Thread by @julien

People are obsessed with remote being the new thing in startups - I think the reality is gonna be way more complicated.

For one, culture is the most important thing in startups, and remote working makes culture blurry.

I learned waaaaay late in my founder career how important culture is to a new company - you don't ever clarify it early enough. I mean, you're busy! You have other shit to do than clarify culture right?? Wrong.

What you actually need to do is clarify the type of culture you want super early, and actually FOLLOW what you write. Because everyone is watching what happens anyway, and if you don't clarify your culture fast, it'll be inferred from your random everyday actions.

Being a founder is super tough for this reason (among many)- everything you do is observed and it becomes unspoken code: "this is what we do here (because I saw Julien do it once)"

So now imagine this in remote culture. In a way it's simpler because your team identify isn't literally in the same room with you all the time. On the other hand, this means whenever you are "online," you are extra scrutinized. So what you should do is build the culture early.

And when I say early, I mean early. I thought I was giving people a sense at Breather of "just get shit done, that's the culture," but I probably was giving other signals along the way as well. I should have written it down and made it so simple you could write it on your hand.

If you haven't built your values and deliberately formed your culture early, it's probably making you hire wrong and communicate wrong, even if you're in your first 10 employees.

The reasons for this are super obvious but worth saying again: because one day soon you won't be able to communicate to everyone. What you taught the first 10 people will be taught to the next 100

Did you quickly hire a guy you shouldn't have? Well that's what everyone does now.

Anyway i fine the idea of remote culture interesting but challenging. The mistakes are magnified so you need way way way more process and consistency. You had better bring your energy and A game all the time to those all hands because that's all your team will hear that week.

Conclusion - build your culture early and deliberately before it's done for you. And even earlier if you have many offices.