Mikkel Schmidt, CEO and founder of Azendo.
Mikkel came to Chiang Mai from Denmark in 2010 and started a small agency called VSI GROUP. Today it's Azendo: around a hundred people in Chiang Mai and Bangkok, building dedicated, managed offshore teams for international software companies.
From VSI GROUP to Azendo.
The agency started with project work. Over the years its clients kept asking the same developers to stay on their product, so the company grew into an offshore software development company for long-term product work: one remote team per client, working full time on that client's roadmap. In 2022 it took the name Azendo, from the Latin ascendo, to climb.
It's still one company in one place. Every specialist works from our offices in Chiang Mai and Bangkok, with a service delivery manager a few desks away. The company story covers the rest.
How he runs the company.
Azendo is small enough that Mikkel still takes scoping calls with new partners, and Danish enough that progress gets reported plainly, good news or bad. He leads by frihed under ansvar, freedom under responsibility: specialists own their commitments and are trusted to keep them.
That trust is part of why our specialists stay for 3.3 years on average, and why a dedicated development team keeps its knowledge of your product. The values behind every Azendo team start from the same idea.
We built this company in Thailand around one belief: look after the people doing the work, and the work looks after itself.
What Mikkel writes about.
How to hire and run an offshore software team: engagement models, pricing, AI engineering and working from Thailand.
- Engagement models IT staffing in the AI era: what to hire for, and where
- Engagement models Offshoring vs outsourcing: two different decisions, explained
- Engagement models Staff augmentation: what it is, when it works and what it really costs
- Engagement models Staff augmentation vs managed services: how they differ, and which fits your team
- Engagement models IT outsourcing: the models, the real costs and how to choose
- Engagement models Software development outsourcing: the models, the real costs and how to choose
- Engagement models Team augmentation: what it is, when it works and what it costs
- Thailand and offshore Thailand vs the Philippines: why software teams are choosing Thailand
- AI engineering Seven questions to ask any AI development partner
- AI engineering Prompt engineering became a skill, and AI-native engineering became the role
- Engagement models What exactly is a dedicated software team? And why is Azendo so different?
- Engagement models What augmented developers really cost, beyond the rate
- Engagement models Offshore staffing: how it works and how it compares with a managed team
- Engagement models Outstaffing vs offshore staffing: one model, two names
- Engagement models An agency, a marketplace or a managed team: three ways to add engineers
- Engagement models What is an offshore development center, and who runs it?
- Pricing and capacity How we calculate a fixed monthly fee that stays the same every month
- Thailand and offshore AI in Thailand: the people, models and money behind its rise
- Thailand and offshore Five reasons international companies build software teams in Thailand
- Thailand and offshore IT outsourcing in Thailand: how the market works
- Thailand and offshore Software development in Thailand: a practical guide for international companies
- Security PHP2Shell: the PHP vulnerability that took government websites offline, and how to fix it
- learning The AI Software Factory: a free e-book on AI agents in software teams
- AI engineering Will AI replace developers? What the research says about speed, quality and jobs
- AI engineering AI automation tools compared, and how to make AI agents work as a team
- Thailand and offshore Six offshore development mistakes, and how to avoid them
