From PhD Dropout to $15M Offshore Business: Ian Myers on Building Oceans

Ian Myers didn't set out to build a $10 million business. After leaving a PhD in international security policy, working in finance, and then founding a venture-backed app company that left him feeling like he was on someone else's treadmill, Myers wanted something different: a business that would give him freedom, not just a bigger paycheck. What he stumbled into was Oceans, an operational outsourcing firm that hit $600K in revenue its first year (2022) and closed at roughly $15 million in 2023—highly profitable from the start.

The Opportunity That COVID Unlocked

Myers saw that the world's largest companies had been using offshore talent as a secret weapon for decades. Google has roughly 180,000 full-time employees globally, with about 120,000 offshore. Microsoft runs similar ratios. But before COVID, this was only accessible to companies with massive budgets and infrastructure.

The pandemic changed that. "Suddenly everyone had to go online," Myers explains. "If you can work with someone who's just moved to Montana because it's COVID and they want to move back in with their parents, you can work with someone in Sri Lanka." This opened the door for doctors' offices, accounting practices, law firms, and creative agencies that had never considered global talent before.