We interviewed Chris Neumann (The Growth Hacker). He is the founder and CEO of CROmetrics. CROmetrics performs A/B testing for a large number of companies. It provides the marketing, product, design and engineering know-how, to develop the team’s performance. They’ll map out a strategy for optimizing the website and the customer research. CROmetrics is a team of about 50 people and is distributed all through the US.

In this episode we talked to Chris about, Conversion Rate Optimization “CRO”, why is CROmetrics fully remote, instilling company culture, the hiring process, their tools, and how to give feedback.

Show highlights? Culture is one of the most important things for Chris. As CEO of CROmetrics, he believes that culture is on the biggest leverages to maintain the company. Chris gave us a couple of tips on how to create and maintain a culture, at least something that is working in CROmetrics… 1) Work on feedbacks, 2) Book clubs, 3) One-on-ones, 4) Yearly retreats

In this episode, we interviewed Seth Brown. He is the Chief Operating Officer at Lullabot. Lullabot is a strategy, design, and Drupal development company that have created amazing websites for large-scale publishers. Lullabot was founded in 2006 and has been a remote company since day one.

In this episode we talked to Seth about, Lullabot, running day-to-day operations with Lullabot, remote work transition and PEOs, the differences between collocated and remote, benefits to the environment, employees at Lullabot. We also discussed about improving culture and communication, his mistakes and what he learned, and the challenges that haven't been solved yet.

Show highlights? According to Seth, a lot of the growth as a distributed company is figuring out how to scale communication. Seth suggests that big distributed companies need highly intentional communication. Communication starts having to be more hierarchical, where you need to have layers of management and different systems.

In this episode, we interviewed Josh. He is the founder of Baremetrics and host of Founder Chats. Baremetrics is a revenue analytics platform that helps subscription companies get inside information about their revenue and customers. Baremetrics is formed by a small team (8 people) spread across the globe doing big things for approximately 800+ customers.

In this episode we talked to Josh about, the benefits of remote work, challenges and what is Josh doing to solve them, scaling a remote company, hiring remote A-players, and preferred tools.

Show highlights? So what are advantages of working remotely according to Josh? Mainly, autonomy and flexibility. But there are also drawbacks… such as communication hassles and lack of human interaction (isolation). When hiring, Josh looks specifically for three traits, have remote work experience, be an exceptional text communicator, and to be a builder and creator.

In this episode, we interviewed Fred Perrotta. He is the Co-Founder & Remote CEO of Tortuga Backpacks. The company that creates amazing carry-on-size backpacks, specially designed for long-term urban trips. Tortuga Backpacks is a fully remote team, with nine employees working from home. Most of them are based in the US, one in Canada, and one in China.

In this episode we talked to Fred about, their decision to go 100% remote, establishing trust, autonomy, the benefits of working remotely, challenges of an e-commerce remote business, communication, lack of standardization, Instilling culture, and their preferred tools.

For Fred, trust plays a big part when hiring new people. He believes that trust is built by doing the actual work. Fred doesn’t see the employees sitting for 10 hours working on something, he only sees the results. There are three “remote” challenges that Fred is always working on: physical product development, flow of information, lack of standardization.

In this episode, we interviewed Peldi Guilizzoni. He is the Founder & CEO of Balsamiq. Balsamiq helps you to go from ideas to prototypes in no time. It is basically a rapid wireframing tool that reproduces the experience of sketching on a whiteboard. Balsamiq is a fully remote-optimized company with their main headquarters located in Bologna, Italy. Everybody working at Balsamiq, works from home.

In this episode we talked to Peldi about, why did Balsamiq choose to go remote, legal realities of the virtual world, tips for founders, how Balsamiq solves the isolation problem, and preferred tools for working remotely.

Show highlights? Peldi started hiring A-class candidates all over the world but soon he was faced with a wall of legal realities. To have employees located somewhere else, pay taxes at the same time and do payroll, is the right thing to do if you want to protect your employees and your company. At Balsamiq, they work really hard to fight isolation and loneliness.

