As tech giants pull employees back to the office, Asaas decided to go the opposite way.
The fintech from Santa Catarina, which projects revenues of close to R$1 billion for 2026, maintains an operation “remote first” with more than 1,300 employees spread across Brazil.
One strategy, for co-founder Diego Contezini, is that there is no plan to one day go back to being in person. “We are not going to stop being remote. We work better for being that way. Remote has strengthened our culture and increased our productivity”, revealed the co-founder of Asaas, during an interview with From Zero to Top.
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A conviction that came even before the pandemic. In 2019, when the company approached 100 employees, Diego realized that the internal rituals of the organizational culture were breaking down.
“The coffee I had there in the morning and afternoon didn’t help anymore.”
It was at that moment that the company began to design a structured digital culture, months before working from home became the norm in the corporate world.
When 2020 arrived, Asaas already had processes and rituals prepared. “Everyone was scared by the speed at which we resolved this. But we had already been writing everything for a year. It was just a matter of putting it into practice”, says Contezini.
The problem is not the remote
For Diego, the failure of many companies in working from home is not in the model itself, but in the attempt to transport the in-person culture to the digital environment without adaptation.
“The problem is that people had to face remote out of obligation, but they don’t see remote as something natural,” he says.
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In the executive’s view, digital companies need to create new relationship, integration and management rituals. “When you do this in the real world, you congratulate, hug, smile. In the digital world, everything has to be thought of.”
Asaas transformed meetings, onboarding, presentations and even informal conversations into processes designed specifically for the online environment.
The result, according to Diego, was unexpected. Today, all new hired employees undergo virtual meetings directly with the founder. The company also maintains weekly cultural alignment and distributed management routines.
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“With 400 employees, I knew who was joining Asaas better than when we had 100,” says the executive.
In addition to culture, Diego believes that remote access also increases productivity and quality of life. Defending the model has become part of the fintech identity and also a competitive differentiator in talent retention.
“A person who saves two or three hours a day on transportation and manages to have lunch with their family will do even more. Remote access solved problems that in-person could no longer solve”, concludes Diego.
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To find out more details about Asaas, see the full episode on . The program is available in its podcast version on the main streaming platforms such as , , , and
About From Zero to Top
The Do Zero ao Topo podcast is a production of InfoMoney and brings, every week, the stories of prominent women and men in the Brazilian market to tell their story, sharing the biggest challenges faced along the way and the main strategies used in building the business.
