Oneminded runs from two locations: consultants in Eindhoven and developers in Jakarta. That model only works if both sides know each other well enough to collaborate without misunderstandings.
By Anthony Raaijmakers
Last month my business partner Sebastiaan boarded a plane to Jakarta. Not for an introductory visit, but for a week of working through problems with the tech leads of the team that builds our client projects every day. Oneminded runs from two locations: consultants in Eindhoven and developers in Jakarta. That model only works if both sides know each other well enough to collaborate without misunderstandings. This article is about why, on top of the video calls and collaboration tools that work perfectly well day to day, we keep investing in physical contact between those two teams, and what a week on site adds that the screen cannot.
That matters to every partner who works with us, because the quality of our work is directly tied to how well those two teams are attuned to each other. In an AI-amplified model, where developers build faster with AI tooling, the human coordination around it becomes more important, not less. A team that only knows each other through a screen lacks the context needed to make fast, good decisions together at the moment a project stops going to plan.
Sebastiaan spent a week at the table with the tech leads in Jakarta, wearing the same Oneminded shirts they do. Not a tour. Work: going through live projects together, finding where our way of working was not quite smooth enough, and adjusting it on the spot rather than in a stray email afterwards.
One conversation kept returning, and it is not a small question for a company operating across two continents: how do we stay relevant in five years to the partners who work with us now? You do not answer that with a strategy document written in Eindhoven. You answer it by looking closely at the work the team in Jakarta does every day and testing whether our approach still matches what a client actually needs today.
Between the working sessions there was simply time to eat together and get to know each other better. That is no replacement for the bond that already exists at a distance, but it is a layer on top of it. What stood out: a team in Eindhoven and a team in Jakarta, different language, different culture, and yet the same sharpness in the conversation and the same way of looking at a problem. That is exactly the kind of consistency you want as a client, even when you never witness it directly.
For us this is not a team-building trip. It is part of how we make our AI-amplified model real in practice. Developers in Jakarta work with the same AI tooling and the same boundaries as the team in Eindhoven, but that only stays consistent if someone regularly sits down in person to check whether the way of working still holds. Not only on paper, but in how a project actually runs.
We believe a shared way of working cannot be imposed through a handbook. It grows by walking through projects together, discussing mistakes, and staying sharp about where we are going. That is precisely why, alongside the work that already runs well remotely, we keep travelling.
What began as a trip to spar mostly produced confirmation: two teams, two cultures, and the same sharpness. Want to know how our Dutch-Indonesian model works in practice for your project? Send us a message and we will gladly tell you more.