We are a remote company. Everything is going well. No plans to be in person, but I’d say we can do a better job at communicating. Any tips or articles to read?
Ask HN: How do you communicate in a remote startup?
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Re: Ask HN: How do you communicate in a remote startup?
#2Re: Ask HN: How do you communicate in a remote startup?
#3Slack / IM often, don't demand a response instantly though, async & remote go hand in hand.
Put important stuff in email not slack/IM
Have a company wiki
Prefer video calls for alignment
Write to each other often, spend time crafting written narratives, 1-pagers, amazon 6-pagers etc. to share ideas, make people read them, use google docs or ms word online and get comments inline in the document using those tools, follow up on video calls to confirm alignment.
Gitlab has a handbook for this stuff, they are a 100% remote business and very open about their practices: https://handbook.gitlab.com/
consider personal readme's if your team is a bit larger (example): https://gitlab.com/swiskow/swiskow
Re: Ask HN: How do you communicate in a remote startup?
#4Video calls. If you aren't having at least one video call a day something is probably wrong. Configure it such that starting a video call takes no more than 4 clicks.
Have a company-wide General/Coffee chat where people talk about arbitrary things. It's better if this chat has history which expires in 24 hours.
Write lots of short documents -- especially for designs. Review them much like you would review code. This can be as simple as Markdown documents in your repository using your normal code review tool. Ensure all documents are listed in a single easy-to-find index of some sort.
Re: Ask HN: How do you communicate in a remote startup?
#5Video calls. If you aren't having at least one video call a day something is probably wrong. Configure it such that starting a video call takes no more than 4 clicks. Have a company-wide General/Coffee chat where people talk about arbitrary things. It's better if this chat has history which expires in 24 hours. Write lots of short documents -- especially for designs. Review them much like you would review code. This…
Agree with the occasional relaxed "coffee chat", and having a repository full of good documentation, but...
>If you aren't having at least one video call a day something is probably wrong.
That seems excessive to me, especially if everyone is also staying connected via chat, emails, etc. Weekly meetings are about my limit, considering I also have work to do, meetings with external stakeholders, ad-hoc meetings, etc.
Re: Ask HN: How do you communicate in a remote startup?
#6Video calls. If you aren't having at least one video call a day something is probably wrong. Configure it such that starting a video call takes no more than 4 clicks. Have a company-wide General/Coffee chat where people talk about arbitrary things. It's better if this chat has history which expires in 24 hours. Write lots of short documents -- especially for designs. Review them much like you would review code. This…
> It's better if this chat has history which expires in 24 hours.
Probably wise to run that by counsel.
Re: Ask HN: How do you communicate in a remote startup?
#7Video calls. If you aren't having at least one video call a day something is probably wrong. Configure it such that starting a video call takes no more than 4 clicks. Have a company-wide General/Coffee chat where people talk about arbitrary things. It's better if this chat has history which expires in 24 hours. Write lots of short documents -- especially for designs. Review them much like you would review code. This…
> It's better if this chat has history which expires in 24 hours.
This sounds fun to have a b.s./watercooler chat channel. It'd be cool if Slack had that feature but I wonder if that's a non-starter for corporate reasons.
Re: Ask HN: How do you communicate in a remote startup?
#8One thing I've found useful is to have deliberate google meet calls when having planning discussions or firming up decisions.
I set up the recording and transcription and then up front we define the problem and what we want the outcome to be. Afterwards I give the transcription to ChatGPT and get it to summarise the content, decisions, etc and add that to our documentation with a link to the recording.
This helps you stay on the same page and also gives context to people who werent present about what has been discussed and decided.
Re: Ask HN: How do you communicate in a remote startup?
#9Huge bias here as I work for Figma, but multiplayer collaborative editors like Figma do wonders.
We run nearly everything out of a figma or figjam file. Retros, planning, etc. There's something really nice about being able to see everyones cursors at once, and feeling like you're collaboratively creating something. Presos and slide decks often feel very one-direction from a data flow perspective, which becomes problematic for remote-only roles.
Re: Ask HN: How do you communicate in a remote startup?
#10First off learn to relax. breathe. Just because people aren’t constantly communicating doesn’t mean nothing is happening.
Learn to embrace long pauses in video calls. Learn to accept that a response to a message sometimes takes several minutes or even an hour to come through.
You said everything is going well. Okay, so what’s the problem then? The amount of communication currently happening clearly must be sufficient, otherwise things would not be going well. Right?
Just chill.