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Ask YC: Telecommuting startup teams?

9 points by thorax ↗ HN
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.

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?

What kind of problems do you foresee for a small distributed team?

9 comments

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

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.

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.

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