There is an overwhelming amount of tools built to help distributed teams, as Elaine Zelby explores in her wonderful Remote Work Market Map.

Some have thought deeply about the problem, others have pivoted to take advantage of COVID-related growth.

Productivity and collaboration is one massive category in this space, and hundreds of tools have been built to help teams work better together.

Dozens of “virtual offices.”

Dozens of variations of Zoom.

Always-on video calls. Water cooler chats.

Screensharing + audio tools. Audio-only messages.

It’s too much.

The reality is that distributed teams need fewer tools, not more, to collaborate effectively. All teams really need to collaborate are to:

• Talk to each other in real-time
• Share information asynchronously

The rest is just noise.

Here’s how the landscape will shake out.

Every team will have some variation of Slack, Teams, Discord, or the next channel-based communication platform.

The best use case for channel-based communication is async messages with high-fidelity data. Slack is great for this.

• Sharing daily updates with Loom or a screensharing tool
• Pushing weekly OKR progress
• Monthly analytics and reports
• Creating ongoing discussion threads

Beyond channel-based communication, there will be winners for each point solution:

• Video calls (Zoom)
• Async video (Loom)
• Task-management (Asana)
• Document management (Notion)

The biggest gap is the glue that ties of all of these together.

Which is why we’re building Holopod.

Presence is the most unsolved problem in remote work.

It’s a challenging one.

Companies have employees in different timezones. These employees have different working hours, and different working styles.

Your goal as an organization is to help every one of those individuals find time for focused work, collaboration, and some level of work-life balance.

The tools we have now do the opposite.

Channel based communication becomes almost real-time chat, which leads to notification overload and constant FOMO. Always-on video calls overwhelm individuals and lead to Zoom fatigue.

Enter the presence layer

An accurate status layer adds context and visibility to every workflow.

The simple question of “what is my status right now, and what is my team’s status?” is extremely powerful.

It should be in control of the individual. It should provide context to all team members. It should be used in an actionable way — to facilitate a video or audio call, to send an async message, to avoid interrupting deep work.

Once you have an accurate status, every other workflow becomes easier.

The best teams will optimize for optimal work states

Level 5 of Matt Mullenweg’s framework for remote work is Nirvana.

Work gets designed around life.

Individuals set their own office hours. Meetings happen when convenient for the individuals. Collaboration happens organically.

I believe Nirvana is within reach, and we can help teams get there.

The status layer is the missing piece in the distributed work ecosystem was originally published in James Clift on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Instead of getting a job when I first graduated University, I started a tech company. Many years and iterations later, one of those ideas worked.

I was in a privileged position — I had money saved up from previous businesses, scholarships, and was paying cheap rent. I also had a huge safety net — there was always my parent’s basement to fall back on.

Not many have that luck.

I would love to see a world where more people can bypass traditional employment and set out on their own. I strongly believe that entrepreneurship is the most important economic muscle to build, and the more we can support it as a nation (and world) — the better off we will be.

We need more people to start businesses, and Canada has an opportunity to become a nation that embraces entrepreneurship.

UBI (Universal Basic Income) is slowing seeping into consciousness, with the rise of wealth inequality. Essentially, it boils down to this:

A type of social security that guarantees a certain amount of money to every citizen within a given governed population, without having to pass a test or fulfill a work requirement. Every UBI plan can be different in terms of amount or design.

The following is a half-baked exploration of why we need to help more entrepreneurs, and why a providing a basic income to entrepreneurs might be a good solution.

Reallocate government funding to very early stage companies with low capital requirements

The cost to start a startup has decreased by orders of magnitude. Anyone with a laptop can build a business if they have the skills and time.

That time commitment often means quitting your day job. Most people don’t have two years of savings in their bank account, which means they need to raise funding to cover basic living expenses.

Fundraising is the least productive and most time consuming parts of starting a company. This problem is even larger in Canada, where there is virtually no early-stage funding.

Along with the time wasted, raising money early forces founders to choose their company trajectory before having a product in the market. Misaligned incentives resulting from raising capital have killed many potentially great companies. It forces founders to focus on selling a vision, inflating numbers, and growth at all costs — when they should be focused on the only two things that matter: Building and selling something.

To help individuals build and sell product, there are a number of government innovation programs that are designed to help de-risk the process of developing technology. Those funds are typically reserved for companies with employees and capital. They don’t address the most important question — how do we get more people to start successful companies?

Research suggests that Universal Basic income is well suited to replacing complicated funding initiatives such as welfare and social security (and the Canadian Government agrees).

Can we solve the Canadian seed-funding gap by reallocating a portion of current government innovation funds to a Basic Income for Entrepreneurs?

Introducing the BEI

The goal of the BEI is to provide a basic living wage for a reasonable time frame to individuals starting companies.

This BEI will be enough to cover a founder’s basic expenses — food and rent — for a period of up to 2 years. This will enable founders to spend time in the early stages of their company in the most productive way.

After two years, there will be enough data for founders to know if they should raise money, continue building the company, or shut down.

Here are some of the upsides for the individual:

• Entrepreneurs can focus on the one thing that matters — building a product that people love
• Less time spent fundraising and more spent building
• More opportunities to experiment and tinker without blowing your life savings.
• More opportunities for people that can’t afford to start a company.

Right now to start a company you need to be very lucky. You need the savings, the spouse, or the family money to have the privilege to jump into this world.

Imagine we could eliminate the downside risk of starting a company, while allowing founders to focus on building and selling great products.

How would it work?

Currently, there are a many ways the government is supporting tech companies in Canada. There are tax credits, innovation programs, venture capital top-ups, and dozens of other programs I haven’t found the time to research. The biggest issue with these programs is that they do more to help companies that have already won, and don’t fund more potential winners.

Step 1: Consolidate government programs

There are a number of tax credits, bursaries, and grants available to technology companies. Unfortunately, the process of navigating this funding is opaque, and it typically helps later stage companies become more profitable — not early stage companies exist.

I do have some first-hand knowledge here — my companies have received over $300,000 in funding from these sources. I received $10k when we desperately needed it, and $150k when we were already profitable.

Here are a few of the programs:

SRED provides tax credits for R&D.

IRAP provides money for R&D projects. Once a project is approved, up to 80% of engineering salaries are reimbursed.

The BC Tech Fund has a 100m VC fund. This could be a good way to deploy some of that capital.

Canada’s Venture Capital Action plan pledges $1 for every $2 raised by VC firms.

