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LATEST POSTS 📚

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🏄🏻‍♂️ Eight Very Cool Marketing Things. Insights I've found from around the web in the last weeks.
💨 Blue Ribbon, MJ & The Swoosh: The Nike Story. How Nike was founded, the battle it fought and how it got to where it is today.
🥊 Battle Royale: ChatGPT vs Claude. A closer look into the biggest rumble of our time.

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HOUSEKEEPING 📨

A while back, Anand Arivukkarasu—ex-Meta product leader and one of our advisors—ran an incredible roadmap and positioning workshop that helped shape parts of our direction. He has since evolved that into ProductWorkshop.ai, where he runs focused workshops for startups and enterprises building AI-native products.

If you’re looking for a way to supercharge your AI strategy and want someone who has been at the bleeding edge for a decade or more, check out Anand and what he’s building. Big recommend. Anyway, enjoy today’s post!

BUILDING IN PUBLIC 🔎

How Athyna Makes Remote, Work

Remote work, once the stuff of sci-fi novels, has blossomed into the full-fledged global movement of 'Remotopia laboralis' (/rɪˈmoʊt.oʊ.piə ləˈbɔːr.ə.lɪs/). The post-COVID phenomena have turned kitchen tables into command centres and pyjamas into the new power suits.

My startup, Athyna, has been remote since day one, ~7 years ago, and if anything, you could say we do it well. The gauge I would use in order to signify a company's doing work well is engagement scores. For those who don’t know the term, your engagement score is effectively your culture score.

Engagement scores of 80/100 are considered excellent. Ours at Athyna has been, for the last four or so years, an average of 91. If 80 is excellent and 100 is perfection, we sit somewhere past the midway point between excellence and perfection.

Let’s take a look behind the curtain at how we make remote work work at Athyna.

Guiding principles

Let’s start at the beginning with some general remote work principles we live by at Athyna. While we have a mission, vision, values, and more, and many guidelines in our internal wiki, what I am about to outline is not formally documented anywhere. I am somewhat free-styling the following points. That said, these are the things we (/I) believe are the keys to remote work.

Trust is given, not earned

At Athyna, you are given trust on day one. You can, of course, lose that trust. But we treat people like adults, and we believe people are inherently good. This means we do not (!!) track people’s time, ask them to check in and out, or subject people to any other belittling measures of the same ilk.

We don’t really have working hours, either per se. Most will come in around 9-5, sure, but we have always worked on the idea that if you deliver good work in a timely manner, you are golden. Hell, one of our PMs was building a product while hiking the Annapurna Circuit in Nepal. Shout out to Lucho.

Documentation first

We use Notion to document absolutely everything inside the organisation. If it exists and is live, it is either built in Notion or embedded—or, at the very worst, linked—on the correct Notion page.

The idea is that, in any remote organisation, anyone should be able to find anything within seconds. And it should really be inside of two search bars: Notion & Slack. We are not there yet, but we’d be close.

Documenting everything also means having less screen-time burden for the team. Nothing sucks the life out of someone more than meeting after meeting after meeting. You can minimise this by being documentation first.

We share one common language

There is very little flexibility in language at Athyna. We have team members whose native tongue is Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Filipino, Romanian, and more, but we all share one common language: English. I actually think it sucks how the Western World and English speakers will often think of themselves as Masters of the Universe.

What sucks more, though, is walking into a Google Doc, Notion page, or Slack channel to carry on with your work and not being able to make sense of what’s going on. It’s a terribly un-inclusive feeling, and it just sucks.

At Athyna, we make sure that in all correspondence, big or small, we speak the one language we all share. This is the one point where I have the least flexibility. And although we have an entire team of people who score 8.5/10 or above in English, we also have an internal English tutor for those who want to continue sharpening their comms.

We do, however, have geo-centric channels (#team-brazil, etc.) where people can talk shit about co-workers during the World Cup and other such events + anything else they may want to chat about.

