Remote Tools
Discover top remote-first products
The reality of remote work has been fast forwarded by 10-15 years given the COVID crisis. We were all pushed into remote work suddenly and now, even large companies like FB, Twitter etc. are taking a full-time leap into remote.
Remote working is close to our heart and we've been working on a host of initiatives over the past couple of years - Products, Guides, Podcasts, Stories!
However, we still felt there was something missing. Existing communities around remote work only focus on jobs giving us a gazillion job boards!
They miss the basic human need - to interact. And for us as remote workers, we need to belong, relate and learn from others who understand the journey we are on.
Hence, we set out to build an exclusive remote-focussed community.
Today, I am super excited to share that we are officially live - The Remote Clan 🚀 🔥
The community website you see right now is the culmination of all our efforts over the past year and half. I would really love if you spend some time on the website and share your thoughts 😀
Our most ambitious project to date, Remote Work 2020, is now live 🎉 You can view the project at Remote Work 2020. We are also live and trending on Product Hunt (you can find us on the homepage) - so, do give us a shoutout if you like our efforts 🙌
What is Remote Work 2020?
Remote Work 2020 is the culmination of all our efforts and learnings thus far basis our personal experiences, insights from our conversations with leaders of top remote companies & remote-first makers, and stories of successful remote workers.
It is a combination of 3 sections -
-
State of Remote Work 2020: Stats, figures & insights based on our survey of 331 remote workers from Invision, Gitlab, Doist and many more distributed teams!
-
Remote work guide: Our commentary (totaling 7,122 words) on pressing topics around remote work based on learnings from interactions with leaders of distributed teams and successful remote workers.
-
5 Podcasts & 13 stories: The actual source of truth for us 😀. The collection of podcasts with leaders from Gitlab, Invision, Doist, Scrapinghub, FlexJobs, etc. and chronicles of remote workers - the people we have learnt the intricacies of remote work from!
In what order should you read the Remote Work 2020?
We created Remote Work 2020 to be your go-to resource whenever you want to refer a particular topic around remote working, borrow inspiration from others who have been working remotely/ leading remote teams or to simply fulfil your curiosity around what's what in the world of remote work! Just FYI, each section is independent of any other.
I know all of us are busy and it is going to be tough to read through the entire content, even in multiple sittings. So here's my recommendation on what you should definitely read:
-
Managing a remote team - This is by far the most relevant section. Even if you are not leading a team, the topics we cover here (and the solutions thereafter) are things you will find useful and immediately executable for your team.
-
Battling loneliness - As an individual remote worker, you will find this section very intriguing. We have also covered best practices as a team, that you can implement, to first acknowledge and then tackle, loneliness.
-
Culture in a remote team and Being remote-first - I would recommend you read this after you have covered 'managing a remote team' since these sections delve into finer details on how best to build and function as a remote team.
-
Podcasts and Chronicles - We have summarised each podcast and story, pick and choose any that interest you.
-
State of remote work 2020 and Is remote the future? - These sections should primarily give you a benchmark on where remote work is headed and what other remote workers are thinking. You can browse through them whenever you have some spare time, while travelling or when you are taking a short break from work.
Eager to hear your thoughts/ feedback!
-
3
I love keeping up with the new trends going on in the remote work economy. Makes me so hopeful for the future!!
-
1
Super! I am hoping you like the content we have put together :)
-
-
3
This looks really cool, kudos!
Didn't do a deep dive into the stack but seems like a VueJS client app at first glance, is that right? If so, I'd love to hear your thoughts on improving SEO and indexing the great content you have there. Have you considered Nuxt at all? I'm in a similar place with a product that is based on content and would love to pick your brain. All the best!
-
1
Thanks a lot :)
Bang on! We are using Vuepress. Currently using meta in the config and front matter in Vuepress. But would love to hear if you have inputs on this!
Did come across Nuxt but haven't tried it out. Tried Jekyll and Hugo though and liked it a lot. But somehow the Vuepress theme (basic) had a little modern look, so went ahead with it :)
-
-
2
A very comprehensive guide on remote working, well done. After seeing your work, I thought that you could help me with something, what's is the best way to contact you?
