Company Launches “Expat-on-Demand” Platform for Help Saying Difficult Things
Need to deliver hard feedback? This startup offers expats for hire to say what locals can’t. Choose your accent, tone, and escape plan.
JAKARTA —Southeast Asia-based startup SpeakEasy Solutions has officially launched Expat-on-Demand, a groundbreaking platform that allows companies to instantly summon an expat to client meetings for the sole purpose of saying things that locals, for cultural or political reasons, cannot.
The service, currently in beta across Indonesia, the Philippines, and parts of the UAE, offers a rotating roster of carefully curated foreigners fluent in business English. According to the company, early demand has exceeded expectations, particularly from HR departments and procurement teams.
The business model is simple: pick a timezone, select a nationality, upload your uncomfortable talking points, and an expat will show up and deliver your hard truths with just the right mix of naivety and misplaced confidence.
SpeakEasy’s tiered pricing model includes three options:
Standard Plan: Includes one direct comment per meeting, with optional follow-up email written “on behalf of the team.”
Premium Plan: Adds a British or Dutch accent for maximum perceived objectivity and post-meeting “gravitas.”
Platinum Plan: Includes immunity from post-meeting fallout, ghostwriting support for escalation emails, and one client dinner exit strategy per month.
Clients can also select from personality presets such as Blunt but Likeable, Woke but Still Harsh, and Overconfident Consultant Who Once Worked at McKinsey for 11 Months.
“We used the service last week to tell a longtime client that their logistics partner is essentially laundering incompetence,” said Maya Kusuma, an operations lead at a regional FMCG company. “No one on our team could say it. But when a Canadian guy in Uniqlo chinos said it, the client thanked him.”
SpeakEasy’s founders say the idea came out of lived experience.
“I used to be the resident expat at a multinational here,” said co-founder and Chief Deployment Officer, James Withers. “I noticed I kept getting invited to meetings where everyone else stayed quiet, and I was expected to ‘push back’ on behalf of the team.”
The startup is now riding a wave of demand from companies seeking to balance cultural norms with operational efficiency. In markets where open disagreement can lead to social penalties, long-term relational damage, or slow internal exile, the option to deploy an expat “as a one-off truth delivery mechanism” is increasingly attractive.
HR professionals are especially enthusiastic, using the platform for tasks such as:
Communicating that someone’s cousin will not be offered the procurement role
Announcing pay freezes “due to global headwinds”
Explaining to clients that KPIs exist for a reason
“Before this, we used to rotate who would speak up and hope it didn’t backfire,” said one HR manager at a regional telecom. “Now we just book a Brit, and everyone keeps their dignity.”
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