Building a Remote First Company when it was NOT a Trend - Part II

Between my last post and this one, there has been an exponential growth in Covid-19 infections. I really hope we can slow the growth curve!

For businesses, the show must go on. We have to keep innovating.

Most of us are working from home. Nothing new for our team but for those businesses new to this, I wanted to share my favorite tools for working from home.

1. Slack

Communication is the most important aspect of work. Slack with it's sleek UI allows you to conduct 1-to-1 convos or group messages. It allows you to set up channels to discuss specific topics. Add-on calling features and integrations with popular tools like Drive, Calendar, etc. makes this the 'modern' workplace. My favorite feature is the storage aspect where links, media that are sent are neatly stored and can be accessed easily. Quicker than email. This is the first tool anyone must explore in their WFH arsenal.

2. Calendly

Once you have set up a distributed team, you probably have a distributed client base as well. Calendly streamlines scheduling meetings. It's very important to be organized in a remote workplace.

3. Zoom

All meetings, discussions need to be conducted in a new way. Zoom is the best way to conduct these. Besides NON-choppy Video and Audio calling, Zoom allows screen sharing and has cool whiteboard features which are very useful when we are brainstorming on product ideas.

4. Airtable

Our solutions engineering and project management folks were the first adopters of this and they found it convenient to maintain records and plan projects here. It is so customizable that anything is possible here!

I've even heard of some people build no-code web apps with Airtable as a database. The API creation aspect where you can turn a base into a API-ready tool is very convenient. We have ran test-driven development with this feature and had the records update automatically as tests passed. Project Management, Product Planning, Estimation, etc are just a few examples, check it out.

5. Transferwise

When you have a distributed team, you have to handle salaries and payments too. Transferwise is a great way to do this! The transfers are instantaneous and my team and I have had good experiences with this.

Chances are even if you are migrating from an office setting you were probably using some of these tools, either way, the way you use these will change I would imagine.

Have you found other tools you've found useful in setting up your business? Let me know in the comments below.