Running Remote

Matthew Barby is the Director of Acquisition for Hubspot. Matt joins us to chat about how Hubspot is in the process of creating its own remote culture - a process that’s been started as the company has grown. In fact, this past summer, Matt tweeted about the entire company going remote for an entire week to see what they’d learn from it. In this episode, we’ll discuss those outcomes, as well as other strategies and tactics that Matthew and Hubspot are developing as the company moves towards a more effective and flexible, remote workforce. So let’s get started!  

Daphnée Laforest is the Product Manager for Enterprise at Human Made. A WordPress development agency that brings open source to big publishers and enterprise-level clients. Daphnée joins us to share how Human Made has built and managed a remote team from the very beginning, growing from 20 to 60 employees based around the world. In this episode, we’ll dive into some key tactics and strategies around how Human Made has approached building and scaling their remote culture - something that’s been ingrained in the company’s culture from the very beginning. So let’s get to it!

Courtney Seiter is the Director of People at Buffer, a social media management platform. In this episode, Courtney shares with us how a culture of experimentation is driving the future of work at Buffer. Peek inside this very transparent company, from salaries to hiring practices, to the frameworks that drive their unique remote working culture and their goal of building “the future of work”. Courtney shares some of the top learnings and insights as she’s helped scale the company from 15 to more than 70 employees. So let’s get started!

Wade Foster is the co-founder & CEO of Zapier, a simple automation platform. In this episode, Wade shares how Zapier was remote from the beginning since it started as a side project and then became a small startup that was short on access to talent and other resources - so the only avenue was to hire smart people in different cities. Now as a team that’s nearing 100 people, Wade shares some of the different growth milestones and what tactics and strategies they needed to re-evaluate along the way in order to continue building an effective remote culture. But as we’ll see, it’s something that’s still being created. So let’s get started!

Ben Sarrazin is the iOS Platform Lead at Trov, a platform that is revolutionizing the way people protect the things they care about. Trov has raised over $87M dollars over several rounds and has many of its team members working remotely as they expand operations internationally. Ben heads up the iOS development team, and as we’ll hear in this episode, he’s embraced and helped continue to push the unique culture within that specific team and how they share it with the rest of the company. So let’s get started!

Diego Bejarano is the co-founder of Wifi Tribe, a community of driven creatives and entrepreneurs who travel the world and work from anywhere! In this episode, we’ll dive into what it’s like building a remote company that enables other nomads and remote workers to travel the world while building their companies. Diego talks to us about that challenges of building and managing a remote team - something he’s currently doing himself - while also trying to create the right community of members to make sure the entire experience is positive and productive for everyone. There are tons of insights and lessons here that will help you build a better remote business, manage a remote team, or create a new outlook on what’s possible for your professional life. So let’s get to it!

Andy Tryba is the CEO of Crossover and is on a mission to help companies find the very best talent on the globe. Andy discusses his vision for remote work and creating culture among his distributed team. 

When Natalie was just a temp, she literally "ran into" the founder of the company in the hall. In a quick conversation, she relayed the inefficiencies she saw within the company. He enlisted her to help fix these issues and now she's CEO.  Natalie is a champion of "Anywhere" work - listen up as she details how she runs a distributed team and creates culture. 

Articulate makes award-winning course creation apps for large companies. Lucy details how Articulate serves their customers with a fully distributed team. Listen in as she gives us a deep dive into Articulate's remote culture. 

When Peldi Guilizzoni decided he wanted to be a solopreneur, he didn't realize he was about to build something that was going to be so successful. Scaling to 3000 customers on his own, he decided he needed to build a team.  Once he realized he needed to bring on team members, remote was the only way to go. Listen as Peldi describes some of his most unique challenges. 

Flexjobs is arguably one of the largest job portals for remote workers. Sara Sutton, CEO of Flexjobs brings us through the evolution of Flexjobs and the insights and trends she's seen through the evolution of distributed teams.  

Brook Schaaf started his career at a very young Zappos as an affiliate manager. Now, he owns and runs FMTC (For Me To Compete) a company that streamlines affiliate marketing.  Brook is very data-driven and takes a fresh approach to distributed teams. Listen in as he describes how he builds culture within his company. 

Lynze Ballay helps workers transform their current role into a remote position. This is a very insightful interview, as her approach is to help workers go abroad, but to also help companies with global mobility.  Lynze has a lot of amazing insights on shifts in the market and what companies are looking for. Listen in as she educates us on the foreign environment ahead. 

