3 States, 2 Timezones, 1 Startup.

Alex Siminoff
Jul 10, 2017 · 6 min read

Alone. That’s how it can feel working with a remote team, sometimes. In fact, I've never actually met one of our co-founders, Matt. And I was only at school with Marlon for a semester before he graduated.

But we still launched Impulse a few weeks ago.

The Three Amigos

You would never guess how our co-founders, Marlon and Matt met: through a little website called Craigslist. Yup, Craigslist.

Marlon posted on Craigslist to “cak computer gigs” with the title “iOS Developer Needed”. In the latter half of his junior year in high school, a kid from Michigan responded. We’re still curious as to what caused Matt to check Akron’s Craigslist for iOS Developers or to even contact Marlon. Nevertheless, the two have been making apps for the last several years. Impulse is their latest and great collaboration.

I met Marlon through PSE, a student organization at The University of Akron. Marlon was a senior and about to start his last semester. I had just arrived and was eager to join a business organization. PSE is a business fraternity and, during recruiting, Marlon and I hit it off. I was ecstatic. I looked up to Marlon. He was confident, slightly cocky, and interested in a majority of the things I was. Perfect. But then he moved to Colorado, and more recently, relocated to San Francisco.

Here we are at a Big/Little Bowling Event (10 points if you can guess where Marlon and I are)

So now you’re probably wondering how Matt and Alex met. As I mentioned, we haven’t. I see Matt via appear.in, where we hold meetings, but that’s about it. Matt and I hope to meet soon, but who knows when that will happen. Marlon and Matt have actually only hung out in person a handful of times, with Matt recently visiting Colorado for a week. Matt’s also going to San Francisco to hangout for awhile this summer, that lucky punk.

Each one of us lives in a different state, which makes growing a startup even harder. But that doesn't stop us from getting shit done.

MapChart

The First Days…

Boy did it take time for us to all gel. It took Matt and I weeks to get along. I had a good connection with Marlon, as did Marlon and Matt. But Matt didn’t seem too sure about me. It’s already hard to work with someone for the first time, but it’s even more of a challenge when you’ve never met in person. And still haven’t.

A huge part of it was I had no idea what I was doing. This is my first experience working with a startup, but I’ve always dreamt of this opportunity. I immediately learned I had a huge part to play in this and I had to adapt quickly.

It took us weeks to finally start working as a team, but once we did, we started to see progress. We became a better team as time went on, but also as I got to understand my team more. When we were all on the same page, we saw results. We became motivated and hungry.

It’s hard to make everything work, but we have come a long way.

How We Make It Work

Communication is key. When you are working remotely, communication is vital. We are constantly talking to each other via Slack. It’s easily my favorite chat service because of how they organize everything and it’s very customizable. We have separate channels for marketing, design, bugs — you name it — which helps us stay organized and on task.

Source

We also use Trello to stay organized and maintain our focus. Trello is essentially a big whiteboard in the form of a to-do list. We have 3 separate boards: marketing, design, and product. I love Trello for 2 reasons. I can see what I need to get done, and I can see what Matt and Marlon are working on. This is a great tool for teams of all sizes. This also helps us when we do sprints. We usually associate sprints with App Store Updates.

We’ve struggled to find a good video chat tool, but we use appear.in the majority of the time. We’ve tried Skype, HouseParty, and others. Since we can’t meet in person, video is the next best, free alternative. Apple really needs to get on this group FaceTime thing. If you have any other suggestions, please tell us!

Source

Meetings play a huge roll for us. Time differences do us dirty, so we typically meet once a week. That ends up being at night in the east coast, and evening on the west coast. However, we often call one another when we need help or want to collaborate on something. During meetings, we share what we have accomplished during the week, and what we will accomplish in the next week. Then we talk about important topics and anything else that came up during the week. We’re fond of this meeting format so everyone takes responsibility and initiative.

We also just started to have “office hours”. When one of us starts working on Impulse, we drop a message in our meeting channel via Slack and any one can jump into appear.in to join us in working. This doesn’t necessarily mean we’re talking. But it does mean we’re available and conversation can start more naturally. This has proved to be effective in creating a company culture and further collaborating with each other. It’s the closest thing we have to an office.

Invision + Sketch play a huge role in our collaboration, as well. The ability to comment directly on designs, manage by phase (key to the design process), and refer back through previous iterations has proven invaluable. Matt also loves being able to export assets through Invision; I guess it’s tidier in the dev process.

Source

One big one that I haven’t mentioned is iMessage. We use iMessage for casual conversations and that’s every bit as important as Slack. The ability to segment work from play is key to a healthy office environment and, when you’re only talking about work with people, it can quickly become demotivating. You also don’t want to get too silly in the Slack channels, because it takes away from all the important work and makes it easier to get off task. We tend to get off task via iMessage. It’s an easy way for us to stay in touch about the trivial things like: who can take a better sunset picture or how the search feature in iOS Photos app was Not Hotdog before Jian Yang became a celebrity.

We’re always looking for new tools to make working together easier. We’d love to hear what your startup does and any insights you may have for us about collaborating remotely. Hit the little 💚 if your heart grew 3 sizes today, and don’t forget to download Impulse on iOS!

AskImpulse

Get Feedback, Fast.

Alex Siminoff

Written by

"Either write something worth reading, or do something worth writing." -Ben Franklin

AskImpulse

Get Feedback, Fast.

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade