

Ask YC: Telecommuting startup teams? - thorax

I've been finding for our development, marketing, etc. that is matters almost nil where we're located. It's just so easy to do things remotely using Skype, IM, good source control, etc.<p>What are you finding? How many of your startups are entirely made-up of people who come in and sit in the same place together?<p>What kind of problems do you foresee for a small distributed team?
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modoc
I work on a distributed team. We aren't a startup however. Using SVN, IM, con-
calls, Confluence, JIRA, and an excellent project manager we are able to work
very effectively from all over the country.

It was key that we all got together for the project kick-off for a week or two
and got to know one another a bit. Being able to picture someone, and having a
sense of how they communicate, how their sense of humor works, etc... can make
non-face-to-face communication later much easier.

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jonnytran
My team and I used the standard IM, email, source control, etc. But Skype
could just _never_ replace a good old fashioned meet-up.

My co-founder and I have been friends for a long time, and the chemistry we
have makes work both fun and extremely productive when we're in the same place
at the same time. Over the net, it doesn't really happen. Admittedly, we waste
a lot of time in person just bullshitting, but I think it's worth it and it
makes the time enjoyable.

For a time, everyone on my team had to drive a half-hour just to meet
somewhere between where we all lived -- due to school, job changes, etc. In my
opinion, this was one of the biggest things that led to the team eventually
falling apart. Simply put, when people moved apart, the fellowship was broken.
:-)

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elad
My co-founder and I worked each in his own home for about 8 months, meeting
face to face one per week or two. That worked OK, but it was obvious that we'd
be more productive if we both worked in the same place. Recently we stared
hiring more developers (3 so far), and it became clear that we just have to
have a central place where everybody spends at least some of the time. We keep
the hours flexible, and anyone can work from home as much as they want, but
still, getting face time with each other a few days per week is priceless. You
can't really coordinate a team's work efficiently when you're completely
distributed IMHO.

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dougfort
Here's our CEO discussing that very thing:

Please scroll down to "The Virtues of Virtual..."

<https://spideroak.com/blog>

~~~
webwright
<https://spideroak.com/>

Flash intro?! REALLY!?

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ekanes
We're distributed and for the most part it works fine. We get together once a
year at SXSW to work/learn/party.

Right now we're at most 5 hours apart in time, which isn't bad, but when we
tried going fully "global" by trying to hire someone in Germany we discovered
there's an outer bound to how far apart you can be.

We use irc, email & skype.

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webwright
I honestly think being in the same room at least a few days a week is
priceless.

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ajkirwin
I'd like to know the answers to these too, they're relevant to my, ah..
interests!

