You are a remote-first company. What tips would you offer for finding the right talent globally? Where could a U.S. company, which constitutes a large part of our audience, look for great talent in Europe and other regions?

I have hired people from all continents, including LATAM, Asia, and Europe. It has always been a challenge. We have tried various approaches, such as agencies and LinkedIn outreach, and found some success with each. My advice is to focus less on resumes and more on testing. Conduct a trial work period or a short project to evaluate how well a person integrates with the team.

Could a platform like Upwork be a good place to start, where you can hire someone on a freelance basis to test their fit with the team?

Yes, platforms like Upwork can be useful for hiring freelancers to work on small tasks. If you like their work and how they fit with the team, you can then consider bringing them on board fully. Balancing work and personal time is important, so if someone prefers freelancing or contracting, we support that approach.

What is your experience working with agencies? Are they expensive, and do they offer better talent?

It depends on the role. For operational roles, agencies are often effective and their fees are generally reasonable. However, for technical roles, agencies might not always be as beneficial. Agencies may not invest as much time in qualifying candidates, which means you might end up spending a lot of time evaluating them yourself.

For startups looking for a technical partner, what areas of the world have you found to be good sources for talent?

In my experience, Uruguay is a good option if you are in the U.S. For Europe, Ukraine and Poland have strong talent pools. In Asia, the Philippines and Vietnam have specialized skills and offer a good talent base.

What other considerations should be kept in mind when hiring a team member and ensuring they are a good fit from day one? Any tips for onboarding them, especially if you haven’t met them in person yet?

We support diversity and inclusion as part of building a global product. If your business is global, having a global team is essential to avoid cultural pitfalls. We have a company playbook that outlines our onboarding processes. Initially, we have daily one-on-one meetings, which transition to weekly check-ins. We also organize team-building activities, such as happy hours, to facilitate mutual exchange and help staff connect with colleagues from different countries.

It’s great to hear that you have a comprehensive onboarding process. We also see similar practices in our globally distributed remote team. Myself included, I’ve worked with people from virtually every country you can imagine over the years. It’s been a great experience learning about different cultures. Some people I’ve worked with for years never met in person until after the company was sold or even five to ten years later. It’s wonderful to finally meet them in person after collaborating remotely.

What other tips do you offer for ensuring that your team stays in sync across various time zones? People from different backgrounds can bring diverse opinions and skill sets that contribute to building a strong team. However, keeping everyone on the same page despite different time zones, cultural differences, and even language barriers can be challenging. Engineers and marketing professionals, for example, might struggle with communication even if they both speak English.

Leverage the tools available for communication today. Instant messaging channels can function like virtual meeting rooms. It's important to have time set aside for casual interactions, such as virtual happy hours, where you can discuss non-work topics, like pets or personal interests. Promoting cultural exchange and understanding, especially during virtual meetings, is key. Ensuring that meeting times are suitable for everyone is also crucial for effective communication.

What tools do you use to keep everyone aligned in their communications?

We use Chanty for this purpose. It’s a comprehensive platform that includes business instant messaging, video and audio calling, and task management. This replaces multiple tools like Zoom and Trello, making our operations more sustainable and efficient.

Can you give us examples of startups that are running effective global operations, even as small teams?

There are many examples. For instance, Buffer was a small company that successfully operated globally with a minimal team. It’s not necessarily about the size of the team but about the efficiency and effectiveness of communication and operations. Avoiding excessive bureaucracy can help small teams deliver big results. Always stay on the same page and over-communicate rather than under-communicate.

What global trends do you foresee in the next few years for globalization and business? What workplace trends will become important?

Artificial intelligence and business automation will continue to advance. Many businesses will remain hybrid, balancing remote work with office presence. The value of face-to-face interactions will persist despite the availability of digital tools. Having personal contact can enhance communication and team cohesion.

Our team, despite being spread across different locations, makes an effort to visit each other. For example, one of our engineers traveled from Brazil to visit the Northwest. It’s beneficial to see team members in person, and I recommend every team consider such visits. Organizing global events where the entire team can come together can also be very valuable.

Failure is a part of any profession, and I find that we can learn a lot from it if we are open to it. Entrepreneurship is a marathon, not a race. Can you share a time when you failed and what you learned from it?

