Livit is of great importance for MagLoft and has played a huge role in its development. That is why this blog post will be just about Livit introducing its functions, values and goals in form of an interview with a Livit member.
- Who are you and what is your function at Livit?
I’m Lavinia and I’m the Managing Partner at Livit. We are a Bali-based startup hub and an international service provider for tech startups. - In one short sentence: what is “Livit” about?
Livit is about reinventing the way we work – and about getting stuff done, “stuff” being changing the world in smaller or bigger ways 🙂 - What does MagLoft have to do with Livit?
Magloft has been a contributor and a part of our community since its (Magloft’s)”birth”. Livit provides Magloft with serviced work spaces, events, accounting and talent management services, legal & immigration related assistance. We love having Magloft as one of our “residents” and we hope (and know 🙂 ) they love it here, too! - Why is it called “Livit”?
To give you a bit of context, our initial tagline was “Build.it Ship.it Liv.it.” It has a lot to do with enjoying life, with really “living”, with our value of “work & play balance” – that’s why we are, in fact, based in Bali. Compared to a big city, in Bali and at Livit you don’t spend time commuting, grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning, doing your laundry, running your errands (we take care of all of that), which means all that time can be wisely spent on enjoying and living life. - What is Livits priority?
Livit’s priorities are very clear: to do our very best to help startups focus on their most meaningful work, and their impact on the world; to inspire others to stop thinking of work the traditional way, because we’ve “reinvented it” and you can try out the new ways here; and to give ourselves the amazing opportunity of practicing what we preach. - What do you think is the most important thing to keep the members motivated?
I believe motivation is a very personal thing, however I think there are aspects that can definitely enhance motivation. Such as: comfortable, productive work environments; a sense of community and belonging; and above all, the belief that you’re working for something bigger than yourself, and than your boss’ bank account, or ego, that you’re doing something impactful and meaningful. - What was the biggest obstacle Livit had to negotiate in the last year(s)?
I believe our biggest obstacles in the last year have been related to navigating the legal setup in Indonesia, especially given that we inaugurated our new hub in Sanur. We are innovative (which is always a bit hard to understand) and we are a foreign investment company, which puts us in a special “box”, where many requirements are tougher than for local companies, we have all sorts of limitations, and we are subjected to increased scrutiny. We are a very “clean” company so that’s definitely not an issue, however there have been incredibly sizeable budgets and man hours spent on making sure that we comply with all regulations.
- What plans/goals does Livit have for the next years?
Oh well, quite a few, and quite ambitious!First, we plan to open the hub publicly over the next month, so more people can take advantage of the great opportunities we offer here. We’re also launching some new coworking, events, coworkation packages which we hope will really help more teams.For next year, we have a few larger events in the pipeline, and we plan to focus a bit more on sharing our knowledge with regards to building teams, especially remote, global ones, as we see there’s more and more appetite for that, but not a lot of people have the kind of unique experience we have with that.I’m really excited about all these! - What do you think is the reason that people choose to work in a shared office space such as Livit?
There are multiple reasons, but most of them have a lot to do with:– Community and knowledge sharing – when you’re a solopreneur or a small team, being in a common space with other people you can hang out with and exchange skills and knowledge is priceless– Cost saving and flexibility – getting an office of your own can be quite expensive and laborious to set up, and not easy to get out of if you want to scale down. - To what extent can Livit influence the work-life balance of their team members?
I believe we do influence that quite a lot via our culture and work related “policies”. We implemented years ago already a system of self-management called Holacracy, where people get to decide how, when and with whom to do their work. We don’t do time tracking, we allow remote work, flexible working times, and our team members decide and track their own vacations and days off, which don’t have to be “approved” by anyone as long as their tasks and projects are not suffering. We organize workouts “sponsored” by the company (such as badminton, futsal, yoga), which are counted as work time. Same for learning and development. We organize social events as well, where our team members are welcome to have fun and enjoy the company of both their colleagues as well as their families, for free. We’re also located 3 minutes from the beach, which might be conducive as well 🙂 - What do you like most about working at Livit?
I LOVE my team members and the respect and attachment we have for each other. I love championing and contributing to the great mission we have. I love working at the hub, it’s a very productive work space for me, but I might be biased here as I led the concept-design for the place 😀 - Is there a special quote you can give any worker to always keep in mind?
“Work expands to fill the time it is given” – it’s a very wise quote reminding us that work never really finishes, if we allow it to take over. Even if, and especially if we are extremely passionate about what we do, it’s important that we take time to enjoy the small and big things in life, outside of work, and recharge. And I’m extremely proud to be leading a company that hopefully facilitates that for more people 🙂