There are dozens more random grant opportunities available that I’m not aware of. If we could simply take all the money, time, and paperwork being spent on SRED, IRAP, and the other funding programs available we could fund thousands of basic income entrepreneurs.

Step 2: Run it like a fund

Let’s take a 50m fund, and assume basic income (provided certain criteria are met) is 50k/year for individuals.

For providing that basic income, the fund will receive a % of companies that are a part of the program for 2 years — in the form of a SAFE

The goal of the fund is not to generate a 4x return, but to break even. Not bad by government standards.

Basic math

Note: I need to hire a PHD to do some real math here.

Assumptions:

• 50k/year salary for individuals.
• 2 founders per company.
• 2 year basic income period.
• 10% of the company in convertible debt (This is the most complex part)

With a $50m fund, we can invest in 250 companies.

Of those 250 companies, if we use typical startup math that two year period — here’s what path we might be on.

• Raise additional funding and become big successes: 1%
• Raise additional funding: 10%
• Grow organically (large): 10%
• Grow organically (lifestyle): 10%
• Become side projects: 30%
• Fail completely: 39%

Using this math, from 250 companies we will have the following:

• 2 “unicorns” — assume valuation of 200m+
• 25 raise more money — assume valuation of 10m+
• 25 good businesses — assume revenues of 1m+
• 25 small good businesses — assume revenues of 200k+
• 75 side projects — assume <100k revenue
• 100 failures

From a pure valuation perspective, this pays back the entire 50m fund. We can also assume that the “good businesses” will either pay back the debt, or let it convert to equity and include the fund in their dividend distributions.

There is risk here — but it’s not a charity. Because the government isn’t beholden to make a 4x return on their fund, it can break even. Breaking even would mean thousands of jobs created and millions in tax revenue generated — not a bad ROI.

Even if it loses money, it will have succeeding in creating a class of skilled entrepreneurs who will build something else in the future, hundreds (or more) jobs, and branded Canada as the best place for startups.

Who gets the money?

This is where it gets complicated. Now we have problems with vetting, fairness, and capital allocation.

Who gets the money?

We need a fair way to distribute this income without losing the principle of it — allowing more people to start companies. I propose some basic criteria such as having a good idea, industry experience, and a plan.

We need to take a strict metrics based approach to this. Creating a blueprint for each type of company (SAAS, hardware, e-commerce) will allow us to track whether a company is meeting it’s goal.

For example SAAS company needs to have a beta live within 4 months, and a full product launch within 6. Failure to meet criteria will result in a loss of funding. The goal needs to be eliminating freeloaders, but not failures.

Under this model we should expect failure, and celebrate the benefits of those failures (lessons learned and skills developed).

Societal benefits

Implementing this on a large scale is the best thing Canada can do for its economy.

Increased competitiveness

We need more people starting businesses. They are the lifeblood of the economy, innovation, and job creation. This policy would brand Canada as the mecca of technology, and would also attract the most talented immigrant entrepreneurs.

Job creation

Think of all the jobs! More new companies = more new jobs.

More opportunity for more people

Most people don’t start businesses not because of a lack of talent, but risk aversion. There are so many talented people stuck in jobs that are both unnecessary and a waste of their talent. The UBEI will free up that human capital to work on important problems and grow our economy.

Derisking the future

Many industries as we know them will not exist in 10 years. The skills that will be needed are the ability to solve problems, be creative, and innovate.

Imagine we can get more people out of traditional, dying industries and learning the skills needed to start their

Imagine a world with self-driving cars, automated factories, and AI powered financial markets. What does our labour market look like?

A class of workers armed with the skills needed to navigate a very fast changing economy.

We don’t need another mid-level accountant who will be obsolete in 5 years, but we do need her to start a financial modelling SAAS platform for tech companies.

The BEI will move us from a reactive to a proactive position, and create independent, creative thinkers that can solve problems in any economic environment — not one that depends on traditional employment models continuing to be true. It could expand into a development program to fund youth entrepreneurship as well — with a smaller capital requirement.

Who’s with me?

I’d love to hear the communities thoughts. As with most of my ideas, it’s a half-baked vision that needs some beating up.

I do believe that if we can use our resources more efficiently and pilot this program Canada will the best place in the world to start a company.

That’s a vision I can get behind.

Update: I wrote this in 2016, and still strongly believe in it. I’d like to try it out, but on a smaller scale. If you’re building a tech or tech enabled company in a country with low cost of living — please email me a blurb about you and your project. I want to pay your salary to go full-time.

Thanks to Tom Bielecki, Eric Kryski, Matt Smith (MRR), Daniel Eberhard for reading drafts of this.

Solving the seed funding gap — is it time for a basic income for entrepreneurs? was originally published in James Clift on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I’ve been playing the technology company game for over a decade now.

In that time, I went from a 20 year old kid who had no idea what he was doing to a man with a good beard who has no idea what he is doing that happened to sell millions of dollars of software.

I don’t often reflect on absurdity of it, but it is absurd.

Weirder still, I’m the least impressive of my friends in this world — I’ve had the good fortune of being surrounded by people who started off exactly like I did build massive companies with hundreds of employees.

As a kid, the only jobs I knew of that “rich” people had were doctor, lawyer, and that scary kid who’s dad was probably in the mob. Becoming a millionaire was not discussed, nor even imagined. Yet, here we are.

Here are a few things I’ve learned from a decade of trying to make it on the internet.

Bet on yourself, but make sure it’s actually a bet

The low point of (one of) my first companies was being so desperate for revenue that we adapted our virtual job fair platform to become a virtual business directory for a small town. For $2000/yr.

There is no upside to that. We essentially became a horribly paid consultant for an industry we didn’t care about with a product that didn’t add any value.

Limping along for years while eating ramen and pitching a VISION isn’t success — you’ll be much worse off than if you had just worked for a startup for a few years to improve your skills and peers.

To truly bet on yourself while starting a company, everything you do should accelerate any of the following:

• Learning new skills: sales, product management, product development, engineering, marketing, design, fundraising
• Meeting great people — not in the “I shook Mark Cuban’s hand” sense, but in the “I have 5 equally motivated people in my corner building shit that I can text about the fact that we won’t make payroll next month.”
• Making money on your own time
• Travelling or experiencing the world through a different lens (though in 2020 you should just get a remote job)

Build your tribe

You don’t need mentors. You don’t need investors. You need 5 friends with similar ambitions trying to figure this shit out with you.