Remote tech stack

Next, let’s go through the tech that helps us make sure the wheels go round. This is boring, but possibly useful too. As far as our key pieces of tech go, I am going to segment them into two areas: Big Hitters, and Necessary Evils.

The Big Hitters

• Notion: We do everything in Notion. Documentation, OKRs, product positioning, employee directory, pet directory, risk analysis, meetings, reports, advisor updates. If it can be done on any other app, we probably don’t use that app; we do it in Notion.

• Slack: This one goes without saying. Slack does seem to be a bit too distracting sometimes, but for now, it’s very much at the core of what we do.

• Loom: I actually really think the product of Loom keeps getting better and better. Big lover of Loom. Less meetings = happier people. That is much more possible with Loom.

Necessary Evils

• Figma: Figma may actually be rated a bit low. We love both FigJam and Miro for brainstorming sessions and much of our design work.

• Zoom & Google Meet: We try our best to minimise meetings at Athyna, and when we do have them, we make sure they are Speedy Meetings. Speedy Meetings save you an average of 17% of meeting time by presetting your 30-minute calls to 25, 45, 40, 1 hour, 50 minutes, etc.

• Google Sheets: Docs are banned at Athyna; we live in Notion, and if it doesn’t require complex formulas, we usually use a Notion database instead. But for complex sheets, we still use Google Sheets.

Meetings & communications

I would love to say we are one of the organisations with close to zero meetings, but we aren’t. We are working towards fewer meetings; however, each department still has meetings. Let’s break down how we run meetings and what communication cadence we use with the entire company.

Departmental Meetings (weekly)

Every department will meet at least once a week to discuss what is important to the department at that time. I think it’s important in a remote setting to have this meeting to get some face-to-face time every week.

Leadership Meeting (fortnightly)

This call is for senior leadership, including all of our department heads. It’s a big call, but I do like having everyone together in one place to discuss key issues. We structure it as follows:

• Icebreaker: One person presents a question to the group, and we spend 10 minutes sharing our responses.

• Carryover actions: Next, we move to any carryover actions from the previous meetings.

• The Big Issue: We choose one topic from the agenda to spend the most time on. We probably spend 20-25 minutes here.

• The remaining agenda: And finally, we tick off the remaining items. For anything that is missed, we try to address async in Slack.

It’s worth noting that all agenda items are posted in the #agenda-department Slack channel with a paragraph or two of context, so everyone can mentally prepare.

All Hands (monthly)

Our monthly All Hands happens on the second Monday of each month and wraps up the prior month. I present these for the most part. We go through key metrics, good, bad, and the ugly, and the new hires, roles, charges, etc., before moving on to a departmental presentation. Following our department presentation, Taina, our HR leader, will speak on some people and culture topics, then we will finish with a team Q&A.

Allies & Investor Update (monthly)

We send monthly investor updates to investors, allies, and potential future investors at Athyna. Our VP of Operations, Bea, prepares these with me, and they go out between the 1st and 31st of every month, ha. But they always go out.

Agora Sessions (monthly)

Every month, we also have a special session we call our Agora Sessions, which focuses on learning a skill from a team member. Think of it as a sort of lunch-and-learn. We have had astrology, cinematography, the synergy of hip-hop & skateboarding, and even a cooking class with our very own Julia Gerardo Luna.

Walk & Talk Meetings (weekly)

I thought it might be worth adding that some teams, including mine, like to use walking meetings in their weeks. Away from screens, unless otherwise coordinated, we will usually walk our dogs, drive down the shopping centre, or go for a slow bike ride in the park. If it’s good enough for Steve Jobs, it’s good enough for me. Another example of us betting on fewer screens making for happier humans.

Hiring & location-ing

When building remotely, it’s important to have a strategy around how, who, and where you plan to hire. For us, we wanted to have hubs around the world. Places where, although remote, people could get together if and when the chance arose.

We have slowed our hiring in Argentina for the moment to referral-only, so that we can build out hubs two and three. Today, we hire more heavily in Brazil and have a significant team there. The reason it’s important for us to diversify our team is that I never want people to feel less than inside our company. And if we have 80% of our team in one location, it starts to feel a little like that.