"Data is the new oil." Pablo Hoffman is the co-founder of Scraping Hub, a data scraping tool for developers.  Scraping Hub is so distributed, that Pablo and his business partner live in totally different countries and have only met in person a handful of times. Pablo outlines how he and his team run their business with a team over 100+ remote workers. 

Zeni Bandy started her remote career by taking jobs on Upwork - she was able to parlay her love of nutrition and customer support into the 2nd hire at Kettle & Fire. Now she heads up their distributed team and spearheads their culture. As a part of a fast-growing startup, Zeni gives us a glimpse into their day-to-day remote team collaboration.

William Beutler started his business with a fully remote team. As they grew and started to hire more team members, they embraced the remote aspect and found better talent as a result. With online tools and a yearly team summit - William and his team are able to have a strong company culture. 

Michelle Ridsdale is the Chief People Officer at Envato, managing over 500 people globally. As the company grew, company culture within their distributed teams became a major focus. Listen as Michelle describes what Envato does to keep their teams close and working seamlessly. 

Based in Bulgaria, DevriX is a Wordpress Development Agency whose team is 3/4 remote. Mario started his company with a fully remote team and brought on more employees locally. Listen in as Mario describes the challenges of having a remote team as well as the surprising advantages he's noticed. 

Bryant, along with his partner Chris, have built a digital agency for a very niche industry: Urban Planning & Real Estate. Bryant lives in Minneapolis and Chris lives in Denver. Bryant outlines the advantages and the challenges of working remotely not only with your team, but with your partner. 

Carrie and her husband founded Greenback Expat Tax Service after not being able to find an accountant that understood how to file taxes for American Expats. One of the challenges she's noticed is remote workers work TOO hard. Listen in as she describes how her team works together and creates culture. 

Liam Martin went from pro-figure skater to building a business with hundreds of remote employees. Pioneering remote work, Time Doctor and Staff.com not only serve employers looking to empower their remote teams, but also digging into incredible research around the movement.  Listen in as Liam gives his unique perspective on culture building, battling remote employee loneliness and why he has an Operating Manual on himself. 

With team members distributed throughout 25 different countries, Doist has an innovative approach to their remote work teams. From 40 holiday days to an involved hiring process, Brenna gives us a glimpse of how things are done inside the culture of Todoist. 

Jamie Masters has perfected the processes needed to create an efficient remote team. Her approach to leading a remote team is very much about personal responsibility. Every challenge she's faced with remote workers has been solved by taking responsibility for it and then creating creative solutions.  Listen in to hear some fascinating insights from Jaime on how she cultivates culture within her team. 

Brian Dixon, along with two other remote co-founders, run Hope*Writers, a membership community for authors. Brian tells us the interesting ways they work with their founding teams as well as the employees.  With a focus on collaboration rather than competition, Brian and team are hyper-focused on culture. Brian's team works hard on the community culture and it helps to solidify their team culture. Listen in as Brian gives us some really different ways they cultivate their remote work culture. 

EOFire is a daily podcast hosted by John Lee Dumas, online courses and masterminds. Kate Erickson is the backbone of the business for all things systems, processes and organization. Running a multi-million dollar business with a team of 5 distributed all over the world is a big task - one she's mastered.  Listen in as she describes how she and John have grown EOFire with a distributed team. 

David Henzel, founder of MaxCDN, gives us a peek inside their company on how they create culture and clear communication. Anything from pushup challenges to hiring in pods, they have a 360 approach to their remote team. 

Laura Roeder, founder of the social media scheduler Meet Edgar, chats with us from Brighton UK. Listen in as she outlines how they create a dynamic company culture while having a fully distributed team. 

Ho Yin Cheung started a social media growth company Riotly, and after attending the Running Remote Conference, was inspired to create Remo.co. Through having a distributed team, Ho Yin talks about the importance of empathy and connection with his remote workers so that company culture remains strong.

From Junk Removal to Adwords - Kyle realized he was actually doing more marketing than junk removal and decided to help others with their marketing. That's how AdLeg was born. With his fully remote team, Kyle gives us a behind the scenes look at how he services clients while his team is fully distributed. 

At the age of 14, Cody and a friend decided to start a hosting company. After losing his parents, going into foster care, starting and selling companies and authoring a book - Cody now has Support Ninja offering backend support for startups.  Based in the Philippines, Cody tells us how he manages his remote team with intentional culture. 

