SaaStr 282: The Ultimate Guide To Remote Work; All vs Part Remote Teams, How To Maintain Culture Across Teams, Should Compensation Be Location Adjusted, How To Structure Internal Processes with Remote Teams, How Remote Teams Impact Hiring, Sales and Fundr
Michael Pryor, Co-Founder & CEO @ Trello, now Head of Trello Product with Atlassian following their recent acquisition.
Kolton Andrus is the Founder & CEO @ Gremlin, the failure as a service startup finds weaknesses in your system before they cause problems.
Dylan Serota, Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer @ Terminal, the startup that helps you create world-class technical teams through remote operations as a service.
Rachel Carlson, Co-Founder and CEO @ Guild Education, the leader in education benefits offering the single most scalable solution for preparing the workforce of today for the jobs of tomorrow.
Sid Sijbrandi, Founder & CEO @ Gitlab, a single application for the entire software development lifecycle.
Jeppe Rindom is the Founder & CEO @ Pleo, the simple spending solution for your company automating expense reports and simplifying company expenses.
In Today's Episode We Discuss:
How should founders think about the debate between all remote vs part remote teams? How does life and operations change with each? What are the pros and cons? Is it possible to move between the two overtime?
What can one do to maintain culture with remote teams? What processes need to be in place to ensure a cohesive and streamlined communication process? What technical architecture needs to be in place? Where are the breakpoints when it comes to communication? How often does one need to do in person off-sites?
How does being remote or part remote impact fundraising? How do VCs think about this new structure of operations? What is the right way to present it? How does being outside a core tech hub impact one's ability to raise? How should one run a fundraising process if outside a core hub?
How important is it for your team to be near your customers? How does this change according to sector and customer base? How important is it for your team to be near your investors? Does having an exec and sales team in one place and the rest of the team elsewhere work?
Jason Lemkin
Harry Stebbings
SaaStr
Read the full transcript on our blog.
20VC: Why Founders Must Use VCs as a Barometer, How to Make Distributed Teams Work Successfully & The Biggest Mistake People Make Early In Their Career with Dylan Serota, Founder @ Terminal
Dylan Serota is the Founder & Chief Strategy Officer @ Terminal, the startup that helps you create world-class technical teams through remote operations as a service. They recently raised a phenomenal $13m Series A with some of the world's most renowned names including Lightspeed, KPCB, Craft, Thiel, Atomic and Jerry Yang just to name a few. As for Dylan, he is also a Founder-in-Residence @ Atomic, one of the valley's most exciting new institutions which both founds and funds companies and includes the likes of Hims, TalkIQ (acq by Dialpad) and more. Prior to Atomic and Terminal, Dylan was Head of Platform @ Eventbrite where he led platform product org, built third-party developer ecosystem and platform partnerships.
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Dylan made his way into the world of startups with Eventbrite and how that led to his realisation on the future of development operations with Terminal?
2.) Why does Dylan believe that it is important for startups to build distributed teams earlier in their growth curve than often suggested? What are the key aspects to making remote teams work well? Why does Dylan believe that "companies overvalue their culture"? How does Dylan assess culture across remote teams?
3.) Jason lemkin says "startups can either hire a stretch VP or a burnt out mediocre VP", does Dylan agree with this? How does Dylan assess the balance between hiring functional specialists vs jack of all trades? When is the right time to make the transition from generalist to specialist?
4.) Hw does Dylan analyze and assess a startup leaderships team ability to adapt and prioritize speed? What is key to successful decision-making today in startups? How does Dylan think about the importance of speed when it comes to product ideation and iteration?
5.) What does Dylan believe is the biggest mistake many people make early in their career? What are the commonalities of the truly successful people in how they have structured their careers? How does Dylan think about the balance between title vs salary vs experience? What should one optimise for and when?
Items Mentioned In Today's Show:
Dylan's Fave Book: The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Dylan on Twitter here!
Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.
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