Becoming a remote agency

This transcript has not been edited — please listen to the podcast to confirm any statements made by speakers. 

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Brian Shields, CEO & Co-Founder of Sprinter:

Everybody, welcome to future at work. I'm Brian, this is Alex. Today we're gonna be talking about managing remote teams and managing distributed teams, both of our experience as the owners of coder as well as the founders of sprinter. So I'm here with my partner, Alex, he's gonna talk a little bit about how we kind of got started with our team at coder.

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Alex Ford-Carther, Chief Technology Officer & Co-Founder of Sprinter:

Yeah, no. So in order to manage remote teams, you I guess, have to know the story of how we manage local teams first. So Brian, I obviously kind of listened to the first couple episodes, learn a little bit about how we got started. But 2015, we opened up just a digital innovation studio here in Chicago, and hired a few local developers. You know, there's obviously a good talent of folks here in Chicago working on different projects and software developers. So we hired a couple of folks in house initially scored a couple big projects right out the gate, you know, some relationships we had from from previous experience. But that was kind of our first time managing, I guess, developers, in essence, so we had a couple people kind of advise us, if you will. But just generally speaking, we had a whole team in house over and foot market it, you know, one of the West who are one of the we work locations. And we did that for probably, what a year and a half, scaled up and scaled down. We, you know, like I said, we've worked with probably 50, 60, 70 different startups and agencies and business owners alike. So as projects came on, we obviously had talent in house. But when projects rolled off, and we didn't have projects, then we were kind of stuck with, you know, the talent and making sure that we had to kind of fill that hour that they had available. And then I guess 2017, two years after we started. You know, we decided internally that that wasn't the best model for us, we were more of kind of innovation versus just volume. So we were getting a little bit pickier about the types of projects that we were working on. Just because of the value that we could add, specifically, our backgrounds and how we kind of positioned the company. And at the same time, we knew deep down that we were always going to build our own platform. And so we rolled off of internal teams and move to I guess, like a hybrid model, not necessarily, but we've found kind of partners within we worked with a couple of agencies and partner agencies in like India, and I guess, one in South America. So those are some interesting stories we can kind of get into as we unpack this whole kind of remote management episode. But then after we worked, I guess 2019 is when we took the money from CB lab. So we built our internal software 2017 2018 And then once we move, or once we got our investment from CB labs, we then went fully remote and kind of built the whole team in Ukraine and kind of not not an agency partner model but we went over there went over to Ukraine, you know, set up a whole team based on some folks that we met in Switzerland as part of as part of our program. So we we have experience on all three sides in house, fully remote and then like remote hybrid where we had a partner agency so we can unpack kind of each one of those kind of scenarios and pain points and whatnot and then kind of dive deeper into specifically working with remote teams and remote talent and how we best kind of manage those folks.

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Shields:

Well yeah, I think that one of the interesting times for us was kind of that transition moment when we were transitioning from you know we probably had you know whatever 1520 People all under roof like working for us we kept having to go to the we work team and say we need another room we need another office we need to expand can we take these you know, glass partitions down and like dealing with all that and then like you said, you know a project rolls off and now I've got three more mouths to feed then what do we need the extra space and the kind of like the the the friction in the maintaining like a kind of fluid human capital in terms of like, you know, rolling people out My project was kind of frustrating, because it was, you know, we had to keep expanding inside the we were cutting honeycomb model and everything like, oh, we

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Ford-Carther:

were we were, you know, I don't want to say a startup, but we were a young agency and a young company at, you know, at the time as well. So we had our own cashflow issues and, you know, just operational processes that we were still trying to establish so,

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Shields:  

so and then not only that, like when we were scaling up, like you said, it'd be like, Okay, can we do we hire another designer? Do we expand the office, right? You get those kinds of constraints in terms of like, how you're managing the budget as a patient as an agency owner? It's like, what do I spend my money on? Right? Am I spending my money on more space, so I can hire more people? Or am I spending my money on marketing so I can get more clients, I can afford more people. And I think that that's kind of like a trigger a pretty standard thing for a lot of agency owners out there to deal with. And then so like for us, and like, we went from having everybody under roof in one location in Chicago, to where then we actually expanded across the city within the WeWork. Network. So we actually had three different offices in Chicago where you and I could go breakout in Grant Park, we had we had our blockchain team working on the on everything in the loop. And then we had in full market, we had the the people doing the agency services for our clients.