Allyn Reid founded a publishing house, a conference for entrepreneurs, a leadership development company and just launched a documentary film - all while having a remote team.  Listen in as Allyn talks leading with our souls rather than our brains and how we can engage others to move our businesses further. 

Immy came to the United States from the UK and had to start over. Becoming a mentee of Bob Proctor, Immy started a career in marketing. Webmetrix is an SEO company that uses remote workers all over the world.  Listen in as Immy talks about the number one reason he is successful: helping his team reach their dreams and goals. 

Brianna Carney was traveling through the Philippines when she noticed that the workforce there was incredible. Her first hire became her co-founder after she realized that there were top performers all over the world. CrewBloom was created to shine a spotlight on the top outsourced talent all over the world to give companies top talent and create amazing lives for their seasoned workers.   

Josh Forti created The Think Different Theory to help understand the mind and how it plays into our success or failure. With a focus on asking fresh and interesting questions - Josh shares his insights with his audience. Implementing his think different theory with his audience was natural, but he also uses it with his distributed team. Listen in as Josh shares how he onboards his employees and how he keeps everyone thinking differently. 

Aimee Tariq is the best selling author of the book A Life With Health. Battling a debilitating illness, Aimee had to become her own doctor to heal herself. From there, Aimee has dedicated her life to helping others with their health. With a particular love of helping entrepreneurs, Aimee and her distributed team work to bringing awareness of health to business owners. 

Lauren Gordon left the little midwest town she grew up in with $500 and went to Australia. She now runs a few online businesses all with a remote team. Building culture is a top priority for Lauren as her team is scattered all over the globe. Listen in as she outlines her team culture - rooted in positivity. 

Cyle comes from generations of entrepreneurs in his family - and he knew he'd follow in the same footsteps. As the founder of Your Online Advisors, Cyle is running his distributed team in a process driven way. By spending the time to create the right processes, Cyle has saved his company and team thousands of dollars and hours. Listen in as Cyle explains his methodology. 

Karla Singson started college at age 15 and graduated at 19. Building several businesses, Karla has perfected her skills in hiring a remote team. Her hands off approach is what she attributes to high trust within her team. Her company helps entrepreneurs and business owners find the best remote workers in the Philippines. 

Serial entrepreneur, Hiten Shah, is the co-founder of several SaaS companies including FYI, Crazy Egg, QuickSprout and KISSmetrics. Listen in as Hiten describes how his 16 years of managing a remote team lends itself to some brilliant ways he's navigating the changing landscape of remote work. From setting expectations to defining the work environment - Hiten describes in detail his method for finding a great fit. Download the episode and check out more at www.runningremote.com

Debbie Archangeles is the founder of The Offbeat Life helps people find remote work positions that work for them. Being location independent has always been very important to Debbie and she wanted to help others find the best way for them.  Listen in as Debbie tells us her journey into remote work and how she helps others. Download the episode and check out more at www.runningremote.com

Al Chen was a superfan of Coda before he came onboard as a solutions architect for the company. As a founder, now a remote team member of Coda, Al tell us how remote work is helping him work for the company he loves and how the company he loves helps him work remotely. Download the episode and check out more at www.runningremote.com

Shauna Moran started her career at Shopify and noticed that the landscape of remote work was changing. A curious person, Shauna is very passionate about how emotional intelligence plays a big role in remote work teams.  Now, Shauna works with companies to execute on their values, creating effective company cultures and helping teams align around their goals. Download the episode and check out more at www.runningremote.com.

Alex Kistenev, CEO and co-founder of Standuply, has a fully distributed team to run his business. Based in Siberia, Alex describes how he collaborates with his team through multiple timezones as well as creating better communication amongst everyone. Download the episode now and learn more at www.runningremote.com

When Springboard Retail started the process of moving their in-house team to a remote team, VP of People Jennifer Raines Loring navigated the transition with a lot of iteration, feedback and fresh ideas.  Listen in as Jennifer describes how employee feedback was the key driver in making the transition to a fully remote team a successful one. Read more at www.runningremote.com

When Jon VerLee created Breeze Church Management Software, he didn't realize the thrill he would get when watching his first remote employee succeed. Now with 70 employees, Jon feels tremendous honor stewarding his remote team.  Listen in as Jon describes how he on-boards his team, the strategies he deployed to increase sales and how he builds company culture. Read more at www.runningremote.com

Amir Salihefendic, founder of Doist, started Doist to as a remote first company. Not only does Doist have a remote team, but they support remote teams. Amir details how important hiring is for their team and why trust is the most important aspect of their hiring process.  Listen in as Amir talks about hiring, process and the Doist culture. Read more at www.runningremote.com  

Sahin Boydas, the founder of RemoteTeam.com has a unique way of looking at all things remote and business. RemoteTeam is a backend software to help manage your remote team and Sahin has a great story. From hiring a comedian to write their website content to how they build culture, you won't want to miss Sahin's outlook on how he manages all things remote. 