I fail every day, and we embrace a culture of experimentation. We conduct scientific experiments in every area of our operation. Sometimes experiments yield disappointing results, but they provide valuable insights. For example, I underestimated the importance of delegation and found that delegating tasks to capable individuals who are at least 80% efficient is crucial. It’s important to hire people who excel in areas where you might not be as strong.

Founders often struggle with delegating tasks and might try to do everything themselves, which can become a bottleneck. It’s essential to focus on recruitment and hire the right team members. Founders typically have a strong vision for their product, but finding good people to help scale the business is crucial for growth. Our company emphasizes responsibility and autonomy. I encourage team members to treat their areas as if they were their own homes. We avoid micromanagement and don’t assign numerous tasks per day. Some people are surprised when they join our company and realize that we don’t have a set list of tasks; instead, they manage their own responsibilities. If you specialize in something, you know best how to be efficient in your domain.

What challenges did you face as a company, and how did you overcome them? Going remote-first was an interesting experiment at the beginning. We started with limited technology compared to what’s available today, such as Google Meet or Zoom. We even developed our own technology for online video calls, which was quite advanced for its time. The early challenges included finding the right team, building a strong team that understood our processes, and developing our unique value proposition to achieve product-market fit. This was a significant problem, but we are almost over it now.

Finding the right product-market fit and identifying unique selling propositions is a major challenge for early-stage startups. It involves not only building these propositions but also finding the right audience and positioning them effectively. Once a company nails this, growth becomes easier, but it’s an exciting and critical phase for every company.

An interesting aspect of our company is that the head of support was initially the CEO. He started as a support agent and ran the company from that role. Over time, I took over as CEO while he returned to support. This hands-on experience helped us understand customer pain points deeply and influenced our development to address these issues. After two years, roles reversed, but this perspective was valuable. Being on the front lines teaches you a lot about customer needs, which can sometimes be lost when management is detached from customer issues.

Currently, we use a round-robin system for support, where someone from every department handles support duties for a day, almost once a month. This strategy helps everyone stay connected with customer needs and avoids detachment. It may seem trivial, but it ensures that everyone understands the customer perspective and keeps the focus on what customers truly need.

Recently, the Starbucks CEO was seen working drive-throughs himself, interacting with customers to understand operational challenges firsthand. This approach of being involved in the actual processes is crucial. Setting up processes is important, but it’s equally important to debug and refine them by experiencing each stage personally.

For reading recommendations, I suggest “The Lean Startup” by Eric Ries. It’s a valuable resource for entrepreneurs. My approach is to dedicate 30-45 minutes each day to reading or gaining new knowledge, whether through books, podcasts, or other mediums. This consistent effort is important for continuous learning. Tools like Blinkist can help by summarizing books into shorter formats, allowing you to grasp key takeaways quickly. I could actually order the book through them, but it’s a good place to start and get the high-level points. If you want to read the whole book, you can definitely dive deeper from there. I’ve been chatting a lot with ChatGPT, and we discuss books frequently. That’s a good trick too. There are amazing prompts coming out, and I keep learning from people. You can also ask ChatGPT to summarize and pull out the key points from the book.

A lot of books contain key rules or learnings, while other content includes case studies, stories, and fluff to fill out the book. If you can get to those key points and understand their real-world applications, that’s the most important takeaway. ChatGPT can summarize this information easily, so I’ll start using that prompt more often.

One thing I want potential customers to know about Chanty is why they should choose us over other communication platforms. We offer an alternative to platforms that frequently push upgrades or focus more on pleasing investors than on customer care. Our approach prioritizes data protection and user-friendly design. Chanty is twice as fast, significantly more affordable, and easier to use compared to competitors. It’s a no-brainer tool that our customers find pleasurable to use. Of course, our excellent support is key, and we genuinely care about our users.

We’re thrilled to be part of the marketplace and appreciate the positive feedback on our branding and marketing. Looking ahead, in five years, we aim to be the information hub for every modern business in the world. We plan to support our customers and their employees with smart solutions for efficient information exchange. Our goal is to make advanced technology accessible to all employees, not just CEOs, to enhance their day-to-day activities. We want to be the company providing these innovative solutions.

We look forward to a long-term partnership and growing together. If anyone wants to organize their team and build a better collaborative environment, Chanty is one of the top tools available. We’re close to being number one, if not already. I recommend checking out Chanty on NachoNacho's Marketplace, where you can get 30% cashback. Thanks for joining us today, Dmytro. I appreciate your time and look forward to continuing to work with you as your company grows.

Thank you very much. Take care.