Why Founders Should Build a Remote Team
12 points you need to consider
Remote Teams Work.
I know, because I run one. We’re a startup, with 50 people across 20 countries, and our executive team has 4 members working remotely, and 3 in Berlin.
As the technology required to support a remote team improves, and the convenient lifestyle it provides becomes increasingly sought after, more founders should be seriously considering this route.
For us, having a remote team unlocked advantages and opportunities that would otherwise have been impossible.
In this article, I’m going to lay out some of the main reasons it’s also a great option for you.
Whilst I’m predominantly talking about fully remote teams, some of the benefits certainly apply to those considering a more hybrid model.
Why have a remote team?
1. You require only a phone and/or laptop
Starting with one of the most obvious benefits of having a remote team. Pretty much the only apparatus you need to make your business a success is a laptop or computer. I’ve even heard of entrepreneurs running their business solely from their phones, sometimes with a Bluetooth-enabled portable keyboard.
This obviously gives you a lot of freedom! With your laptop, you can work from anywhere, have all the tools you need to manage a team and with the addition of some good headphones you are easily able to make calls or video conferences.
This is the only item you really NEED to run a remote team. Theoretically, anyone who only needs a computer to work can follow this path.
2. Save money on office space
The next easy win that many businesses will benefit from is not needing to have an office space. Office space is one of the biggest drains on finances for many companies. Primarily because it’s not an investment, it’s just a sunk cost.
Hiring someone can enable you to make more money, but an office will rarely do that.
In San Francisco, a very small office for 10 people can cost $5000 a month. In London, New York, and other major hubs the costs are similar. If you are in a much cheaper city then this may not be so much of a burden, but the question is, is office space needed at all?
If you have a remote team you can skip this cost altogether. You may choose to invest in people’s home offices or spend some money on a co-working space, but this will be a lot less than taking a lease on an office.
3. Access a bigger pool of talent
Arguably the biggest benefit of a remote team is the massive pool of talent that becomes available. This has really been a game-changer for us.
In major cities, competition is fierce for the best talent and that can make it difficult to stand out or to find who you need. In smaller towns, there may simply not be enough people to choose from to fill all of your roles with real talent.
Opening up to a remote team enables you to hire someone from nearly every country in the world. It can mean that rather than five people applying to your job ad, you might have five-hundred people applying. Some may have exceptional experience and skills that you would struggle to access at home.
It also opens your doors to workers you might not usually have access to. From parents who need flexibility, to those not living in a tech hub, to those with chronic illnesses. In fact, there is a much higher number of women in leadership roles in remote teams.
4. Leverage rare skill-sets
When starting a company you are often limited with the ideas you have and the resources you have around you to execute those ideas. One of the real beauties of remote work is you no longer have to constrain your ideas.
Maybe you are based in the US and want to sell vacations in Italy or toys in Japan or build websites for people in Saudi Arabia.
The reality is you may not speak the language, have all the skills, or the local knowledge. And you might not be able to find anyone near to you that does!
A remote team gives you access to entirely new skill-sets, all you have to do is find them.
5. More flexible employment decisions
Starting a new company is tough. In fact, running most small or medium companies is fraught with risk. Most businesses are interested in scaling, which often requires hiring more team members to join the mission.
Labour laws are different in every country and designed to protect any team member. I am 100% in support of this, but, depending on the country, these laws can also be very inflexible. Inflexible is not the best adjective for small businesses.
Most of your team members can be brought on on a freelance basis to work on specific projects and you are also not necessarily liable for a host of social security benefits (but we advise you compensate for that). As your business inevitably ebbs and flows, flexibility in your employment decisions and the ability to allocate capital effectively can often be hugely beneficial for growth.
6. Better utilisation of budget
The world is FULL, literally full of talent. Every timezone, country, language, skill-set, there are often thousands or millions of people out there. However, finding real quality is often a challenge.
Once you open up to the whole globe for your hiring decisions you might find you can better utilise your budget. Someone in New York will demand a much higher salary than someone in most other places. Maybe you can find two highly skilled people for that same price. This doesn’t mean you should pay low salaries. I’m a firm believer that you should pay-up for anyone you hire, and often in remote teams, it’s still much more within budget.
