We’re organising the informal workforce by connecting people to more opportunities.

Staffing should be three things: simple, effortless, and accessible.

Workmate solves staffing for businesses. But our larger purpose expands beyond that. We’re here to help workers increase their income, social protections, and ultimately their quality of life.

2016

Founded in Singapore

Talented people in our team

$10M

Total funding raised

What we do

We make the informal labour market more efficient with technology.

By connecting and organising the workforce, businesses get all they need to fulfill their short term and contract labour needs. By creating an open and transparent platform, we help informal workers exercise their right to fair work and a better living.

We’re an end-to-end staffing solution that’s unlocking efficiencies for over 100M informal workers in Southeast Asia. To us, it’s more than harnessing manpower—it’s giving the power back to workers.

How we got here

2016

JANUARY

Founded by Mathew Ward and John Srivovakul, raised US$500k in angel funding

APRIL

Opened our office in Bangkok and launched the first version of Helpster

NOVEMBER

Raised $2.1m seed investment

2017

FEBRUARY

Expanded to Indonesia and opened our Jakarta office

APRIL

Signed our 100th customer, and expanded into logistics staffing

2018

AUGUST

Signed Asian Games, and delivered over 1,000 workers

DECEMBER

Grew 10x from January 2018

2019

FEBRUARY

Closed $5.2m in Series A funding

NOVEMBER

Helpster is rebranded as Workmate

Our Team

Mathew Ward

Co-founder & Chief Executive Officer

Mathew, who is originally from New Zealand, brings 18 years of experience in building high-growth businesses and teams in the APAC market. Prior to founding Workmate, he was the CEO and founding team member of Admax Network (acquired by Komli Media), Managing Director APAC for Lotame where he setup and launched their Asian business, and served on the advisory board of Ardent Capital. He has also worked with startups in Australia, Japan and the UK.

Martin Sørensen

Chief Executive Officer, Thailand

Martin leads the strengthening and expanding of Workmate’s operations and team in Thailand. He brings to Workmate 13 years of experience in sales and business development in the B2B segment and eCommerce. Most recently, Martin is the Co-founder and Managing Director of WearYouWant, a leading fashion and beauty eCommerce store that offers an online B2B2C platform for offline retailers. He holds a Master of Science in International Relations and Affairs from the University of Southern Denmark.

Peter Goldsworthy

Chief Operating Officer

As COO of Workmate, Peter leads operations in the region and is charged with delivering more value for our workers in our mission to organize the informal workforce. Since joining Workmate, he grew our Indonesia business substantially and is now rolling out that same repeatable engine across the region. Prior to this, Peter founded and directed various online and business products—such as B2B marketplace Bizzy and Indonesia’s first social travel network Burufly. His passion for nurturing entrepreneurs and growing emerging businesses is shown through his role at Ardent Labs. Peter received his MBA from RMIT University, Melbourne.

Tudor Coman

Chief Product Officer

As CPO of Workmate, Tudor leads product strategy and technology delivery in the region. He is charged with developing the Workmate platform in our mission to organize the informal workforce. Since joining Workmate, Tudor has restructured the design, product and engineering organization to embrace outcome-based product delivery; rapid experimentation, lean development, agile methodology, deep analytics and now is gearing up for continuous AI/ML deployments to create the absolute best Client-to-Staff matching algorithm. Prior to this, Tudor founded and directed various online and business products—such as B2C online travel platform, Flocations, which exited to Japan’s largest online meta search, Travel.Jp in 2015. Afterwards, Tudor held various team lead positions both in growth and product at both small and large startups, and was recently Head of Innovation for Manulife.

En Lerk Law

VP of Engineering

As VP of Engineering, Lerk sets the core direction for Workmate’s technology. Since joining Workmate, he has upgraded the backend systems and data models, improving efficiency for the operation teams. Prior to this role, Lerk co-founded digital design consultancy Gridhaus, and dedicated four years to dealing with data critical systems at DBS Bank—improving systems stability for the bank’s core data warehouse. Lerk is a developer by trade with a Bachelor of Biomedicine in Biosystems Engineering from the University of Melbourne.

Our Principles

Customer Obsession

We’re relentless in our mission to deliver positive impact with all that we do. We always start with understanding our customers’ needs and feedback in order to make core decisions.

Fight like Underdogs

We reach our goals through hard work and diligence, not just talent. We always strive to improve. And when we achieve the unthinkable, we never forget where we came from and the people who made it possible.

Be Open and Honest

We challenge each other openly, committing to spur each other’s growth. We actively listen and understand first, and when we are direct, we do so with kindness and compassion.

Pride in Our Work

We pour as much passion and focus into the small things as we do the big things. How we do our work is as vital as what we do. Most of all, we deliver on our commitments.

Stronger Together

Our battles forge and bond us together. We make space for others to shine, as each of us have an equal responsibility to lead from the front. Our diversity in experiences, cultures, skills and personalities temper our strength.