As the dust settled amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Derek Smith looked at his four-year career at Airbnb and decided the San Francisco skyline wasn’t the only thing he needed a break from. After moving his family to Utah from the Bay Area in March, Smith found himself at MessageBird, an Amsterdam startup working on corporate communications technology.

“I’ve always been drawn to companies that are solving problems,” Smith said. “There are many roles where you’re basically a team of one, and you’re expected to manage outside counsel, and then there’s roles like this one, where you have an internal team and your role is to manage and develop that.”