Chris, CEO of Slite (Notion competitor & YC W18), shares how he built a remote team & YC experience
Written by: Hrishikesh Pardeshi, Founder at Flexiple, buildd & Remote Tools.
Last updated: Sep 03, 2024
Slite, short for 'Satellite', started with a simple motto: 'Note app for teams'. 3 years later, it's become much more - one place for your remote team to share ideas & collect knowledge.
Slite is also one of the earliest companies to grow from an in-office setup to a hybrid one to now a fully-remote company. So we got chatting with Christophe Pasquier, Founder & CEO of Slite, about his experiences on building 3 startups, benefits of being a YC alum and growing a remote company.
For a quick read, you can just browse this Twitter thread:
@christophepas, CEO of @SliteHQ (YC W18 & Notion's competitor), talks to @KarthikS2206 about:
— Hrishikesh Pardeshi (@hrishiptweets) October 26, 2020
🚀 Building 3 startups
🎯 @ycombinator experience
🌏 Going from in-office to fully remote
Key takeaways from the podcast below 👇#remotework pic.twitter.com/ZDsOG0EGpV
Starting with a strong team & building fast
Chris knew they were building a complex product that would need time & expertise, so he brought on a strong team from the very beginning. Before applying to YC, they already had a 6-member team.
With a strong team in place, they moved really fast launching private beta in 6 months (post an alpha earlier), open to public in 8 months and having 50 teams onboard in a year! Among those 50, was an 80-member team who replaced Confluence with Slite (which still had many issues back then). This served as strong validation for Slite.
Listen to this section: here
YC is totally worth given the great valuation & mentorship, however it only gives you an initial boost
The decision on whether to apply to YC was fairly simple. Chris says, 'We thought we'll give it a try and if we are lucky, we'll get through'. He also said that you already get a great valuation for 7% that YC asks, plus the later rounds you raise are at a much higher valuation given you're a YC startup. On top of it, the mentorship through the program is priceless. So going for the program is also well worth it.
Chris also mentioned that people expect YC to serve as a huge explosion or launchpad for their startup. While this may be true for a few companies (ex. Checkr jumped to $20mn revenue rapidly because they onboarded Uber), most others have to work hard to eventually become successful (ex. Webflow, which was part of YC in 2010 but became hugely popular only much later). YC surely gives an initial boost (TechCrunch, Demo Day etc.) but you still have to do a lot after that.
Listen to this section: here
Hiring across geographies, thanks to remote
Building a remote team wasn't a conscious decision at the start for Slite. In fact, it was the opposite. Chris was used to working in office & everyone else also lived closed by. Later on, people wanted to move away from their Paris office (to live somewhere else, avoid commute etc.) and eventually, they ended up making new hires only remotely.
While they chanced upon remote, Chris says that this has offered them the flexibility to hire the best across the world. An example he recollects is when he hired Bob (based in Korea), one of Slite's product designers, after following his blog for a while.
... I was following Bob's work for a while and I thought why not reach out to him to see if he wants to work with us. Remote offered me this chance to work with someone whose work & content I find really inspiring.
Listen to this section: here
Having uniform contracts with every remote employee is a pain
Chris says remote companies face a huge pain when hiring remote employees across the world. It is tough to have uniform contracts in place given every country has its own regulations. Workarounds exist like having people on contract vs. hiring them full-time, but they are mostly hacks and fall in grey areas.
... say, how do you devise a uniform policy for maternity/ paternity leave. For ex. I might hire someone in Finland where it is normal to take a 6-month leave whereas other countries might have it much lower.
Listen to this section: here
Solving for mental health of employees systemically
Finally, the discussion moved towards managing mental health of employees and solving it systemically. Chris suggested having a person-to-person mapping even as the company grows since a single manager having 1-on-1s might not be scalable.
While a manager should be looking over his team, I make sure that just one person in any part of the company isn't overloaded with too many people in this regard and at the same time, there's at least someone looking after you.
Listen to this section: here