Thread by @dunkhippo33

Some thoughts on how we work @HustleFundVC:

1) Even though everyone is working from home these days, our workflow remains largely unchanged.

From Day 1, we've had a remote team with companies in many places.

2) For internal communications, we use Slack, Zoom, Whereby, email, and phone.

Email = not urgent work / action items
Slack = asynch conversations
Zoom & Whereby & phone = unscheduled water cooler convos & scheduled mtgs

3) Everyone logs into the "water cooler" almost continuously. You can see our SG office is gone for the day.

(Also note that our SG team is back to business as usual -- they all go into the office again instead of working from home unlike the SF Bay Area folks.)

4) Having a "water cooler" allows you to "feel" like you're there in person. This is impt not just for social interaction but also for those random thoughts that you might have that may spark a larger idea.

5) Because we work on diff time zones, we only overlap for 1-2 hours a day in the water cooler. Asynch topics often go on Slack for all other hours.

6) We have scheduled mtgs on both Asia and US time. We do our weekly GP meeting once a week at night (PT) for a couple of hours. It's nice because it doesn't eat into the standard work wk but it also means that you have to do mtgs at night.

7) We also do a # of internal mtgs in the late afternoon (PT) just when SGT is waking up, so the flip side is that my colleagues in Asia wake up quite early.

8) Externally, we have been doing Zoom mtgs with companies from the beginning. Because 70% of our portfolio companies are outside of the Bay Area, remote interviews was something we built in from Day 1. Even our SF cos we interview remotely.

9) Some VCs say that it's hard to pick up on quirks on video. Zoom makes it easier to present yourself well, because you can see your own face on screen. But I've found that most ppl are not able to control those "microexpressions" despite that. You can read ppl quite well.

10) What does my home setup look like?

It's a little ridiculous. 3 screens. An old laptop off to the side that exclusively runs my cxn to the "water cooler" so I don't use bandwidth on my working laptop. It is slow but it gets the job done and isn't used for anything else.

11) You can get most of these things for FREE / near free. Defunct SV startups give away so many nice monitors, desks, chairs.

One of our LPs gave us a HUGE TV where we have a similar, much nicer setup at our actual office. (Thank you!)

12) Lastly, the most important thing in building a remote team is to create a process that is used *consistently*.

A) What comms channels are used for what?
B) What level of comms are expected?
C) How much serendipity vs scheduled?

Remote feels like in-person if consistent.