You want people that you can call when your world is falling apart. When you want to quit. When you hate your co-founders. When you’re questioning everything. When you’ve made the money, but don’t feel good about it.

It is a weird, un-relatable world that we’re playing in. To navigate it, you need people that understand. I’m so lucky I found my people.

I don’t have great advice on how to find your people.

Join a co-working space? Get into a startup accelerator? Join a program like On Deck? Message people on Twitter?

Just launch something

I know many people who are much more talented than I. They’ve got better ideas, more technical skills, and are just plain smarter.

What they don’t have is that forcing function that compels me to launch stuff.

The shamelessness. The not-give-a-fuckery.

To not quit when I want to quit. I’m not sure that “chip on the shoulder” is all positive, but it’s probably necessary.

It’s a learned behaviour. I don’t come by it naturally. I hate failing. I suck at getting feedback. I’m overly sensitive. And yet, here we are.

It takes 3 years for anything to work

Every successful individual I’ve seen has taken at least 3 years to create something with some hint of product market fit.

Dig deeper into every company that takes off overnight — it’s probably a pivot from something else, the founder’s 8th attempt, or a hail mary. The one thing that truly worked for me was about 3.5 years in.

That specific thing worked in month 2, but it took 3.5 years of learning to get to that point.

Check your ambitions

My original goal when starting out (Thanks Tim Ferriss!) was to “build a business making 10k a month so I could work from anywhere.”

I got there, and enjoyed it — lived in multiple countries, didn’t work too much, drank great wine and ate incredible steak. It wasn’t enough.

Financially, it didn’t matter. The cash was enough, but a life of leisure isn’t a great goal for a 30 year old. I stopped growing, learning.

Ironically, that guiding goal held me back. What seemed ambitious at the time led to unambitious decisions, like first building a below average web design company. It also led to coasting when cashflow was (very) good.

I somehow managed to reverse engineered my version of success, but unfortunately financial success is always a moving target — especially once you have something that works.

What would have been a better focus is building an exceptional product, an amazing team, and continuing to grow as a leader.

If you can solve for those things, the score (and the cash) takes care of itself.

That said, if your goal is to build a company that makes 10k/mo that allows you to work from anywhere — go for it, goddamnit.

You will want to quit

Building something from scratch is hard, and having a job will often sound very appealing.

Here’s what you need to do today, and here’s your paycheque!

Starting a company has infinite variables. At the early stages, you’re pushing a boulder up every hill you can find. You’re trying to find that one thing that gathers enough momentum to allow you to survive another day.

If you’re lucky, you’ll get to a place where you’re no longer trying to survive — you’re trying not to die. There’s a difference.

Every day you will have an infinite to-do list, none of which is certain.Take your best guess at what the most important thing you can work on is.

Do that thing, and try to ignore everything else.

Don’t forget to manage your psychology along the way. At the end of the day no one cares if you fail, and it’s not that important. Have grounding forces in your life (sports, family, knitting) to help keep you sane. Try not to build your whole identity around your company.

(You won’t do any of this, but I’m hopeful this will help you realize you’re not the only one.)

You might surprise yourself

Most people who reach unheard of levels of success are probably not that much smarter than you, and they probably don’t work that much harder.

Granted, there are ridiculously smart driven people that operate on another level (Elon Musk, The Collisons). They’re likely going to be trillionaires.

I’ve met many people who have built $100m+ companies that are very smart and work very hard — but probably not that much harder than a Senior Engineer at Amazon. Success is a result of talent, hard work, and luck.

If you’re smart, want to work hard, and care about building a business one day — the best place to put that energy is into creating something new.

You can’t get lucky if you’re not in the game.

Start your business in minutes with Durable.

Looking for more ramblings? Follow me on Twitter.

7 things I’ve learned after 10 years of trying to make it on the internet was originally published in James Clift on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Unintentionally, I was an early adopter of remote work.

I built my last company with the goal of being location independent, and was fortunate enough to travel and hire all over the world while growing VisualCV to millions of users.

V1 of Holopod was built as a side project to solve some of the problems we experienced while operating a remote team. That simple project grew exponentially when everything changed in March.

COVID forced remote forward a decade, and there’s no going back.

Whether it’s fully remote, satellite offices, or hybrid offices — any company that can, will offer remote as a benefit. The scale has tipped. Flexibility will be table stakes — companies that don’t offer it will struggle to recruit and retain talent, and ultimately compete.

Over 500 companies signed up for Holopod as they looked for solutions on how to navigate this new world.

Defining remote as “working from home” is a recipe for failure.

Remote work needs the same thoughtfulness that was put into building out office culture. It needs a playbook for creating an environment that allows teams to get their best work done — focused deep work, engaging meetings and calls, and well-drawn boundaries between work and personal time.

We think we can help build it.

Our long term vision is to build the operating system for remote teams.

We want to create the playbook for how to optimize your work day as a remote team. The tools already exist, and they’re great. Slack is an excellent chat app. Zoom is great for video calls. Google Calendar gets the job done.

What’s missing is the glue that holds all those together. The physical office, despite its drawbacks, does a few things well:

• Helps you feel connected to your team
• Encourages impromptu conversations and collaboration
• Coffee breaks, lunch, and happy hours to build culture
• Creates a boundary between work and personal life

Remote work can sometimes lose that important feeling of being apart of something bigger than yourself. It’s a bit clinical to just sit down, code all day, and check out. For some, that works. But not for everyone.

We’re solving those problems with Holopod — helping teams design an optimal operating framework that suits their culture, with the goal of resulting in every individual having their best day at work.

State of the union

Currently, Holopod is a Slack app that helps teams:

• Automatically update their Slack status based on their work state and calendar
• Manage do not disturb based on their status
• Schedule messages
• Drill down into personal work analytics and happiness

We’re live on the Slack store. Over 500 teams have signed up, including some of the world’s biggest companies.

Our activation and retention is excellent, and NPS is promising.

Our Roadmap

Step 1: Slack

We are focused on Slack as a platform, and gaining widespread adoption among teams transitioning to remote. Our goal is to be a must-have Slack app for every remote and hybrid team.

We plan to tie a bow in our Slack features in Q4.

Step 2: Beyond Slack

Our goal is to build a better way to collaborate and operate with your team, with a simple desktop application that focuses on your status of the main driver of your work day.

