AppStoreHQ isn’t really a virtual company, but it’s close (especially for me): My co-founder and our first employee both work from our office in Seattle, while I work from my apartment in Los Angeles. It’s definitely an adjustment, but I we’re doing well with this set up.
Here are some tips that have helped us over the past year or so:
- Begin by working together. Chris and I spent a few months together in the office in Seattle before I moved to LA. Before that, we spent upwards of a year chatting off and on about business, startups, etc. This time together helped us get used to our styles and understand the primary objectives of the business in a way I’m not sure we could’ve done purely virtually.
- Know when to use various tools. Email is great for things you don’t need a response to immediately. IM is good for getting quick answers to simple questions. Voice is the best for hashing out more elaborate issues or arguments. In-person is the best for long-term strategy and planning. Learn when to use each of these tools and you’ll have a successful virtual startup with great communication.
- Skype video chat is your friend. You’re running a startup, so you probably have a new laptop. It probably has a web cam. Use it. Seriously, Skype video chat is fantastic: being able to see your teammates faces and reactions is an amazing tool for virtual teams. It also has a great Screen Sharing feature to show-off half baked ideas.
- Make sure you’re in-sync with daily video chats. Every morning the AppStoreHQ team logs on to Skype and does a quick video chat. We go over projects in progress, recently completed, and upcoming. We make sure everyone on the team understands what everyone else is working on and how it’s going. This 15 minute video chat is, in my mind, probably the single biggest key to our success working virtually. Getting on the same page every day is so important.
- Make your progress transparent. We use a Google Spreadsheet to keep track of all our projects and where we are in each of our tasks. Keeping that up to date gives everyone, regardless of location, insight into how everyone else is performing and how close each project is to launch.
- Get together in person every once in a while. Once every month or month and a half, I head up to Seattle for a few days and meet face to face with the team. We spend a few hours going over higher level strategy, thinking ahead a few steps. We go out to team lunches. Things we couldn’t otherwise do effectively over email, IM, or Skype.
These tips are simple, but they’ve helped us a ton. You have to be committed to running a startup virtually, but if you are, you can be successful.
