🚀Remote rising: I've spoken to around 1,000 companies over the last 6 months about their plans for remote work going forward
Covid has accelerated trends that were already happening by 15 years almost overnight
We have key insights in this space
🏢HQ's are finished: companies will cut commercial office space by 40-60%
Tools and services that enable organizations to transition seamlessly are of critical importance
🗺Fully distributed: ~30% of the companies we talked to are getting rid of the office entirely and going remote-first
Micro co-working spaces will emerge in every street, with great work spaces, coffee and on-demand fitness equipment
📈Remote burnout: The productivity inside the companies we've spoken to has gone through the roof
Their biggest concern is that workers burnout because they are working too hard
They are actively looking for ways to combat this
✈️ Remote onsites: 60%+ of companies we talk to are already thinking about ways to best use time together physically
The most popular we hear is flying team to locations for ~week. Portugal, Spain, Puerto Rico seem to be the most popular
Organizing this is very hard today
🚨Async by default: is the thing that organizations are struggling with most
The majority of companies have replicated the office remotely and it is causing strains that are beginning to show
Async tools that give teams superpowers are still emerging
🚂Output over time: the measure of performance in the office is how much time you spend sat in your seat
The measure of performance while working remotely has to become output.
Tools that enable this to be tracked more accurately are something we are asked for a lot
✍️ Written over spoken: documentation is the unspoken superpower of remote teams. The most successful team members remotely will be great writers
Companies are searching for ways to do this more effectively
Tools that enable others to write better will explode
🤖Personal RPA: robotic process automation will transform work for individuals
No-code tools that enable workers to built bots that automate menial parts of their roles will be huge
🚐 Remote Living: Work from anywhere RVs will become huge business
Associated business parks and services will spring up. This will happen even more rapidly as self driving tech emerges
🎮 Work as Play: Platforms will emerge that make the processes involved with doing work more game like
These tools help workers remain more engaged and empower workers with a deeper feeling of achievment as they make progress and complete tasks
🏆 Incentivized Relocation: Tulsa remote — paying people $10,000 dollars to move to a different city — is one of the most interesting economic development plays in history
Services that enable small nations to offer this instantly may emerge
🌉 City Unbundling: the allure of the city has been eroded by technology. You can easily spend time there without living there. Cost of living has made them irrational.
Modern time-shares for city living will emerge, city services being decentralized are inevitable
🧰 Vertical Tools: @NotionHQ, @loomhq, @zoom_us etc. are incredible horizontal products that do nearly anything
Vertical products that do one thing, operating around a constraint that looks like a feature, will explode to prominence
Meetings, async & culture big opportunities
🗣 Voice Tech: You speak 7x faster than you type and you read 2x faster than you listen
Tech that let's you consume and input via these modes will arise and interface with every possible tool you use
👀 Distraction Avoidance: The home office will skyrocket in popularity. A space at home to get away a necessity
There will be an explosion of people purchasing standalone units for their backyards for this.
🎳 Company communities: stronger corporate social channels, think company specific linkedins, that help develop a cohesive sense of connection between team mates
Stripe have a version of this which will likely be replicated/become more widespread
🏇 Venture Collectives: communities of founders, makers and operators will find one another and build tools to solve the problems they are facing
These teams will be uniquely placed to do this as they’ll be collections of people operating at the cutting edge of innovation
⛓ Decentralized Credentialing: a modern LinkedIn that focussed on outcomes
As job titles become less important, what you have achieved on a granular level will be the best way to showcase your skills and expertise
This is needed
🔆 Why us: we live and breathe this space
We know the founders who built the most important things in this space yesterday
Our friends are the founders building the most interesting projects in this space today
We see the most exciting startups of tomorrow as a result
🔮 Contact us: building something in this space? DM me or @ShaneMac
Too many gatekeepers looking to bend remote work in ways that benefit them. If you're going remote and think that timezones matter, location should a multiplier for salary, and you are not becoming more diverse, accessible and inclusive as a company, you're doing it wrong
Remote work is about decentralization of opportunity. What stops it is fear and a lack of trust. Companies that don't trust their teams to work will be blindly transparent as terrible places to work remotely. Surveillance capitalism will be ripe and prevent great work
Remote rejection will be a thing. 'Remote work didn't work for us as a company' will likely hide the reasons culturally for the failure. Everything is about trust. Less trusting remote organizations will be more synchronous
In a world awash with turmoil, I increasingly believe what we're experiencing the death of 'analog nations'
Computers have existed for decades but it's taken until now for software to eat the world. The rise of Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Facebook show's that complete
What replaces 'analog nations'?
Are nations even still a requirement? Much of what we see today is government standing in the way of progress as technological evolution has rendered laws obsolete
Cloud Countries?
The world feels increasingly divided yet it has never been easier to connect with people who we share common interests with
Much of the vitriol we've lived through in the last 5 years comes from those trying to hold onto power. They've leveraged tech to take control & divide