We want to solve some of the deeper problems that teams experience, and are extending our desktop application to allow individuals to:

• Get to work, without checking email or Slack
• View your entire team’s status — without any noise
• Quickly collaborate and connect with their team through 1-click integrations with tools like Zoom & Loom

Step 3: Scaling

There is much we want to build, and the opportunities are endless.

• Integrations with the best remote tools (like Zoom, Loom, and Asana).
• Team culture building features like virtual coffee hangouts and water cooler chats
• A focused work buddy system
• Meeting analytics
• Anything you can dream of?

I’m confident we can build a massive company here. While remote is hot right now — it is still very early days.

About me and how I work

I’ve been a lifelong entrepreneur, and built my last company to over 4 million users and millions in revenue. I want to go even bigger with Holopod.

I’m passionate about working with exceptional people to build amazing products that improve people’s lives.

I believe in collaboration over dictation. In setting up good processes and empowering people to do their best work.

Obviously, we will be a fully remote company.

Expectations

As the technical co-founder of Holopod, my expectations are high. You’ll be the lead on all things engineering — from architecture to devops.

Ideally you have experience starting a company, or as an early engineer at a startup. You’ll be in charge of best practices for testing, deployment, and shipping great software. You’re passionate about the space, have strong opinions on what we should build, and can hire/lead a team.

Initially, you’ll be writing code. We need to get to escape velocity — moving fast and shipping weekly.

You’ll be involved in product planning, hiring, and managing the team.

Our current stack is:

• Ruby on rails (with Sidekiq)
• Postgres
• Swift (we have a dedicated Mac developer)
• HTML/JS/CSS

We’re considering a rewrite with a more dynamic stack — experience with React and GraphQL would be great too.

Compensation

I’m offering a combination of salary + a healthy equity, with both being negotiable.

If this sounds interesting, please send me a note (james@holopod.com).

I had failed to sell my last startup, and was considering job offers.

After some soul searching, I figured I wasn’t quite ready for the world of gainful employment and decided to see how this new project would do for 3 months.

It worked.

A few months turned into 6 years.

VisualCV grew to over 4 million members in every country worldwide, and was named Canada’s 28th fastest growing startup in 2017.

Beyond that, we’ve helped millions of people improve their careers and lives.

It’s easy to get lost in the numbers, but still the most rewarding part of my day is hearing stories from people whose lives are impacted by VisualCV.

I was 24 when I started VisualCV, and accomplished what I set out to build:

• A simple, useful product that improves people’s lives
• A small, remote team
• A profitable business without outside capital

While VisualCV was successful beyond my expectations, in managing that growth we put the original vision for the business on the back burner. When we first started the goal was to build a much broader set of tools that helped people on every step of their career journey. We called it Workstory.

I’m excited to announce that I’m stepping down as CEO, and passing the reins to a new CEO with a plan to execute on that larger vision.

Workstory Inc is healthy, growing, and has a great team in place.

I will remain a shareholder, board member, and advisor — and can’t wait to see what’s next.

What’s next for me?

I’m still focused on making people’s lives better through the internet. My new project, Holopod, aims to help people better optimize their remote work day.

Besides that I’m investing in/advising a few profitable internet companies, and would love to work with more founders.

Oh, and spending more time with the family!

Onwards!

Onwards! was originally published in James Clift on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

An inevitability, maybe. But not a dream.

I’m 31. The only real job I’ve ever had was coaching tennis at age 15.

I’ve half-assed a few other part-time gigs, but 99% of the money I’ve made in my life I’ve pulled from thin air.

Despite that, I have a hard time defining myself as an entrepreneur.

Granted, if I heard of a dude who 7 years ago was collecting Starbucks coffee grounds to sell as fertilizer at Farmer’s markets who went on to build a multi-million dollar SaaS company — I’d probably call him an entrepreneur.

Not me.

I’d define my career to date as simply avoiding getting a job as long as possible. For those of you that are audacious enough to follow this meandering road — try to do the following.

Save money

The #1 reason people get jobs is because they need money. The more you can avoid needing money, the more you can avoid getting a job. This is hard.

Life is expensive. School is expensive. I was lucky enough to get some scholarships to cover a year of my University tuition, and pay the rest through a window cleaning business. I don’t know how I’d do this if I lived in the USA. Student debt is ruthless.

Not having debt, and managing to save $7,000 by the time I graduated University was enough for me to not consider getting a job right away.

Avoid status traps

I liked business, so I went to business school. Business school does a very good job at pushing you towards the corporate world. Especially if you major in accounting, which puts a lot of reverence on working for Deloitte.

Unfortunately business school doesn’t help you start a business.

For some reason it puts corporate jobs on a pedestal (to be fair, that’s what they’re graded on). I just couldn’t swallow the Kool-aid. It was weird to me that 20 year olds were putting on suits to shake hands with 25 year olds to try to impress them enough to have the privilege of working in a cubicle for $40k/year at KPMG.

Once you start playing the game, it seems pretty hard to get out. In fact, multi-billion dollar business models are built on keeping you in.

If you want to start a business one day, I suggest avoiding being impressed by real jobs (as long as you can). Other status traps might include living alone, having a nice car, caring about nice clothes, and popping bottles at the club.

Don’t plan too much

Starting out, I did not even consider how I would pay my rent. I had a weird confidence that I’d figure it out.

I started my first company at age 20 with $15,000 in prize money from business plan competitions. That seemed like a lot of money. It was not.

After that dried up I was forced to figure out how to make enough money to pay my rent. So I turned to Craigslist….

….to sell crappy websites.

Ignorance is useful in this situation. I honestly had no idea what my friends were making after graduation, and it never crossed my mind to get a job.

Don’t move back home

Even though not needing money helps you start a business, needing money also helps you start a business. You need to be hungry.

Living in your parents basement rent-free while your dad cooks you banana pancakes every Sunday will not help you succeed.

You need to throw yourself into the real world, which means paying your own way. I had 2 roommates and rented out my room on AirBnb a few nights a month when I was really broke. It didn’t feel hard at the time because I had no dependents, and didn’t know what a paycheque looked like.

I’m not going to pretend I struggled — I have no memories of being bummed about any of this. It was fun.

Don’t live above your means

Because I was paying my own way, I was frugal. I lucked out and took over a lease in downtown Vancouver where my roommates and I were paying $2200/mo for a nice 2 bedroom + den apartment. This was a decade ago, and sadly that place is probably $4000/mo now. That sucks.

I started off in the big room (with an ensuite!). When my roommates moved out and my savings dwindled, I rented the big room out at a premium and moved to the den. I still went to bars, ate well, and had a great time.

