Posted by Updated October 2025
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
It was August 2014 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. My son Mason and I were en vacance, celebrating his eighteenth birthday — until business barged in. Our 1998-era website needed a reboot, and since we were already in Southeast Asia, I figured we might as well meet with a few tech experts before heading to Indonesia. I sent six emails. One company replied within minutes.
The next day, I met the firm’s director in the hotel lobby. I wasn’t fluent in tech-speak, and the meeting ended as quickly as it began. Mason and I lingered in the lounge, plotting our route to the Batu Caves when a young woman sat nearby — the spitting image of the model we had seen on a giant screen at a Guess team-building event in Los Angeles our company, Venture Up, had produced. As she left, I realized it was Gigi Hadid, fresh from a Harper’s Bazaar swimsuit shoot.
Even on vacation, business has a way of tagging along — from website rebuilds to supermodels who once starred in our client’s conference videos. The line between work and life blurred somewhere between the hotel Wi-Fi and temple visits, and another example of our tradition of blending travel, business, and global collaboration — including our first outsourcing venture in India.
Sulawesi, Indonesia
A student at the University of Alaska-Anchorage, Mason had not been to Indonesia since he was four, when we spent the summer in Bali and celebrated his birthday with locals on the beach. Upon arrival in Manado, Sulawesi, he was ready for a seaside internship and scuba-diving certification course at Murex Dive Resort.
Sitting by the Celebes Sea on the north of the island, work issues were still chipping away. Funny how that happens when you keep your laptop by your side.
I noticed one IT company from India continued to email me. I had mistakenly messaged them in Kuala Lumpur thinking they were in Malaysia. The India firm, NCode Technologies, shows up well on Google searches even when I typed in the Malaysian locale. I didn’t respond at first because I wanted to meet face-to-face. My husband, David, still back in the States, was impressed at the firm’s persistence.
We knew it was a risk doing business overseas, with the language barrier and time difference. But NCode’s Business Developer Manager convinced us he could make things work. And I didn’t want to think about it much more, since I was lazing on the beach and scuba diving with sea turtles.
Back home, the team dove in. True to form, they took the risk and signed with NCode to work directly on our main website, ventureup.com. Google’s new algorithms had knocked us off page one where we had stayed effortlessly for a decade. Turns out we had over-stuffed keywords, and it backfired. And I also dabbled in areas on the site I should have left to the pros.
We were soon on our way to make our site Googlicious. Kicking off the New Year 2015, the website finally found its way to the masses and we were ranking high again. We retained NCode for the next few years.
When it comes to outsourcing, sometimes you can hit the target on the first try. But if you’re skittish, check out Fortune magazine’s resource: Global Outsourcing 2025. Or you can be brave and go in blind like we did — which is easy to do when you can’t get fired.
In all, there were a few bumps in communication, but the India team responded quickly, made the necessary fixes, and delivered solid work with impressive turnaround time. If you’re planning to revamp your website and thinking about outsourcing overseas, here’s some hard-earned advice. You’re likely not working with native English speakers, but with a full team of skilled IT professionals — not just a couple of lone techies behind laptops.
- Take screenshots.
- Be explicit.
- Number all directions or corrections.
The good news is the different time zones. When you team up with people half a world away, you can work during the day on corrections and wake up to find all fixes already in place.
Venture Up (est. 1983) is the original team building company, helping organizations build trust and collaboration through real-world experiences.
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