#142 | Remote work & startups

Is very long-distance a sound idea?

“Not I, nor anyone else, can travel that road for you. You must travel it for yourself.”

— Walt Whitman

“The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.”

— Saint Augustine

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We ran Yokeru from abroad for a few years. To fill the gap, we used zoom like everyone else. But zoom is a weak substitute, and we certainly felt distance’s distorting influence. Should startups start remotely?

We began with a broad hypothesis: 

It’s good to ask vulnerable people if they feel okay. Asking can be done automatically by phone call.

These two sentences were the extent of our business planning. I read somewhere that all great business decisions are made with gut instinct and poor ones with Excel. Our story invalidates the aphorism; it was neither a great business decision nor did we use Excel.

With our gut, we got to work. We were novices in every sense. I didn’t know what “SaaS” meant. Even so, we secured several local authority contracts through luck and perseverance. And with these, the fog of our ignorance began to lift. The silky darkness of unknowing was swept up. The sun was rising…

This was 2020, and early wins create excitement. There is a “this is it” moment; it’s satisfying when something you’ve built is actually used. We said goodbye to our foetal darkness and, in doing so, unearthed the surrounding market landscape. Alas, we realised we weren’t in a luscious fruit-filled orchard full of ripe customers, ready for picking, but in a kind of startup wilderness. Every startup arrives here for a time; most never leave.

Thirsty for progress, we were exposed to the beating heat of our monthly burn. Opportunities, like mirages, stalked us — always just out of reach. The fruit, if there was any, was limp and small. Parched, we ate what we could.

It was Lockdown; we couldn’t see our customers during these hungry times of cold calling and iteration. People had retreated to their spare bedrooms to work. (Many haven’t left.) Therefore, in a brief respite between lockdowns and being unable to visit customers IRL, we moved to Turkey to see if we could manage life there. It turned out we could.

The perennial project with a startup is understanding the customers’ problems. If you know the problem, you’ve done the hardest work. From a sales perspective, you’re doing well if you can state the problem back to your customer. We learn through getting feedback, so feedback is the corollary lifeblood of any new venture.

Being abroad, we relied on zoom for our feedback. Despite promising to “enable efficient collaboration”, zoom is not a portal but a brick wall. This wall stops the long, rambling, accidental conversations needed to understand the person behind the screen. A digital divide hides 90% of potential threads of conversation. Worse, when someone checks their email mid-convo, it kills the flow. And we all check our email on zoom. Admittedly, zoom does open doors – everyone has time to “hop on a call” – but it also disguises the truth, slows buy-in and limits progress. 

Then we made things harder for ourselves. From Istanbul, we moved to Kenya. On the Kenyan coast, tanned and sweaty, I remember pitching for contracts and muting our audio when a call to prayer began overhead. During an early evening call, large bats assaulted our flat. While I extolled the virtues of integrated care systems, Mont chased the bats out and closed the shutters. 

However, distance from the problem, whether physical or intellectual (we were both), has one advantage. From the outset, we had no experience in the adult social care sector. We began with a blindfold. This was a heavy hessian blindfold, well tied and uncomfortable, made of raw ignorance about the industry. 

We maintained no preconceptions that would have invariably manifested as misconceptions. This is the first time anyone on the team has started a software business. Consequently, we approached problems from a marginally First Principles perspective: “Why is it important to proactively check on vulnerable people?”, “Who can pay for these checks?”, “Where are the savings to the system?”, “Who’s the beneficiary of the service?”

With previous experience, we wouldn’t have built our earliest products on no-code platforms. Nor would we have stuck to our knitting concerning the concept itself (others have failed before). Without sunk costs, we had the luxury of experimenting, building and selling anything aligned with our (albeit limited) two-sentence business plan (above). There was a kernel of opportunity somewhere; we just had to dig like pigs. 

The initial idea is always wrong, so it’s best not to overthink it. The idea evolves on the grindstone of feedback; we should avoid barriers to feedback. Slow markets, and remote work, are such barriers. 

Time in a market allows you to learn, learning generates growth, and growth solves all problems. Surviving is the aim of the early-stage startup. All other things being equal, it’s better to be in the room with customers (which is why Mont moved to Northern Ireland for three months). Early-stage startups are an IRL activity; going from zero to one is best done in person. One to “n” — scaling — can be done online

Even with the added complexity of working remotely, our experiences working abroad were invaluable. Having never before travelled, I developed an appreciation of new cultures, and made wonderful friends.

There is a counterfactual world where the business grew faster. And there are counterfactual worlds where it ended. On reflection, I say optimise not for speed but for the experience. Commit to the long term, and stay confident you’ll work it out. And if you can work abroad, screw the inefficiency of it and taste the experience.

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My week in books 

The Romantic by William Boyd. This is a beautiful story of Cashel Greville Ross, a Waterloo veteran, traveller, author and adventurer. Big thanks to Hector H for the gift!

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Live well,

Hector

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