These opportunities still exist, but maybe not in the downtown core of big cities. I don’t know any successful (young, first-time) entrepreneurs who lived by themselves when they were getting started.

Read and learn obsessively

Some obsession with Y Combinator is probably healthy for first-time entrepreneurs. Watch the startup school videos, read Hacker News, and follow inspiring people on Twitter. Don’t be cynical.

Follow great people on Twitter. Read and consume as much as you can.

And make stuff. Make lots of stuff.

Surround yourself with great people

Join a co-working space as soon as you start your business. Maybe it’s a WeWork, but try to find a place where many people are building companies — not doing consulting. I met 4 of my best friends at a co-working space 7 years ago, and they’ve all gone on to do incredible things.

Surround yourself with people who support your ambitions. Almost every conversation with people in the game leads to a new business idea, spark of inspiration, or lesson you can apply to your own company.

The people you look up to were just like you — not too long ago.

Fail upwards

There are many kinds of failure, but the worst is the failure of doing the same thing for 5 years and have nothing to show for it. You should be building and selling, that’s it. The only other acceptable form of spending your time is meeting people who might be able to help (very diminishing returns), and maybe fundraising (but also very diminishing returns).

It’s not complicated, it’s just hard…

The siren call of gainful employment will always be there. Parents, peers, and paycheques are powerful forces. This is a hard path. It’s a risky path.

The right answer is probably to get a real job, learn some skills, and build stuff on the side until you’re ready to take the leap.

But if you’re like me, you’ll ignore that advice.

Go for it.

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How to build a career by avoiding the job market entirely was originally published in James Clift on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

There are a millions of job search articles on the web, and as a job seeker it’s easy to spend hours every day reading them. It’s a great way to procrastinate, but not a great way to land your dream job. In fact, I’ll save you from reading the 100’s of career advice articles posted every day on the internet. Here are the top 5 articles from the last 6 months:

These articles are generally useful, but not nearly enough. The simple things you’ll need to get a job are well covered:

• A great resume
• A consistent online presence
• No red flags
• Skills that match the job description

But even if you’ve got those covered, there are hundreds of variables you leave up to chance when applying for a job. You risk being lost in a pile of resumes. The job requirements changing. The budget changing. An internal referral stealing your spot. The hiring manager going on vacation. So how do you guarantee you’ll get the job you want? We have the system. Take the uncertainty out of your job search process by following these 7 steps, and you’re virtually guaranteed to get what you’re after. The extra patience, hustle, and attention to detail is worth the investment in your career trajectory.

STEP 1: SELF-REFLECTION

If you know the enemy and know yourself you need not fear the results of a hundred battles.

- Sun Tzu

You must first know two things before you attack your job search:

• Exactly what you want in a job
• An accurate idea of your skills and experience

The system you’ll be using will allow you to punch above your weight class, but doesn’t mean that 3 years in online marketing can land you a front-end web development job. You need to be honest about what you want, where you’re at now, and where you want to be in the future.

Step 1A: Decide exactly what you want

If a man knows not to which port he sails, no wind is favorable.

- Seneca

Before you look for a job, you need to figure out what is most important to you. If you’re just starting your career, focus on developing valuable skills. Don’t necessarily “follow your passion,” but seek work that is interesting and will help you develop your skills. Look for a company that fits any (ideally all) of the following criteria:

• Has a mission you believe in
• Is growing fast
• Has a great team to learn from

In Drive, Dan Pink finds that the three things employees want most from work are: Autonomy — the desire to direct their own lives. Mastery — the urge to get better and better at something that matters. Purpose — the yearning to do what they do in the service of something larger than themselves.

Your first goal should be mastery , which means finding a place to develop your skills.

Another study performed by John Graham, a professor of social work, found that the top five traits that make employees happy are:

• A strong sense of engagement in their work.
• A feeling of being appreciated and valued
• Having a high degree of freedom
• pleasant physical workspace and good relationships with clients and colleagues
• Flexible work schedules

If any of these ring true, add them to your list of standards for a job. Cal Newport’s must-read career book So Good They Can’t Ignore You has similar advice.

• Master a skill that is rare and valuable.
• Cash in the career capital this generates for the right rewards.
• Set your standards for skills development higher than other factors. The rewards will come later.

Grab a notebook or open a new document, and write down everything you could possibly want in a job.

Step 1B: Assess your skills and experience

The next step is to do an honest assessment of your skills and experience.

In that same notebook, write down the following:

All the expert knowledge you have. Your best accomplishments. All your skills. Your greatest strengths. This knowledge will help you figure out in which positions you’ll be able to do your best work. Your best job lies at an intersection between exactly what you want and your skills. Again, put less emphasis on “what you love,” but if you can fit that criteria as well it is a bonus.

If you’re not good at anything that has the potential to pay well, you’ll need to level up your skills and experience. Be honest and decide whether now is the time to improve your skills before looking for a job. Here are 5 ways to do so:

• Take an online course
• Go back to school
• Work on a new project in your spare time
• Get a job where you’ll learn the skills.
• Work part time for free where you can learn the skills

STEP 2: Prepare for success

Success is where preparation meets opportunity.

- Bobby Unser

Once you begin to know yourself, it’s time to start building your positioning and personal brand. Positioning is a marketing term coined by Al Ries and Jack trout which relates to how marketers attempt to create a distinct impression in a customer’s mind. It is why Volvo is safety. Why Apple is design. Why Fedex is overnight. Personal positioning involves controlling how you will be perceived by other people. For anything you want to accomplish in life that involves other people making decisions about you — positioning matters. This is especially true when looking for a job. Whether you like it or not, employers (and everyone around you) are judging you based on their initial perceptions. And it is very hard for people to change their initial perceptions.

When you meet someone for the first time, or walk into a house you are thinking of buying, or read the first few sentences of a book, your mind takes about two seconds to jump to a series of conclusions.

- Malcolm Gladwell

You are being judged upon your first point of contact with an employer, which could be the difference between a new career or your resume being shredded. Any minor detail can tip the scales — and it is your job to tip the scales in your favour. You’re not going to change much between when you see a job description and apply for a job, however you can change your positioning by focusing on the right things, getting into the mind of the prospect (employer), and tailoring your application accordingly.

Remember, you never get a second chance to make a first impression. Until you are ready to position yourself, you are better off if communication doesn’t take place. For any job, use the following system to position yourself for success. Your goal is to figure out who the ideal person the company (or industry) is looking for to fill the role. This refers to that person’s skills, personality, style, and expertise. Follow these three steps to figure out exactly what a company is looking for.