You may also be able to save money on a host of services, products and other overheads that might normally come into play for your business.
7. Enables global client base
As more and more businesses themselves go remote, the concept of buying a product or service from someone you’ve never met (or maybe ever will meet) becomes the norm. Videoconferencing or calls are sufficient for the vast majority of client liaisons, but what can often be a stretch is if you have clients on the opposite side of the world or who maybe don’t speak the same language as you.
Managing clients or requests in every timezone can start to take a strain if you are all in one place, and it’s why historically SMEs serve one market, usually the one they are in.
Opening up to a remote team allows you to easily onboard clients wherever you have a team member, localise to multiple languages to expand your target market and discover new, potentially bigger, opportunities in markets you are unfamiliar with. This is the future of scaling businesses.
8. Choices over working hours and lifestyle
As a founder or an employee at a company, we are usually conditioned with a fixed schedule.
Working 9 to 5, what an inflexible way to make a living.
Many employers over the last decades have introduced offering flexible working hours, but these are still usually only semi-defined and make it unlikely you can dramatically operate outside the status quo.
Well, it’s no surprise that working as part of a remote team you can have much greater flexibility about when you work. Maybe you’re an early bird or prefer to have afternoons free for your family. Or maybe the opposite is true.
If you design your business, your target market and hire to compensate for your preferred lifestyle and working hours, you can have much greater flexibility as part of a remote team.
I personally prefer to start my day later and work later. Being based in Europe this is ideal for working with our North and South American clients, but less so for our Asian clients, so I make sure we have someone on our team who can handle that.
9. Fresh perspectives and cultural diversity
This has been one of the most unexpected and fulfilling perspectives of the whole process of building a remote team. You get to meet, work with and talk to so many different people, with different lives, cultural traditions, ways of working and perspectives on the world.
Our team ranges from twenty years old to late forties and we have people in all of the 6 inhabitable continents. Everyone contributes a different story, perspective, and approach — and all of this together is arguably our greatest asset as a business. I love hearing the amazing anecdotes and ideas we get every single day and seeing how it impacts the team members too.
10. Make money while you sleep
There are many businesses that make money around the clock, but there are many that do not. They often operate in a single market or can only make money when their team is working.
Well, what happens if your team is always working because you have people across the globe? That’s a great situation to be in. If your working day goes from 8 hours to 24 hours, theoretically you could triple your output, triple the speed you grow and it means you start to make money while you sleep.
11. A happier, more productive team
More reports are investigating this topic, and the results are positive. We’re seeing that remote work is highly sought after and that those in remote work are 13% more productive. Daniel Sines discusses this in: “Hiring Remote Workers Made My Entire Team More Productive”.
What’s more, remote workers are reportedly more satisfied, leading to higher retention rates.
My experience aligns with this; hardly anyone leaves. Our team has had a 95% employee retention rate in the last year. We’ve had minimal issues with the team delivering the results we need for our business. Certainly no more than a non-remote team.
12. Ability to work from anywhere
The final benefit I’d like to highlight is the ability for you yourself to work from anywhere. Digital nomading — picking up your laptop and working from a co-working space by the beach. Who doesn’t like the sound of that?
If you structure your time well and get your business running like a well-oiled machine you should be able to work from anywhere you want.
We actively encourage our team to spend at least some of the year as a digital nomad. It’s a great way to feel like you have way more vacation time, get inspired, and strike a good work-life balance while simultaneously growing a business.
The points I’ve mentioned fall under three key categories: lower expenses, increased efficiency, and a strong, global team.
Needless to say, building a remote team is not without its challenges. To name a few, Vy Luu recently wrote about managing communications, and Francesco D’Alessio discussed overcoming social isolation,
But with such compelling benefits, founders shouldn’t be too quick to rule it out.
And yet remote teams are still relatively uncommon.
There is a huge opportunity to be ahead of the curve.
We’re reaping the benefits as the founders, for the business, and for the team. Why don’t you?