In this episode, we interviewed Alexis Kingsbury . He is an experienced business consultant and serial entrepreneur. Alexis is the co-founder at Spidergap and founder of Parentpreneur Accelerator.

Spidergap is an “employee-friendly 360-degree feedback tool”, typically used by mid-large organizations. Alexis has been running Spidergap for about 7 years with a completely remote team of about 8-10 members dispersed all around the world. Parentpreneur Accelerator is aimed at helping parents who are looking to start a new business.

In this episode we talked to Alexis about his ventures, his morning routine, working in a home-office when kids are around, his hiring process, advice for founders, and his favorite reading material.

Show highlights? According to Alexis, it is really important to block specific times during the week for work, family, exercise, and be strict about it. Because working as an entrepreneur in a remote environment can leave you working extra hours around the clock.

In this episode, we interviewed Richard Heby. He is a creative writer founding editor of Beechwood Review and Marketing Manager at Liquid Space. Liquid Space is one of the largest office network platforms in the world. It provides flexible working space, from an hour in a meeting room, to a day pass in a co-working place, and up to 3 years in a long-term.

The nature of Liquid Space is to promote working remotely. They help their customers work anywhere; usually “Digital Nomads” but they also do it themselves. They are distributed across the globe and use their own products sometimes.

In this episode, we talked to Richard about, Flexibility, Workspace Freedom, Autonomy, Communication, Deep Work, Time-zones, Transparency, and Tools.

Richard believes in the full flexibility that remote work provides. He is able to change physical location from time to time but believes that you do need an office in order to have deep focus.

Visit us at https://trackly.com/

In this episode, we interviewed Melissa Ng. She is a Digital Nomad, Product UX designer, and Entrepreneur. She is the founder of the location-independent UX design studio, Melewi (@melewi). Melewi designs UX products for big companies such as McDonald's, Samsung, Visa, Citibank, etc. Today, Melewi is formed by a team of 8 employees spread all across 7 different countries.

In this episode we talked to Melissa about, her decision to go remote, psychology & isolation, hiring for culture, preferred toolset, lessons learned, and advice for founders.

Show highlights? Melissa has built a remote team that shares similar values. It is so much easier to work with a team that shares values and culture. From the very beginning, Melissa has been very protective in order to maintain and grow their amazing culture. The candidates don’t have to be extremely skilled at what they do; they only need to be a cultural fit.

Visit us at https://trackly.com/

In this episode, we interviewed Nick Francis. He is the co-Founder and CEO of HelpScout. This company makes customer support software for over 8,000 businesses all over the world. They are fully remote and work with a team of 75 people distributed around the world.

In this episode we talked to Nick about, what inspired them to go remote, on-boarding new people, mistakes when hiring, letting go of someone remotely, remote culture, scaling remote companies, tools, and autonomy.

Show highlights? Nick, knew that there were going to be some trade-offs when going remote, but the massive advantage in terms of talents was totally worth it. Nick hires people that are better than him, so he can trust them to do the work. That way of thinking is even part of the culture; every time they hire a new employee... the new employee has to hire somebody better.

Visit us at https://trackly.com/

In this episode, we interviewed Dylan Schiemann, known Dojo, Comet and SitePen. SitePen is a fully remote company with +40 employees working mostly in US and UK. Dylan decided to go 100% remote in 2007. The team had good engineers located around the world and wanted to hire new ones that didn’t want to relocate. They saw the benefits of remote work and joined in.

In this episode, we talked to Dylan about, the benefits of going fully remote, creating great culture remote work/life balance, how SitePen deals with communication, technology tools, and the challenges that they face every time.

Show highlights? For Dylan it is critical to put a lot of emphasis on the remote team communication. He deals with this, by clustering time-zones, and creating amazing documentation. Dylan thinks is very important to maintain culture in the remote company. How he does this? Tune in to learn more and visit us at https://trackly.com/

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