Hey Ravi, these are good questions. I’ll do my best to answer briefly. 
- Here’s a list of articles I refer to people about our remote culture. There’s no magic pill – like anything else, you just focus a lot of time and attention on doing it well.
- What We’ve Learned Building a Remote Culture (3k words that I recently updated)
- Keeping Your Remote Team Connected (some ideas for simulating the water cooler)
- How We Use Video to Build Remote Culture
- How Our Remote Engineering Team Stays Agile
- Help Scout’s 12-Step Remote Hiring Process
- How Our Remote Support Team Collaborates
- How Our Remote Team Stays Aligned with “Town Hall” Meetings
- Lessons Learned from 6 Years of Working in My Pajamas
- Sales as a Service (our approach to remote Sales)
- How to Plan Fun and Productive Company Retreats
- We don’t think of them as freelancers. They are full-time employees. In the US and Canada they are paid as employees with full benefits. In other countries we don’t have a legal presence in, they are legally contractors, but are paid a benefits stipend each month that is our very best effort at equal benefits. Every employee has stock options in the company for sure.
Ultimately what I’ve tried to do is build a company people are proud to be part of, and a culture within which they feel like they are doing their best work. Retention is the byproduct if you get those things right.
- An exit is thought of as an IPO or sale of the company, but truthfully there are several other ways to create liquidity for a company and shareholders. Buffer and Wistia have done some really interesting things along these lines, and you’ll likely see us do some interesting things in the coming years as well.
What I like to tell people is that it’s way easier to create liquidity for employees and shareholders than it is to build a great business. Focus on building a great business and you’ll find abundant ways to manage the liquidity situation.