Running a Virtual Company

Yakov Fain, co-founder of Farata Systems and SuranceBay, USA

Running a Virtual Company

“I got an idea. Let’s create a startup”

A friend of a friend

Early 2006 •  I’m not happy with Java offerings for the client side

•  Met two seasoned developers who were not happy with JavaScript

•  Adobe acquires MacroMedia and releases a promising RIA framework Flex 2

•  Let’s learn Flex and write a book about it

Let’s create a consulKng company

Do we need an office like this?

Or like this?

Who’s going to work in our office?

Lawyer

Bookkeeper

Payroll

HR

Accountant

Salesman

Who’s going to work in our office?

A lawyer

Bookkeeper

Payroll

HR

Accountant

Salseman

Sales force 1. Tech. wriKng, teaching, speaking 2. Former Customers

How did we get projects

How did we find people 1.  Personal ConnecKons in Eastern Europe

2.  Speaking at

conferences in Ukraine

3.  Recording audio podcasts (non-‐technical)

Where to Open an Office?

Recrui'ng!!! “Ideas are a dime a dozen. People who implement them are priceless.”

Mary Kay Ash

How we Aaract Talent from Overseas

•  Ability to work flex hours

•  Ability to work in your own town

•  CompeKKve pay

•  Work with seasoned developers

Hiring

•  We don’t hire teams

•  We don’t hire juniors (too expensive)

•  People must be capable of doing independent work and communicate well

•  Each person goes through phone/skype technical interviews. If we are not VERY impressed, we offer a candidate paid

test assignment

Retaining Good People

•  Between consulKng projects, they work on our product

•  People need to be moKvated: pay + flexibility + challenging work

•  Moving people from development to maintenance, if it beaer fits them

•  Encouraging people to aaend trainings and conferences

Firing

•  Didn’t become producKve in 2-‐3 months

•  Prima donnas

•  People who don’t care

Developers should be traceable

They Need to Have Self-‐Discipline

How do we do Time Tracking?

We don’t. Developers send us daily reports:

Managers

Manager’s role is to produce realisKc esKmates, deliver on Kme and protect developers from mean clients.

If a manager can’t tell if people were working unless he saw them working, he’s incompetent and has to be removed from the project (fired, promoted et al.)

Our Always Remote Offices

Nothing beats face-‐to-‐face communicaKons

Photos from hap://imgur.com/bJnJN

Nothing beats face-‐to-‐face communicaKons

Photos from hap://imgur.com/bJnJN

Face-‐to-‐face rules!

“I got an idea. Let’s create a startup”

A friend of a friend

2009

Let’s Automate Insurance Industry

Yeah, right!

Let’s create a product company

One person started invesKng money

One year later

Our Product Company (front office)

•  We have sales, customer support, HR •  During 4 years everyone was working from home.

•  Two months ago we rented an office in Tampa, FL for 5 people of the front office team.

Our Product Company (back office)

•  No specs for development. Fail quickly. •  Sprints for maintenance

•  Wiki arKcles describe processes

•  QA, CI, releases twice a month

Hardware

•  First development server was running on Verizon FIOS in my basement in NJ

•  Now we have two data centers (leasing cabinets in FL and NYC ). Once a year we double the capacity/bandwidth

•  We buy 2-‐3 y.o. hardware for 25% of original price, works well

Smart UI + Workflow AutomaKon •  More than 50% forms are autocompleted (Geo locaKons, public/proprietary DB/Web services, educated guesses)

•  All paper forms are turned into PDFs

•  OCR

•  Digital Signatures

Epilogue

In 10 years most of the of small IT companies will work remotely. Large corporaKons should find a way to work in the same mode or else...

Some URLs •  hap://faratasystems.com

•  @yfain

•  [email protected]

•  hap://yakovfain.com

Read this book for free now at hap://enterprisewebbook.com

Running a Virtual Company

Technology

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