Research the company. Look at their website, news, press releases, and company page. What you’re trying to find out is how they are trying to be percieved by the market. Your job is to fit into their ideal perception. Even if they’re an old-school corporation, if you can tell they’re trying to be new and fresh, you want to come across as new and fresh (but not too new and fresh).

Look for clues in the job description. Most job descriptions aren’t very detailed, but look for hints that give an idea of the type of person the company is looking to hire.

Get into the heads of the hiring managers and VP’s. Follow the people involved in the hiring decisions on Twitter, LinkedIn, and any online resources. This will give you a good idea of the personality type they’re looking for.

Note this works on a broader industry level as well — position yourself to fit well in the industry and role you’re looking for. This makes things easier than doing it company by company. Once you’ve a better idea of how you want to be percieved by the hiring company, do the following.

Build a master resume to work from. Your resume will be ever evolving, but you need to start with an excellent one. The The VisualCV Ultimate Resume Guide gives a good overview of how to build a stand-out resume.

Write a generic cover letter. This is a letter that will outline your skills, experience, and why you’re so amazing. It will be tweaked for each job application.

Beef up your LinkedIn Presence. Update your LinkedIn with relevant work experience, your summary, and your brand. Add at least 50 people to your network.

If relevant, beef up your Twitter brand. Write a good description of yourself, follow influencers in the industry, and share relevant content using a tool like Buffer or Hootsuite.

If relevant, start a personal blog. Pick a subject you like and write valuable content for a specific audience. This takes commitment, so make sure you’ve got enough material for at least 5 decent articles to display.

Create an online portfolio of your projects. Create a site where it’s easy to share work samples and projects with employers.

STEP 3: LOOK FOR JOB OPPORTUNITIES

Once you know exactly what you want and what you bring to the table, it’s time to look for a job. Ensure that every job you decide to go for meets your criteria you set out in stage 1 — if the job doesn’t excite you, you won’t be willing to go the extra mile. Follow these steps for finding a job opportunity you’ll love:

List all the companies whose products you use and love. If you already love a companies’ product, you’ll do much better in getting hired. You won’t have to fake the passion, and will be excited to do the work to get the job. Look at their careers page for open opportunities.

List all the companies you think you’d like to work for. This could be companies you admire, companies that are building cool products, or companies with a great reputation. Look at their careers page for open opportunities.

List people in your network who work for great companies.Make a list of people you know who have awesome jobs that you’d like to have one day. Research the companies they work for and check their careers page for open opportunities.

Search for jobs on Indeed.com and niche job boards. Indeed.com is the most comprehensive job search engine on the planet. It also drives a lot of volume, which means high competition. Niche job boards in your industry are less competitive and feature more specialized positions. View our comprehensive list of job boards and employment resources here: Ultimate Job Search Resource Roundup

Compile a list of at least 5 jobs that you really want. This is crucial — you have to actually want the job. If you don’t want the job you will not be willing to put in the extra work required.

Use Tab 1 of the Job Seeker Spreadsheet to manage the process.

If you find yourself with excess jobs, apply to them the traditional way with a kick-ass resume and cover letter. It’s good practice, and it could work out.

STEP 4: CREATE AN APPLICATION SYSTEM

Now that you’ve got your list of 5 jobs you really want, it’s time to get serious about landing them. Instead of the traditional method of blindly submitting a resume and hoping for the best, follow these 6 steps for every job.

Study the job description and decipher what problems the employer wants solved. Employers don’t care about you. They care about solving their problems. This is the only reason why they are posting a job. Get into their heads, and try to understand their pain.

• Why are they posting this job?
• Who is the ideal candidate for the job?
• Which skills does the ideal applicant have?

Write down a brief description of the ideal applicant in the third person, all the way down to what they’re wearing. This will help with your positioning when applying for the job.

Example “3rd person” description:

Kyle is a professional marketer who graduated with a marketing degree from UCLA in 2011. He’s worked for three years in the digital agency world in LA, learning content marketing, SEO, and SEM. He pays attention to the details and is reliable. Skills include Photoshop, indesign, and basic HTML. Kyle dresses in a classic navy business suit — but with bright socks and a colorful tie.

Write a cover letter detailing how you’re going to solve the employers problems. Apply your skills and work history to what the employer is looking for. Besides a traditional cover letter, write (but don’t send) a 3 paragraph email outlining why you’re the ideal person for the job and why you’re excited about it.

Tailor your resume to fit the job description.Change specific words, wording of accomplishments, and even job titles to better fit the position.

DO NOTHING. Keep these documents handy for the next steps of the process.

Extensively Research the Company.Your biggest advantage is information, and almost everything you need to know about a company can be found online. Here are the questions to answer about the company you’re applying for:

• What does the company do?
• Why do they exist?
• What recent milestones has the company surpassed?
• What is their culture like?
• What kind of people do they typically hire?
• Do I know anyone who works there?
• Do I have any loose connections there?

Use the following resources to get your answers:

• The company website
• LinkedIn
• Google news
• Youtube
• Google Finance
• Glassdoor.com
• Twitter.com
• Facebook.com
• Instagram.com

Be armed with as much data as possible. This post from Reddit Jobs has an excellent system for preparing for interviews which increased the person’s interview success rate by over 700%.

At this point, I had spent the past TWO DAYS studying the organization and practicing my answers. In these two days, I still treated finding a job like my job, but I didn’t apply to any new jobs. I simply prepared for this first interview. By the time I got there, there wasn’t a question they could throw at me that I didn’t have the perfect answer to. I came here to r/jobs, I searched for first interviews, I searched for first interview questions to ask, etc. I studied my answers and how I would say them—at what speed, how I would use my hands, etc. I also practiced my posture so that I could have a confident posture as I interviewed.

STEP 5: GET NOTICED BY DECISIONS MAKERS

This is the most important step in landing the job. You need to impress the people making the hiring decisions. Follow these steps.

Step 5A: Research the decision makers and get connected

Find out the following about the company:

• Who is the CEO?
• Who is the VP in charge of the department?
• Who is the hiring manager for this position?
• Who is the recruiter?
• Who is working at a similar job?

Your job is to get into the heads and hearts of these people. Follow them on Twitter, study their LinkedIn profiles, read news articles, quotes, and blog posts. Use Tab 2 of the Job Seeker Spreadsheet for each target introduction.

