From six weeks of building to five years of continuous development with Cocoroco

Building to learn

Imagine: you sell products in Germany, but your customer service is based in Amsterdam. You'll want to help German customers with someone who doesn't just speak the language, but also knows the culture and understands local nuances. Except finding these multilingual specialists isn't always easy for companies. Job openings stay vacant for months and businesses have to choose between outsourcing or costly temporary fixes.

Floor van Haaren, co-founder of Cocoroco, saw that things could be done differently. He already had experience with customer support outsourcing and working with remote specialists around the world. During the pandemic, as remote work became increasingly standard, the idea for Cocoroco was born: a platform giving companies direct access to global customer service specialists who work from home.

To turn that idea into reality, Cocoroco knocked on our door for the necessary dose of experience. The brief was clear: don't overthink endlessly, but build fast. Together, we stripped the core processes down to the essentials. A company needs to be able to post a request, find a suitable candidate, and both parties must then be able to work together smoothly. After six weeks of building, the first version went live in 2021. Just enough to support early users and, above all, to discover whether the idea actually worked in practice.

“Our ambition was clear from the start: make sure that where you live doesn't determine what opportunities you get. How the platform had to work to achieve that was something we could only discover by going live and learning from companies and candidates. That first version gave us the room to do just that.”  – Floor van Haaren, co-founder of Cocoroco

Validating also means uncovering friction

That early proof arrived with Bugaboo, among others. The company was looking for customer service colleagues across different languages and time zones. Through Cocoroco, they found specialists who were hard to come by locally, but readily available elsewhere in the world. Still, one successful match doesn't make a successful marketplace. Plenty of candidates were already finding their way to the platform, but the number of job postings lagged behind. The challenge was no longer just finding great specialists, but mainly attracting enough companies and interesting roles to balance supply and demand.

New phase, new choices

In the years that followed, the platform continued to grow. Candidate profiles became more detailed, featuring more information on experience, skills, and competencies. In turn, companies could specify the kind of specialists they were looking for using an ‘Ideal Hiring Profile’. This made finding the right match easier and easier. Companies and candidates also gained more options to manage their collaboration directly, without third-party interference.

At the same time, market demand shifted. While Cocoroco initially focused mainly on permanent roles, the demand for flexible talent surged. The platform evolved right along with it. Companies can now also contract and pay specialists from all over the world. Partner networks take care of local contracts and payroll per country. Additionally, businesses can post a job themselves or search directly within a pool of 80,000 specialists. Today, specialists work through Cocoroco from 42 countries, and more and more companies use the platform, including KLM, Picnic, and Rituals.

A partnership that moves with you

It wasn't just Cocoroco that changed. Our collaboration did too. In the initial phase, we worked using our own Freshheads approach: a multidisciplinary team, clear sprint goals, and making upfront choices about what we would—and especially wouldn't—build. Five years on, lines of communication are shorter and Cocoroco enjoys working directly with our developers alongside their own team. That sometimes calls for a different way of working than we're used to, but above all, it builds mutual trust. And maybe that's exactly what five years of working together requires: not clinging to how you once started, but continuing to look together for what works best right now.

“What I appreciate about Freshheads is that we can keep adjusting course together. We bring in insights from our users, and Freshheads thinks along on how to translate those to the platform. Thanks to the direct contact with the developers, we can switch gears quickly and make real progress. That really makes Freshheads feel like an extension of our own team.”  – Floor van Haaren, co-founder of Cocoroco

Five years later

Today's Cocoroco looks very different from the one that started five years ago. The platform supports more forms of work, operates independently, and continues to evolve. By applying AI and new features, Cocoroco keeps exploring ways to connect companies and global customer service specialists more seamlessly. One thing we know for sure by now: you don't need to know exactly where you'll be in five years. As long as you keep looking at what works, dare to change what doesn't, and keep taking the next step together. Cocoroco, thank you for five years of trust and the room to build, learn, and adjust together!