Building culture remotely

This is a really funny one for me. I vividly remember the early days of Athyna, when I was having a conversation with Carmela, our first head of culture, and I was stressing about how we were going to bring the team together. Carmela shook her head at me and said something I’ll never forget.

The statement hits me like a ton of bricks, and I stand by it today. I don’t think thereis any link between building team engagement and seeing people in person. Seeing co-workers face-to-face is awesome. But it’s totally uncorrelated to building culture. At least this has been my experience.

That being said, I am sure many people find ways to fuck it up. Here are a few things you can look at to make sure you're not one of those who don’t.

Make everyone an owner

We give equity at Athyna to everyone, from executive to intern. And we don’t offer options that someone would need to buy to access. We give RSUs. Giving RSUs is the equivalent of gifting stock to your team at no cost. Options for most young people are often prohibitively risky and/or expensive. They are bogus, really. We give RSUs.

And we also built a second trigger into our plan, meaning the shares don’t vest until a) time and b) a liquidity event has happened. This means there is no taxable event (ever!) until someone has liquidity in their stock. BOOM!

Help people build their careers

People are ambitious. Help them get to the next stage of their career. Whether that is within your org, outside of it, moving up a ladder, or across to a totally different area. This is your job as the leader of an organisation. Help your people thrive.

We have had salespeople turn into product managers, CS people move into culture, graphic designers turned UX, and much more. Add to that, we have had people with little to no experience grow into leaders of our organisation.

Research by PwC showed that 43% of employees leave their jobs due to a lack of career growth opportunities. While a sideways move might not directly lead to promotions, it can demonstrate your commitment to career development.

Not only is it great for your people, but it’s also one of the things that, unless you are slightly evil, will fill your heart with little bundles of joy. Take this seriously!

Don’t f**k around

I could have called this title ‘Lead by example’ or ‘Act with integrity’ or any number of other titles, but I simply would not have been able to use my favourite meme of this edition. This one.

In all seriousness, though, your job is to be a leader. How you act is how your people will act. Our corporate motto at Athyna is ‘What Would Ned Stark Do?’ And people get it. They are expected to act with integrity and do the right thing at all times, but the moment you don’t uphold your end of the bargain here, neither will your team. Act accordingly.

In sum

Remote work isn't a consolation prize for companies that can't afford an office. Done right, it's a genuine competitive advantage: access to world-class talent, lower overhead, and, if you're intentional about it, a culture that punches well above its weight. Seven years in, a 91 engagement score, and a team spread across a dozen countries, Athyna is proof that the kitchen table can be just as powerful as the corner office. You just have to be deliberate about it.

The playbook isn't complicated. Trust people, document everything, meet less, and remember what Carmela told me all those years ago. Culture isn't built at the water cooler. It's built into how you show up for your people; every day, across every time zone, whether they can see you or not. Get that right, and the rest is just tools and calendars.

Extra reading

• GitLab Handbook, All Remote - 2023

• The Remote Handbook, Tyler Denk - January, 2024 - (need to subscribe to read)

And that’s it! You can find more about how Athyna can help you to build a high-performing global team here.

BRAIN FOOD 🧠 

TWEETS OF THE WEEK 🐣 

TOOLS WE RECOMMEND 🛠️

Every week, we highlight tools we like and those we actually use inside our business and give them an honest review. Today, we are highlighting Hyperbound*—the AI sales coach to help you quickly evolve and reinforce your playbooks as you scale.

See the full set of tools we use inside of Athyna & Open Source CEO here.

HOW I CAN HELP 🥳

P.S. Want to work together?

1. Hiring global talent: If you’re hiring tech, business or ops talent and want to do it 80% less, check out my startup, Athyna. 🌏

2. See my tech stack: Find our suite of tools & resources for both this newsletter and Athyna here. 🧰 

3. Reach an audience of tech leaders: Advertise with us if you want to get in front of founders, investors and leaders in tech. 👀