Building an Outsourcing Ecosystem for Software Engineers – with Fred Joye of Arcanys Ventures

Fred Joye, Co-Founder of Arcanys, joined Derek Gallimore in this week’s episode of the Outsource Accelerator Podcast.

They discussed Arcanys and Arcanys Ventures, winning the Outsourcing Impact Review 2023, and the firm’s initiatives for its employees and its community, including the Arcanys Early Learning Foundation.

Arcanys and Arcanys Ventures

Fred is no stranger to the OA Podcast – he has appeared on the show thrice. While we’re all familiar with Arcanys, Fred is back to discuss a new undertaking – Arcanys Ventures.

Arcanys (main) was founded by Fred and his business partner Alan Debonneville over a decade ago. “We’re two Swiss high school friends who founded [Arcanys] in Cebu, in the Philippines in 2010. We provide long-term software development teams and augmentation services,” said Fred.

He added, “What we do for companies, mostly in Europe, Australia, and a little bit of the West coast of the US, [is] provide long-term dedicated developers that are augmenting their existing development team.

In some cases, we can actually be the development team of companies and add fractional CTOs and any other skills required to have a well-functioning software development team.”

On the other hand, Arcanys Ventures was founded “about seven years ago, [when] we realized that we could also invest in the startups we were working with initially.”

The Arcanys Co-Founder recalled, “When we had clients that were raising funds, they were either asking us if we could participate in a raise or the clients that we really believed in.

We told them, “Hey, next time you’re raising funds, let us know. Maybe there’s another way we could participate than just giving you cash.” That’s how Arcanys Ventures was born.”

As of this writing, Arcanys Ventures has made 25 investments in companies in the US, Europe, Asia, and Australia. 

“That’s been going really well. We’ve accelerated the pace at which we invest. We even have a partnership now with Techstars Sydney, Techstars Milan, and Techstars Paris, where we help some of their startups and invest in them.”

Fred added, “What we do here is we’re investing in late seed pre-series A companies with manpower. Our investment is not cash per se, but we are augmenting their existing development team to deliver more during the term of the investment.

The idea is that we keep the team with them for the long term. We’ve seen really, really nice traction with that model.”

The Arcanys Early Learning Foundation

Arcanys is dedicated to investing in its employees and its community. For employees, the company is “very focused on health and fitness. [We focus on] mental health, physical health and fitness for our employees and trying to make our workplace a really fun and learning environment.”

For the community, the firm founded the Arcanys Early Learning Foundation. This initiative won the Silver Award for the 2023 OA Outsourcing Impact Award for Education.

Fred added, “This initiative has been running for 11 or 12 years now. We provide early math education to poor families in Cebu through teachers [who] enable the parents to be the first teachers of their own kids.

We’ve done many scientific studies to measure the results of our efforts, and it’s been super encouraging. We’ve helped probably close to 9000 families over the years.”

The Arcanys Co-Founder explained how the initiative works. “We hire teachers… and we train the parents with the kids there. We show the parents how we do [early math] with the kids.

And then the parents keep doing this under the watch of the teacher for three to six months because the games can become quite complicated with not just counting, but additions, subtractions, and all that stuff…”

Regarding the impact of this learning center, Fred said, “What we’ve seen with these kids who are usually around four years old, they keep their advances in math throughout their whole life. We’ve got 12 years of data, and we follow some of these kids to see how they perform in school afterward.

The results are amazing because they give the parents so much confidence in realizing that they have a positive impact on the lives of their kids. We’re talking about very poor families – the poorest in Cebu.

It’s empowering the parents. It’s empowering the kids. It improves even the relationship between the parent and the kids because they do something really productive together.”

Fred added, “We have the foundation that shows that we are very involved in the community. I mean, we’re not just here to make money, right? We are also here to make a difference.”

Keeping the office culture alive

Returning to the office after the pandemic has proven difficult for employees. To encourage them, Arcanys invested in a gym near its office.

“We felt like, if you want to keep the culture of the business alive, then you have to do something a bit different, where people still actually meet without it feeling like it’s a chore. So [we built] the CrossFit gym.

We’ve made a big place where people can sit and chit chat, and some of them can actually work a little bit… Every now and then, we throw a party on a Friday or Saturday night, and this gym becomes like the most fun dance club with karaoke, and people drinking and laughing.

We’re also doing a sports fest. We’re slowly ramping that up until now. It’s once a year, but it lasts for a month [and features] different kinds of sports. It’s not just CrossFit, and we’re planning to do quarterly and monthly little challenges and stuff,” Fred noted.

What a way to invest in employees’ health and well-being!

To learn more about Arcanys and Arcanys Ventures, visit their website or connect with Fred Joye through his LinkedIn page.