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Ford-Carther:

So one of the reasons we did that is because internally, we had already made the decision that we needed to go remote, and manage, and probably internationally remote for a number of reasons. But so we basically gave ourselves training wheels for a few months. Yeah, so for one summer, we had teams in different offices to kind of test out our processes, and set up new processes for having that remote management,

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Shields:

especially because when we were building the early version of the of the Sprinter platform, the idea that like if everyone working on it was in the same room, it's too easy for them to solve problems by just directly communicating, it's like no, no, this needs to be able to work for a remote team. So we're gonna basically silo you into different offices so that you can make sure that we're collaborating properly, and like building the solution as we needed it to be architected. And because of that, we were in a really good place to then once we did start working with remote teams, which we did at first, we started, like you said, we worked with a few teams in India and South America. And that was because we were bringing on new clients. And we had to scale up. And we were not able to hire quick enough locally to capture those opportunities. So we had to work with these other teams that, you know, some were better than others, some were not great, right. And there was a lot of issues in terms of communication and quality of deliverables. And just the, the the caliber of the talent. And we had some, you know, some of the economics of it look fantastic on paper, and then you start working within you realize that like, you know, certain communities of talent pools don't necessarily have like the same like design aesthetics, or, you know, they're more utilitarian, they're not looking at it from like a UX UI perspective. And so then, you know, finding the right fit in terms of their teams was difficult to kind of like a juggle. And then again, it was the same type of thing. It's like, okay, I got to pay these invoices, and I'm chasing the invoices from the client, I got accounts receivable and accounts payable. And then I think you get into all the just general cashflow, operational issues as agency owners, when you're dealing with that. And so I think then, then, once we, you know, we're basically had developed the Sprinter platform far enough to where we were able to feel comfortable, you know, taking outside capital investment, and like, you know, moving to Switzerland and building everything out and Krypto valley with CPVC. At that point, we were kind of, we trained ourselves to run the team remotely, we had built the platform to be run remotely. And then we were able to connect with our, with our Ukrainian friends, and then go over to Kev and start setting up the team over there. And then like you said, for, you know, the good two and a half, three years since then, like everything was fully remote. And we were basically just in the morning, morning stand up. So like, watch what everyone's doing. And the whole, the whole kind of ethos of what we want to do with Sprint are like, I just want to know who's doing what if it's on time, if it's on budget, like I want to, you know, hire good people and get out of their way, make sure we have a well managed roadmap. And then, because we had kind of built that solid foundation for the remote team after first kind of teaching ourselves how to manage remotely from being kind of traditional, like local agency guys. When kind of, you know, shit hit the fan, so to speak, like we're in pretty good position to manage that. So maybe you can kind of talk a little bit about what what that was like.

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Ford-Carther:

Um, yeah, I mean, obviously, a war broke out. So you know, it was tough, you know, obviously, you know, to get work done, but at that point, nobody cared. You know, for us, you know, the safety of our team was, you know, obviously the most important aspect of of the war, you know, we were in constant communication with our product lead and making sure that our team was safe. You know, some of the guys were able to get out of the country. I think the couple guys we talked to liken it to some grand theft auto ship.

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Shields:

Call of Duty when they were getting out of town and that was their

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Ford-Carther: 

their verbiage. But, you know, for us, you know, we had had to shift. But, you know, everybody was at once we got back to internet, like the process was saying, you know, people were kind of scattered all over, you know, Eastern Europe right now and just Europe in general, different time zones, but you know, process is still in place, you know, the daily stand up, still happens. So, because we were able to kind of properly set structure up, and obviously, I come from a logistics background and, and, and so, you know, making sure stuff gets delivered on time is kind of in my, in my ethos and in my blood. So we got to make sure that and obviously, we are delayed on a few things for the, for the platform. And, you know, Human Nature says I don't care, right. And so, you know, and that kind of goes back to our previous episode of, you know, the community, right, like, if you're building a community that they're going to, that's collaborating on a specific project like that, you're gonna have to have understanding buy in from the community. And so, at the

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Shields:

end of the day, software is built by people. Yeah, so, you know, good old fashioned human beings.

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Ford-Carther:

So yeah, I mean, we kind of just, you know, our team, we got real close to our team. And so, you know, we cost communication as best we can, and communicating through telegram and, you know, making sure their families are alright, and their families, families and friends. So, you know, we're getting real time war updates from from our team, Ukraine was not what I was gonna expecting. And you know, my partner. Yeah, exactly. But, you know, I think now that everybody's safe, and, you know, back to nobody's, like, fully back working yet. But, you know, 100%, because obviously, there's probably a little PTSD there. But, you know, for us, you know, the process that we established, and we started building in 2015. You know, kind of still holds true and it has allowed us to kind of weather, weather that storm and weather a few other storms, as we've grown and kind of scaled our business.

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Shields:

Well, it's like the the old sailing, right that, you know, smooth seas never made a strong sailor, right. And like, so once you kind of get out there. And like, once you have that kind of remote team, it's kind of like, you could weather the storm, right. And like, because we had the foundation in place, because we had the communication, the transparency and the tools in place. But we also had, like the collective mission that we're all working on, right. And so I do think, like you said, like the human component of like, first things first, like get everyone safe, right? Like I don't care about there's no deliverables until everyone's safe and sound their family's safe and sound. And I think the entire world's been nothing but like just blown away but and impressed by the strength and tenacity of the Ukrainian people. But that's also what people I think, one of the reasons we set up there to begin with was that we knew that the talent pool that was there, the engineering, the education system over there was was undervalued in the market up to Yeah, top to your talent, totally undervalued in the market. You know, there's a large Ukrainian population in Chicago, we have a neighborhood called the Ukrainian village, like, it was kind of natural for us to consider that as a as a location to build a team out. But a lot of people I think were kind of looking down on Ukraine, they were looking down on the talent pool there. And I don't think that that was ever justified, which is why we ended up going there. And so I do think that kind of coming off of this, you know, God willing, everything goes, you know, goes well, in terms of the war with Russia, but I think that, you know, Kevin and Ukraine will basically be like, you know, the web three country like, it's gonna, you're gonna see that you're gonna see the city's built back, like the Marshall Plan, you know, on steroids. And I think that people don't seem to really understand if they haven't been there before, but like, it was already, like a crypto city. Like the engineers, the people that were like living well, there were they were the crypto engineers that are the blockchain guys, they're, they're building stuff for companies all around the world. And I don't think that they that people really understand how like, technologically advanced kiff as a city was, like, it really is like a modern European, like, you know, capital and financial sense and cultural sense. And I think that people who haven't been there and aren't familiar with their culture until they started seeing, you know, the war on the news, didn't necessarily grasp kind of all what was going on over there.

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Ford-Carther:

Let's dive a little deeper into some of the processes and stuff that we kind of talked about and actually kind of what are some of the few things that we did to kind of set up set up over there and setup you know, communication channels and what are some some little tidbits that we can give our listeners to you know if they're looking at are on the fence about hiring remote teams and kind of you know, you and I we've talked to quite a bit of people is like, oh, like it's a lot cheaper but like it's a quality like like, we've talked to plenty of people that are remote hesitant if you will Remote curious. Yeah. Remote curious. And also, you know, but still won't pull the trigger?

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Shields:  

I think that there's been a kind of the general shift with COVID. Right. So I think that a lot of the remote work curious business owners have shifted on that domestically. Right. But I think they're still it's still the offshore component that they're, they're hesitant about, right. So I think that they're okay, hiring, you know, sec, big 10. You know, university educated, you know, tech people, but I think that they're not yet comfortable with the international component. I think part of that's operationally and I say, operationally, in terms of like the process we'd set up, like where we had, you know, we had entities that we're handling local taxes and local employment issues and making sure that we had people on the ground that were trusted business, experienced business owners in their own right, who knew how to handle that stuff for us to help us kind of navigate that there are tools that people can use now to kind of manage some of those remote teams, or not manage the remote logs and stuff like that, like the local, like hiring laws, and whatnot, but it is a it is an operational concern, are you okay, you got to figure out with your with bank accounts, and wire fees and transfers and all that. And so that's one of the reasons why we built sprinter was to kind of, you know, rip all those middleman fees out of the equation so that you're not losing the nine points in the transaction to try to send money to dollars to a bank in Ukraine to get turned into crypto. So these guys can get, you know, get paid. And so making sure that we could kind of architect that solution into the platform that can solve that problem for people was pretty important to us.

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Ford-Carther:

What are the other things that we found is that obviously different countries in different communities and within the world, I guess, have different ways of doing business in different ways of communication? So how could we establish you know, I think, from early on, we established that this is how we communicate, this is our expectation for deliverables. This is our timeline, this is our like, so I think, you know, being able to properly plan, I think, and establish your roadmaps establish your cadence with your team, I think is obviously, of huge importance. But I think we spent a little little extra time making sure we built that out correctly. And we, I'll be honest, we struggled early on, and, and making sure that the team was doing what we asked them. And once we figured out the right process, like it just kind of clicked and kind of moved in overdrive. And then obviously, you know, we were able to find, you know, a hugely important member of our team over there, kind of manages, you know, boots on the ground manages our whole whole operation over there, Vladimir will probably bring him on on the pod in a second and kind of chit chat with him a little bit about kind of how he has helped build our build our team over there. But, you know, having boots on the ground, having a point person that clearly understands, and, you know, what you're trying to achieve, and what you're trying to accomplish, I think is a huge importance. And there's quite a bit of talent, you know, out there, whether it's in Ukraine, whether it's in South America, India, wherever you kind of find your fit for your team, and where you think it's the right fit for your team. There's quite a bit of talent that can be that point person. And we always talk about local at scale. And that's what we mean by local at scale. Like if we you need a point person in Ukraine or point person in New York, you can have that through the network. And we have established that and are looking to establish, you know, further touch points within within the platform to make sure that if you do need to engage your team at a local touchpoint, we have that. And so, you know, establishing that process, but then standardizing that process. And that's one of the things that is important for us in the platform and kind of how we architected the way we did. Is that making sure that if you know, and you know, we had a different situation, but let's say you are a business owner, and you can't afford to slow down or stop, because your team in Ukraine is getting bombed by Russia, and you had to like swap out your team, you know, with with the platform and with the processes that we've established. We're trying to make it really easy to swap in and out so you can bring a new team on, obviously, there's some on ramp there but the day to day process of checking in time tracking, there's no system switching right managing your features, managing your note taking the feedback loops, all that's kind of built into the platform. Making sure that you could swap a team out in the instance that you needed to maybe you're not happy with the team for a particular part of a project and you needed to swap some somebody out somebody gets sick. The process and the day to day kind of my new show of of

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