Running a Virtual Company
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This document describes how the author created and ran a virtual company with remote workers. It discusses how they started with an idea to create a consulting company, recruited remote developers primarily from Eastern Europe, and later spun off the consulting work into a product company. They were able to successfully run and grow both companies entirely remotely for many years without a central office by using flexible work arrangements, competitive pay, clear processes and communication.
Running a Virtual Company
- 1. Running a Virtual Company Yakov Fain, co-founder of Farata Systems and SuranceBay, USA
- 2. “I got an idea. Let’s create a startup” A friend of a friend
- 3. Early 2006 • I’m not happy with Java offerings for the client side • Met two seasoned developers who were not happy with JavaScript • Adobe acquires MacroMedia and releases a promising RIA framework Flex 2 • Let’s learn Flex and write a book about it
- 4. Let’s create a consulKng company
- 6. Do we need an office like this?
- 8. Who’s going to work in our office? Lawyer HR Bookkeeper Accountant Payroll Salesman
- 9. Who’s going to work in our office? A lawyer HR Bookkeeper Accountant Payroll Salseman
- 10. How did we get projects Sales force 1. Tech. wriKng, teaching, speaking 2. Former Customers
- 11. How did we find people 1. Personal ConnecKons in Eastern Europe 2. Speaking at conferences in Ukraine 3. Recording audio podcasts (non-‐technical)
- 12. Where to Open an Office?
- 13. Where to Open an Office?
- 14. Recrui'ng!!! “Ideas are a dime a dozen. People who implement them are priceless.” Mary Kay Ash
- 15. How we Aaract Talent from Overseas • Ability to work flex hours • Ability to work in your own town • CompeKKve pay • Work with seasoned developers
- 16. Hiring • We don’t hire teams • We don’t hire juniors (too expensive) People must be capable of doing independent work and communicate well • Each person goes through phone/skype technical interviews. If we are not VERY impressed, we offer a candidate paid test assignment •
- 17. Retaining Good People • Between consulKng projects, they work on our product • People need to be moKvated: pay + flexibility + challenging work • Moving people from development to maintenance, if it beaer fits them • Encouraging people to aaend trainings and conferences
- 18. Firing • Didn’t become producKve in 2-‐3 months • Prima donnas • People who don’t care
- 19. Developers should be traceable
- 20. They Need to Have Self-‐Discipline
- 21. How do we do Time Tracking? We don’t. Developers send us daily reports:
- 22. Managers Manager’s role is to produce realisKc esKmates, deliver on Kme and protect developers from mean clients.
- 23. If a manager can’t tell if people were working unless he saw them working, he’s incompetent and has to be removed from the project (fired, promoted et al.)
- 24. Our Always Remote Offices
- 25. Our Always Remote Offices
- 26. Our Always Remote Offices
- 27. Our Always Remote Offices
- 28. Nothing beats face-‐to-‐face communicaKons
- 29. Nothing beats face-‐to-‐face communicaKons Photos from hap://imgur.com/bJnJN
- 30. Nothing beats face-‐to-‐face communicaKons Photos from hap://imgur.com/bJnJN
- 31. Nothing beats face-‐to-‐face communicaKons Photos from hap://imgur.com/bJnJN
- 32. Face-‐to-‐face rules! Photos from hap://imgur.com/bJnJN
- 33. “I got an idea. Let’s create a startup” A friend of a friend
- 34. 2009 Let’s Automate Insurance Industry Yeah, right!
- 35. Let’s create a product company
- 36. One person started invesKng money
- 37. One year later
- 38. Our Product Company (front office) • We have sales, customer support, HR • During 4 years everyone was working from home. • Two months ago we rented an office in Tampa, FL for 5 people of the front office team.
- 39. Our Product Company (back office) • No specs for development. Fail quickly. • Sprints for maintenance • Wiki arKcles describe processes • QA, CI, releases twice a month
- 40. Hardware • First development server was running on Verizon FIOS in my basement in NJ • Now we have two data centers (leasing cabinets in FL and NYC ). Once a year we double the capacity/bandwidth • We buy 2-‐3 y.o. hardware for 25% of original price, works well
- 41. Smart UI + Workflow AutomaKon • More than 50% forms are autocompleted (Geo locaKons, public/proprietary DB/Web services, educated guesses) • All paper forms are turned into PDFs • OCR • Digital Signatures
- 42. 2013
- 43. Epilogue In 10 years most of the of small IT companies will work remotely. Large corporaKons should find a way to work in the same mode or else...
- 44. Some URLs • hap://faratasystems.com • @yfain • yfain@faratasystems.com • hap://yakovfain.com Read this book for free now at hap://enterprisewebbook.com