DO NOTHING WITH THIS INFORMATION. Do not email them. Do not ask them a question on Twitter. Do not randomly start retweeting them. You only get one chance to make a first impression, and need to do it strategically.

Step 5B: Find out how you’re connected to the target decision maker.

Conduct a LinkedIn search to see how you’re connected to each person. Decide if your connection to them is good enough to ask for an introduction. If you have more than one connection, pick the most powerful first but don’t hesitate to attack from different angles.

Step 5C: Make initial contact

The next step is to leverage your connections to make contact with the decision maker. Send your best connection the following emails:

• An introduction email with a quick brief on why you’re a great fit for the job, which includes asking if you can send them your resume to forward
• Upon reply, send a brief paragraph explaining why you’re a great fit for the job with your resume attached.

Here is an example where Tim is trying to get a job introduction to Kristine from Samantha.

Hi Samantha, Hope you’re well. Can’t believe the Market Research Summit was 6 months ago! Hope to see you there this year. I’m emailing about the market research analyst job that was posted last week. I’m looking to move back into full-time work from the consulting world and It looks like a great fit. Do you think you could make an intro to Kristine for me? Let me know and I’ll send over my details in a separate email. Cheers, Tim

Hi Tim, Great to hear from you, it definitely looks like it could be a fit! Please send over your details and I’ll forward it to Kristine. Samantha

Hi Samantha, Thanks for offering to make the referral to Kristine. I’m moving out of the consulting world and looking for a full-time gig. In the last 3 years I’ve specialized in market research in the SMB Medical Device Space. My best accomplishment was a market research report focused on market penetration of Thermo-physical scanning devices in the Latin American Market. Clients who purchased the report included Merck, BSO, and MDI, and they all gave reviews of 4 stars and above. I’ve attached my resume, and look forward to speaking with Kristine about the role! Cheers, Tim Visualcv.com/timjohnson

Repeat this process with your other connections, but do not use the same template. If the same email is forwarded more than once, you’ll look bad. After you have one introduction in the bank, just attaching your resume is fine. The hiring manager only needs to receive your introductory paragraph once. What if you don’t have any connections to the decision maker? If you don’t have the right connections to decision makers in the company, you’ll need to do some extra legwork. Find anyone in the company you’re connected to by any degree. Research that person and find a closer mutual connection. Brainstorm a few ways that you could add value to the target contacts’ life. Once you have your pitch down, follow the process above asking for an introduction to that person through your mutual connection.

• An introduction email with a quick brief on why you should meet their contact, followed by “The Ask”
• An introductory email to be forwarded to the target connection.

Your goal is to meet that person for a coffee or drink. Note — you need to provide value or have something in common, or be asking for some direct advice. Never ask to get together to pick their brain. That just annoys people. Here’s an example on how to get together for coffee.

Hey John, I’ve been running marketing at KarmaHire for the last 2 years, and increased our traffic about a 10x. It’s been a good ride, but I’ve always been interested in wearable technology and am looking for my next career move. Would love to share some of what’s worked for us in the web marketing game, I think some lessons could definitely apply to WearableX. Would love to learn more about your growth plans and whether my skills could be a good fit for your team. Do you have 30 minutes for a coffee next Thursday? Best, James

Go for coffee with your contact, with no agenda but to make friends. Know exactly what job you want and who you need to meet beforehand, but never mention it directly. That makes you look like a jerk. Be strategic. Have a conversation that leads in the general direction of job openings at the company, and towards the position you’re looking for. If you do it right, this will happen.

Oh yeah, I think we are hiring a marketing manager — John’s in charge there. You should definitely meet him!

Boom. Say that would be awesome, and move on to a subject that they are more interested in. Follow up with an email and follow the previous introduction process. After getting multiple introductions for a job, you’re looking pretty good. Move on to nailing the interview.

STEP 6: NAIL THE INTERVIEW

If you’ve made it to the interview stage using this system, your chances are excellent. The company knows you’re well qualified for the job, and you’ve gotten glowing recommendations from their peers. The job is yours to lose. In the interview stage, you need to do two things.

1. Make sure the interviewer likes you and convince them you’ll fit in

There are dozens of little things that matter when interviewing. Your goal here is to make the interviewer like you, and your first impression matters a lot. You can Google most of them, but here are the basics.

• Dress appropriately
• Have a good handshake.
• Say hi to the secretary.
• Nail your elevator pitch.
• Mirror the interviewer’s body language and energy
• Be confident

Interview Protip: Find a video of your interviewer online before a phone or in person interview and watch it for 20 minutes before the interview to “mirror” their energy and style. This will create instant rapport with the interviewer.

2. Prove that you have the skills and expertise to perform well on the job.

This comes down to preparation. The more you know about the company and the industry, the easier it will be to nail the interview. Your best weapon is knowledge . Dig into the company. Dig into the job description. Find out exactly what they want. Find out exactly how your skills apply.

The best way to impress during the interview.

Assume you have the job and come up with a plan to execute on the deliverables from the job description. Write down your plan in a 1-page, multi- page, and presentation format. Make sure it’s good. Tell them this is what you’ll do in the job. And these are the results you’ll get. Some examples of effective plans (dependent on the position):

• A 60 day sales plan
• A strategic marketing plan
• A new marketing website mock-up
• Rewritten copy of a website sales page

Besides knowing everything about the specific job, study interview questions and be prepared for everything they throw at you. Try to relate every question you are asked to your previous experience or education. If you’re interviewing for a technical job, expect a skills test. In many careers you will be asked the exact same questions that you can find online. Glassdoor and Careercup also have lists of company specific questions.

STEP 7: CLOSE THE DEAL

Once the interview likes you and are convinced you’ve got the skills for the job, you need to walk the fine line of balancing expressing how passionate you are about the job and how you want it while maintaining scarcity (You’re a hot commodity with many offers). Here’s a basic script:

I really love YourCo. I’ve followed you since (founding) and it seems like the perfect place for me to build my career and continue to grow. What I’m looking for right now is a company where I can add the most value.

Don’t forget to politely follow up after the interview with an email. If you’ve executed correctly, expect an offer soon. If you don’t get a job offer, you have two options. Offer to work for free to execute your plan from step 5. This is risky — as it devalues you as a product, but is also a way to get a foot in the door at a hot company. The best option is to get a really good job elsewhere, and revisit your Dreamco later (Leveraging the relationships and reputation you’ve built there).