Kean Graham, founder of Monetize More shares his insights in creating a very large distributed team all over the globe. Starting his career as a growth hacker, he eventually created a way to help companies monetize their web traffic. On a hike up Mt. Machu Picchu, Kean realized he wanted more freedom and came up with the idea for his company. Listen in as Kean tells his story and how he manages a large remote team. www.runningremote.com

Always fascinating, Frank Cottle, the CEO of Alliance Virtual Offices has been working and running remote teams since the '80s. Frank has decades of experience and insight on the evolution of working remotely. Listen in as he details how he manages his team and what he does to create culture. www.runningremote.com

With over a decade of experience, Darren Murph joined GitLab to head up all things remote. With over 1200 people and no offices, Darren follows a "handbook first" approach to manage it all. Listen in as Darren dives deep into how GitLab manages their distributed team. 

Today we are talking to Michael Mizrahi who spent much of his career at Uber, beginning at the startup in New York in 2013 and continuing to build a globally scaled Community Operations organization out of San Francisco through 2018. Now, he is Head of Operations at Levels where he is running business operations, keeping finances in check, and managing people operations and culture initiatives. Michael will share Levels' asynchronous and remote principles which many other startups have learned from.

Raj Singh is the co-founder and CEO of Loop Team and has more than 20 years of experience building products. This Silicon Valley veteran sold his last company, Tempo AI, to Salesforce. This podcast focuses on how to create a remote work environment that facilitates the type of in-person interactions that lead to business growth.

Peter Rooney is the chief revenue officer for Canadian Payroll Services. This company was office based until COVID-19 came along and now works 100% remotely itself. In this podcast, Peter talks about the Canadian market in particular and how to make global hiring accessible.

Sharon Koifman is the founder of DistantJob with more than 15 years of experience in the tech, recruitment, & HR world. In this podcast, this interesting thinker will discuss the talent side of remote work and how to promote worker creativity and a better quality of life.

Daniel Ramsey is the founder and CEO of MyOutDesk, a company with more than 13 years of experience helping CEOs and entrepreneurs around the world grow virtually. In this podcast, he discusses how a blended model can allow you to grow your business, save time, and lower operating costs through virtual solutions.

We have a returning guest on our show today - Sahin Boydas, CEO & Founder of Remote Team - an all-in-one Remote OS that powers remote teams operations. This time, Sahin shares his own fascinating story - from selling a massive technology business in Turkey to arriving in Silicon valley with almost nothing in his pocket. Sahin talks about his last 10 year's experience in the Bay Area and how he sees companies are evolving in the remote age. Enjoy a high-energy conversation with one of the visionaries in the remote work space.

This week Danny interviews Liam Martin - co-founder and CMO of Time Doctor and co-organizer of Running Remote Conference.  They discuss Running Remote’s survival and victory in this emergency situation when all their in-person events were cancelled.  Running remote has always been able to gather absolute top innovators in the remote work space at their events. Here's what Liam talks about it in this interview - “That type of access is very, very rare. I remember interviewing Dimitri of GitLab directly for the first Running Remote. And I thought to myself that guy's a billionaire, pretty crazy.” Listen to this candid conversation as Danny and Liam discuss how the world has changed in 2020 and how remote work has been a key part of this revolution. Also you will enjoy some of Liam’s joyful experiences interviewing billionaires at Running Remote events.

Our guests this week are marketing wizards from the mid-west, business partners as well as life partners - Mike Grinberg and Gaby Israel Grinberg. Mike and Gaby are the co-founders of Proofpoint Marketing - an all remote B2B Digital Marketing Agency. In this episode, we talk about the ideal home setup for a family working from home, how to balance personal life and business life, and the transition that the marketing leaders must go through in these days of remote. Tune in to this episode to learn from this dynamic couple who runs a successful remote business.

