A Virtual Toolkit For Everyone’s Island
By Tony Conrad, CEO/Co-Founder Sphere
One of the amazing changes taking place in the tech space is companies being formed around a virtual work environment. Sphere has operated this way since inception. The four founders are based in San Francisco, Seattle & Denver. We have team members living in Vancouver, Portland, Phoenix, Denver, San Francisco, New York, and Boston. Our Advisors are based in San Francisco, Connecticut, New York, Boston and Atlanta. At first, I thought it was crazy to start a company with no geographical base. As we started Sphere, I had two main concerns about a virtual environment:
1) how do we effectively work together to create a great product/ service?
2) how do we create a culture that serves as a foundation for success?
We’ve adopted a number of tools that keep us ticking, enabling us to maintain a fluid, nimble approach to creating a great blog discovery engine. Here are some tools we couldn’t live without:
- we use teleconferencing like crazy – Premiere Global Services
- we use an internal blog/ wiki – WordPress
- we use Basecamp for our ongoing UI design process
- we use Fogbugz for bug tracking, feature priorization
- we use IM (too much) to avoid too much phone talk
- we use email (oddpost/ oops, I mean Yahoo! Mail Plus) for formal dialog
- we use office space from one of our investors (True Ventures)
- we spend as much time as possible meeting with people at their offices
The culture piece is a little less straightforward. In fact, I’ve never met three of our key team members. Here are a few obvious things to do to develop a feel for each other:
- we make sure we talk everyday, EVERYDAY
- we do a group call every Tuesday (Tech team) and Friday (Business Team)
- we engage people on a series of projects before signing them on as team members
- the founders meet physically at least once a quarter.
We’re also trying a few new things. For example, this Friday we’re holding a pizza party – each team member will receive a pizza at their homes for a group call and mini celebration of our accomplishments to date – not sure how this will work but it’s worth a try. Check back next week and I’ll share some thoughts on how it goes.
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This is awesome.
While I’ve been itchy about full time work for a while, it was more the geographic constraints than it was commitment anxiety – I live abroad part of the year. That freaks many manager out, big time.
I am really psyched to see this model taking ground for full operations rather than only for contractors.
An idea not limited to a purely virtual company that was one of the best policies of at least the engagement I worked on for Perot Systems when I worked there (in the mid-90′s) was that when ANYONE was traveling to a city with co-workers they could, no questions asked, expense taking those co-workers out for meals.
This is a very, very simple policy – but one that pays many dividends. Key to it is that it was true for anyone, not just for executives or “the boss” but any team member who had to travel. When I was in London training developers and new members of the team I was on, I could and did take some of them out for dinner one evening, the bonding over good food (i.e. using the expense account well) meant that later when I would IM about something we already had a rapport.
I’ve found that even as little as a single coffee together or even better a meal (best usually being lunches or dinners) helps cement bonds that can then persist and grow through emails, IM’s, conference calls and other collaboration tools – but that it is a very rare relationship – whether personal or business – that becomes a deep and in the case of business profitable one, without some face to face interaction at least once. (video conferences do help as do proxy relationships – i.e. not directly sharing a lunch/dinner but the existence of a third party with whom we both share strong bonds – family, past work together in person etc).
In the upcoming months I may have a set of consulting projects where I would be interfacing with US clients on behalf of teams geographically dispersed (mostly in this case in South America). I’m comfortable taking on this consulting engagement because I have a strong relationship with the founder of the company and trust him and the quality of his employees, as well I have had some in person interactions with his developers when they were here in the US. Not to mention that the fact that many of his developers have worked here on client projects gives me confidence that they will “get” US business and US market requirements.
But too I would be planning as soon as possible on a trip in person to meet with the teams, share meals, and get to know them at least once in person.
Shannon
Over the past three years, Joe (who founded FreshBooks with me and is our Chief Architect) has probably graced our office 15 times…that’s about once every three months…and we live in the same city :)
To communication we use (pretty much exclusively):
- telephone
- email
- the web (to show work in progress)
These tools are simple, tried, tested and true…and for a team of six, they manage the load effectively.
I’m curious to know what Premiere Global Services provides that something like iChat AV does not.
It’s nice to see other “virtual” organizations out there. Our company, EBSQ, LLC, has always worked this way, and it’s helpful to see what tools other folks are using since we’re always on the lookout for better ways to improve efficiency, communication, and in general, keeping us all motivated and on the same page.
Currently, we use email, IM, an internal feed of site processes so we can track events in real time, and Basecamp. We also try to do some face time once or twice a year. While I personally like Basecamp and feel it keeps us more organized, I know our programmers would like a more robust tool where they can do collaborative coding more easily. Any recommendations out there?
I just wanted to comment on working spaces. I’ve recently discovered Kinkos. I subscribed to the T-Mobile hotspot service and bring everything I need (inlcuding power strip) to their computer centers. It’s way cheaper than a coffee shop and I stay for as long as I need (sometimes over ten hours when I get into that devTrance thing) and none of the staff even bat an eye. It’s even better if I need to print or get something ready for a client, since I’m already there.
Another thing that has proven to be a invaluable resource for our team (we are all remote as well) is leasing our own dedicated server for dev and staging purposes. This gives us a true customizable environment to work as we need.
I hope that this is a glimpse into the future! Great job, and thanks for sharing how you operate in basics.
Rex
7 Minutes with Rex Dixon (cyberears.com) – http://www.cyberears.com/index.php/Show/audio/157
Technically Speaking (blog) – http://rexdixon.wordpress.com
7 Minutes with Rex Dixon (clickcaster.com) – http://clickcaster.com/rex-dixon
I mainly use email and IM to communicate with my partner and freelancers, that we occasionally work with. I would like to know more about tools that can increase online productivity.
Our company has worked this way since it was formed just over 3 years ago, and we have built a lot of the tools we use to make it work. But we are a small company, the big revolution will be when big companies start to work in this way. They currently seem to have major trust issues with letting their staff work how they want, understandable I guess… but surely unnecessary.
We treat our staff in much the same way we treat our freelancers, giving them projects to complete with deadlines as appropriate. Our staff seem to produce more inspirational work, and the moral is always high, which we attribute to the freedom and trust bestowed upon them.
I’d like to think that the same would work for big companies, but I wonder if the trust element only works because of the close bonds that form between the workers in a small business.
Amie Gillingham says;
“While I personally like Basecamp and feel it keeps us more organized, I know our programmers would like a more robust tool where they can do collaborative coding more easily. Any recommendations out there?”
We use Basecamp too. But for managing development use Trac – http://trac.edgewall.org/. Before the move to Basecamp we used eGroupware and Gforge.
Joe