Conclusion: Hard work pays off

Following this process is a lot of work. But as a reality-check, you’re making an investment into a career path that will pay you millions in your lifetime. Putting the time in to do your job search right is worth the investment. The right job can set you up for endless opportunities, and is always worth the extra effort. If you just want any job this formula will work too. but I challenge you to look for more than just any job. Look for an opportunity that you will enjoy that will grow your skills, network, and influence.

Invest in yourself now to reap future rewards.

Originally published at www.visualcv.com.

I lost my Kindle last month. This was upsetting, as I loved reading on my Kindle. Instead of buying a new Kindle, I decided to email Jeff Bezos to ask for a new one. I wrote a silly sob story about how important the kindle was to me and hit “send.”

An hour later I got a reply!

…..from Amazon corporate.

They thanked me for emailing Jeff and told me to go buy a Kindle.

What a boring story.

The truth of business is that most stories are boring.

Most of the time, any action you take will result in nothing.

A swing and a miss. No likes on your tweet. An “archive” button pressed.

Results are binary.

You either succeed, or you don’t.

The great thing about that is, there are only 0s and 1s — there are no negatives.

The gorgeous girl at the bar talks to you or doesn’t. She doesn’t throw her drink in your face.

The email is archived, you don’t get a reply telling you what a piece of crap you are for having the audacity to email them (unless you emailed DHH…)

This article goes unread.

There are rarely consequences to taking action.

There are huge costs to not.

I’m not scared of failure — I’m scared of what ifs.

If I don’t make that call — what happens?

I would rather know for certain whether something is a pass or a fail — then live with the pain of not knowing. That is my fear.

And maybe a compulsion. But I’ll take it.

I emailed Jeff Bezos to ask for a free Kindle. Here’s what happened. was originally published in James Clift on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Holopod is a simple tool I built to help me better manage my remote team.We launched in November, and saw a slow trickle of signups.

Everything changed in March.

With the whole world desperately trying to figure out remote work, this may be Holopod’s moment.

Since the world has started working from home, dozens of companies have signed up — from 10 to 6000 employees.

We’re doubling down, and I’m looking for a digital marketer who is interested in digging in and helping to build our community, create content, and acquire customers. The deal could range from joining as a cofounder to simply getting paid for contract work.

What is Holopod?

Holopod was built out of challenges I’ve had running a fully remote team in different timezones. It’s trying to solve a few problems:

• How do I know when someone is available?
• How do I know when to message someone, and when not to interrupt their flow?
• How do we reduce Slack interruptions? Eg. signalling when I’m on a Zoom call, so I don’t get distracted

Holopod automatically updates your Slack status based on your work state. If you’re on a call, in the flow, or available — it will update your status and optionally pause your notifications.

It also sends you a daily report that shows how you spend your time.

You can test it out at Holopod.com.

As a side project, our traction ain’t bad.

We launched November 2019, and currently 180 teams have signed up — ranging from 10 to 6000 employees — including some very big names.

Marketing needs

Our marketing currently consists of a Slack store listing and a trickle of search traffic. I need someone to work with me to:

• Write compelling, search focused content
• Build a community using Twitter
• Generate buzz and PR
• Write educational content and product guides

Ideally, you have this experience:

• 3+ years of experience in a marketing role in e-commerce/SaaS
• Solid understanding of market research and data analysis methods
• Solid content writing experience and community building knowledge
• Interest in remote work

Next steps

If you’re interested in partnering on Holopod please email a brief profile along with writing samples to james@holopod.com.

The ideal skillset is a talented digital marketer looking for a side project who also wants to hustle on customer development, and is interested in how a startup goes from 0 to revenue.

Initially, this will be a contract gig that ideally leads into a full-time role after 1 month. We’re early enough that we are looking for co-founder, or early employees interested in owning a part of the business.

We soft launched in November, and with no marketing had seen a small drip of signups trickling in.

Two weeks ago (along with everything else in the world) that changed.

With the whole world desperately trying to figure out remote work, this may be Holopod’s moment. In the past week, a dozen companies have signed up — ranging from 10 to 3500 employees. I’m looking for the right people to help get Holopod from beta to revenue— as a side project or full-time gig.

This isn’t an ask for “free work” or a “partnership.” I’m looking for a developer who has some time to dedicate to this. The deal could range from joining as a full-time cofounder to simply getting paid for contract work.

I believe with some effort we can get to revenue within a month.

What is Holopod?

Holopod was built out of challenges I’ve had running a fully remote team in different timezones. It’s trying to solve a few problems:

• How do I know when someone is available?
• How do I know when to message someone, and when not to interrupt their flow?
• How do we reduce Slack interruptions? Eg. signalling when I’m on a Zoom call, so I don’t get distracted

Holopod automatically updates your Slack status based on your work state. If you’re on a call, in the flow, or available — it will update your status and optionally pause your notifications.

It also sends you a daily report that shows how you spend your time.

You can test it out at Holopod.com.

As a side project, our traction ain’t bad.

Status: Launched November 2019

Traction: 166 Slack Teams signed up

Notable signups: Zapier, Telus, Klue, Unbounce, Quill

We launched in November, and have generated 166 company signups with little marketing effort.

Roadmap

Here is a brief list of things we need to build.

• Update the web app UI (design is ready)

• Custom statuses (so people can update their status for sick days/vacations)
• Time zone management
• Team dashboard view
• Windows desktop client

Tech Stack

• Rails
• React (Front-end)
• Swift (Mac Client)
• Windows Client

The initial focus will be the Rails + React (web experience).

Customer feedback

Overall, users are generally happy with Holopod. Once they install it, they expect it to work properly and run in the background. It seems to work best when an entire team is using it, but there are some barriers to adoption.

Competition

Currently, there is no direct competition for what we’re doing.

The alternatives are updating your status manually, or synching with Google Calendar. We also have a Google Calendar Sync.

Potential

The first major challenge is improving onboarding and retention of new customers. We need to really simplify the first run of the app so that companies get immediate value without doing any work.

How do we get every company that signs up to get their whole team on board?

Next steps

If you’re interested in partnering on Holopod please email a brief profile, what you’re looking for, and any other thoughts to james@holopod.com.

The ideal skillset is a solo developer looking for a side project, who also wants to hustle on customer development.

I can offer a combination of large stake in the project, a base salary, and coverage of operating costs/budget.

HELP WANTED! Technical co-founder for a remote work tool with 166 registered companies was originally published in James Clift on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.