Thread by @nabeel

This week I’ve had at least half dozen conversations w/ startup founders excited to be back in the office.

Only, now they are basically alone in there, and it feels like a vacant shell of the energy it used to have. I expect huge employee churn is about to come.👇1/8 #blog

An office is nothing w/o the creative energy of others, and the people that value that energy will simply go looking for a startup that has a better in-office work environment. 2/8

I’m starting to believe that every startup trying “hybrid work” will slowly result in one of two equilibriums. a) Not enough people come into the office often enough, so the people who value that in-person feeling will churn, and it slowly becomes default remote workplace. 3/8

Or, b) enough people return to the office, they “make hybrid work” but HR realizes remote folks don’t lead or collaborate as much, and their NPS is lower since all the action is in person. So slowly the remote folks churn & the company becomes an in-person culture again. 4/8

All of this is fine, except we just went through a massive migration of talent in the last 12 mos. This will likely gum up the works of a bunch of startup cultures for a bit again. And if CEOs say they “can’t say no to good talent no matter location”, it could be longer. 5/8

FWIW - I do tend to lean on in-person offices for startups under 100 people, but to each their own. I think of a startups’ as more like an organism of creative energy & agility, less raw list of talent. 6/8

Startups that take creative risk & have the ability to change direction quickly have a huge advantage over incumbents. But creative risk & agility requires huge amounts of communication & trust. And those two things are easier to establish in person than any other way. 7/8

Remote-first will get linear work done faster, but exhibit less creative risk & agility. For some sectors & at some times that might be ideal. But hybrid is awkward, and startup cultures need to hum perfectly to have a chance at winning vs the big boys. 8/8