This week, our guest is a worthy adversary, if you will, and a podcast host himself, Aydin Mirzaee, the host of the Supermanagers Podcast. More importantly, he’s focused on changing how companies conduct meetings worldwide via his company, Fellow.app, where he’s the CEO and co-founder. In this episode, we talk about what a supermanager is, what a high-performing team is (and how they’re created), and how meetings should and can run.  Things are changing, so we need to look around and re-adjust to our surroundings. Tune in to learn about the future of meetings.

On the Running Remote podcast, we’ve talked to individuals from so many different areas of business. But, this is our first conversation with a finance nerd. Our guest this week is Wayne Richard, COO of Bean Ninjas, a Xero bookkeeping business for online businesses based in Tucson, Arizona. He jumped from a corporate role to building a company that works on asynchronous collaboration. In this episode, we talk about what financial support a small company needs, how Bean Ninjas began, what the recession looks like, and how remote work integrates with raising a family of five. Tune in to learn more about the financial side of remote work while Wayne shares his experience making it all work.

Our guest this week is Sondre Rasch, co-founder and CEO of SafetyWing. SafetyWing offers travel, medical, and health insurance to nomads and remote companies around the world. Sondre and his team are innovators in the digital nomad space, offering global insurance to remote workers. In this episode, we talk about how the pandemic has affected their customers and nomads in general, how their product roadmap has evolved over time, and the importance of infrastructure in the remote world. Tune in to learn about the potential of remote work, Sondre’s journey, and what he and his company are doing for remote work.

With hundreds of millions of people working remotely for the first time, companies want to know if they’re doing this right. Our guest this week, will help you find out if you are. Carlos Escutia joins us from San Diego, California. He’s the CEO and founder of Growrk Remote, which launched operations in January, offering smart home office management for remote teams.  In this episode, we talk about issues that are popping up with the home workplace, what companies should be considered in terms of remote employee safety and workers’ compensation, and how companies can build solutions. Tune in to learn how to take care of your employees and prioritize them—they’re your greatest asset.

Our guest this week, talking to us all the way from India, is Rahul Aggarwal, the founder and CEO of the freelance design platform, Designhill. If the future is freelance, Designhill is a company at the forefront of understanding what the future of work is like. In this episode, we talk about how the more than 200,000 designers and artists on Designhill from all over the world are really advancing freelancing globally, how trust in freelancers has evolved over the years, what the importance of cross-cultural breakthroughs for any business is, and what the freelancing gig economy looks like post-pandemic.  Freelancing has exploded over the past few years as trust in the work they provide continues to grow. Tune in to find out more.

This week, we’re happy to have one of the more reputable names in the remote work world as our guest. Ho Yin Cheung is the founder and CEO of Remo, the virtual event platform. In this episode, we talk about Remo’s past, how it came to pivot to what it is today, and its explosive growth in 2020—not just regionally, but also internationally. We go on to touch on a number of different issues that can arise when it comes to scaling remote companies. As Ho Yin is joining us from Taiwan, we use this opportunity to talk about the differences in the pandemic between Asia and the West.  Diversity in thought and approach can build better products. Tune in to find out what it means to build a truly cross-cultural team.

A well-known name in Running Remote circles and a star from our Running Remote event in November 2020, our guest today is co-founder and CEO of CoScreen, Till Pieper. The winner of the 2020 Hottest Remote Startup contest, CoScreen helps coworkers be more efficient, reduce misunderstandings, and, most importantly, get on the same page. In this episode, we talk about what the founders were trying to accomplish by designing their software and its development process. We also talk about lessons managers can learn, the power of deep collaboration, and the future of remote work.  Tune in to find out how fostering remote relationships can make the newly remote world work more smoothly.

This week, our guest is Karen Mangia, vice president of Customer and Market Insights at Salesforce. Karen published two books in 2020, “Listen Up: How to Tune in to Customers” and “Working from Home: Making the New Normal work for you.”   In this podcast, Karen discusses various factors in determining policy regarding working remotely, including how the employer can collaborate with employees in creating a community to focus on common goals.

This week's guest, Forest Key is the CEO of Voodle, who wants to help teams build and share knowledge using short videos.   Forest is a serial entrepreneur with a passion for innovation in UX, video, and storytelling software platforms.    In this interview, he discusses his personal experience in transforming his company into a completely remote environment. He stresses that it is vital to make sure there is equity - making sure that workers are provided with the tools they need to do their jobs properly, wherever they are.

This week Danny Page is talking to the Running Remote's veteran, Mariano Suarez-Battan who is building an imaginative cloud MURAL recently evaluated at $2B. In this interview, he talks about the company's hypergrowth in the past few years and how remote structure contributed to it.