The years.
You've either run a remote team or you've been lied to about one. David had been in it for years. Shipping. Managing. Watching the gap between the slide deck and the person who actually does the work. He already knew the Philippines wasn't a loophole. It was a labor market with professionals in it.
The family.
Then he built a family in the Philippines. That's not a case study. That's real mornings, real people, a country he doesn't have to Google. You don't fake that. You live it. And once you live it, you stop talking about 'offshore' like it's a hack.
The phone.
Entrepreneur friends called. Other businesses too. Can you find someone like the people you work with. He kept saying yes. One seat. Then another. Then it was a company whether he liked the word or not.
The company.
701am is the name because that's the operating system. We find AI trained operators in the Philippines. You meet three. You pick. If the seat fails in ninety days, we run it again. If we can't fill it, that's the first thing we say.