued around $400m or so today. But in late 2013 the first war in Ukraine started and the economy started to tank. I felt like it was time to take a break from the region.

So with my pregnant wife, we moved to Ho Chi Minh City in early 2014 and I began working for Lazada. I was supposed to be on the commercial side, but due to some major health issues that were screwing with my concentration… I asked to switch to “product”. At the time, I’d never even heard of product management before… but I figured these sleepy-looking tech guys must be easy to compete with. So I dove in.

At first, I felt like a fish out of water with all these engineers walking around. What the hell were they even talking about? But in time I got to really enjoy it and moved up the ranks. Eventually making it to SVP Product in charge of all operations, marketplace and finance products for Lazada (~50% of all tech).

Since that time, product has always been a part of what I do and I really love it. Particularly eCommerce product. Following Lazada, I did stints as a Director of Product for Wayfair (the US furniture eCom) and as the Head of Product for Pomelo Fashion. And have also contracted for numerous large ecom players like Ozon, Yandex, Branded, Shipper, etc.

That takes me to today where I run my own ‘virtual agency’ providing a mix of product and other tech services.

Explain how a tech agency works to a 10-year old. Who is a good fit for starting a tech agency and why?