-
1
Thank you for the kind words :) You can drop me a line at hrishikesh@remote.tools.
-
We have 200+ makers on remote.tools now who are making products for the remote working community. I am always amazed and curious to know about their journey, products and such other things.
So, started talking to each maker, ideally having a half hour long conversation. The first in the series is with Vivek Nair from Pragli, a virtual office for distributed teams.
Full episode here - https://content.remote.tools/i-built-a-virtual-office-for-distributed-teams-vivek-nair-pragli.
A few interesting points from our conversations -
-
Vivek built his first company while in College and raised $2mn in his final year. While this was amazing to start with, the founders eventually realised that this comes along with an expectation of a typical VC-level growth which they weren't seeing. Had to then sell it off after a couple of years.
-
Pragli was inspired from his personal experience of working remotely for over 2 years, wherein he realised communication is the biggest problem when it comes to remote working. And asynchronous solves only a part of it. Social isolation problems, which are in fact the biggest, aren't resolved. In consequence, Pragli came into being.
-
Vivek is relying a lot on content and channels like HN, PH, IH to market Pragli. His approach here is to cover all possible types of content/ channels and see what sticks best.
-
Interestingly, for the next hire, Vivek is looking to have a QA onboard since Doug and he are both engineers and feel the QA bit (or the lack of it) slows down their ability to ship faster.
Would love to hear your thoughts on this :)
-
3
Nice!! Look forward to hearing it!!
I run Open Podcast on Telegram. You're welcome to join!!
http://t.me/Openpodcast-
1
This is great! Would love to join :)
-
This month we have had 750 new users signing up on remote.tools and I'd like to share some insights on how we achieved them.
-
~80% of the user signups are the colleagues of the remote-first product makers whose products were posted this month.
-
~15% engaged with other remote-first products posted on the platform with the majority going to Twist - the Slack alternative built by Todoist.
Targets for next month:
Rather than focus on the metrics since it is just a month since we launched. We intend to focus more on the inputs.
Thus, we aim to work on content to improve on SEO and distribution on social media to get more organic users to the platform.
Question to the community:
As a remote worker, what blocks you from working as productively as you can on a daily basis?
-
2
@Suvansh_Flexiple
It would be really interesting to hear about some of the most common complaints you've heard about remote work! Seems like you've put in a lot of research into this, would be great to learn from you!
-
1
Somehow missed this! My bad.
The most common complaint is that it takes a lot of effort. Putting structures in place is hard and takes effort. Which is what most companies find tough to do and ultimately end up inferring that remote does not work.
Have you tried remote work? Anything that you found difficult?
-
-
2
You should make some experiments with FB ads (targeted on popular remote companies such as Hubspot etc). It should be cheap to create new signups.
-
1
Great idea, Marcin. I looked into this today and figured that we need to commit to spending $10k+ on Facebook ads to run such targeted ads. Is there anything I have missed?
-
2
$10k on Facebook - why so much? Just conduct an ad test with $300 for a few days.
-
1
I made an error last time around. I was unaware that Facebook allows us to target lookalike audience. Figured this out last week and have allocated a budget of $500 for the newsletter subscriber base too.
We figured that we need to experiment with content. Thus, rather than driving sign-ups we want to first try engaging on newsletter and figure out the kind of content the audience likes. That would also give us insights on the features to be built next.
-
-
-
-
2
This comment was deleted 6 years ago
-
1
It does, Rico! Though still a long way to go before we make a sizable dent in the huge and fast growing remote working space.
-
6 Comments
This project looks great @hrishikesh1990. Congrats on the launch and best of luck with it all!
Thank you so much @gordon :-)
Just some constructive criticism.
Auth locking your content is not a great idea for seo purposes. Also sign up requirements are really strict may turn off some people like me.
Best of luck to you and your platform 🤞
Hey @saltysammy, Thanks, those are some great points.
Just trying to understand a bit more:
This is a small bug on Remote Clan. Even now if you click on the card, the posts are accessible (without signup). There is a small bug on clicking the post title, which we'll correct immediately. You can try by accessing a post in incognito - you'll find that it is accessible.
But still open to feedback. How would you rather implement quality control?
@rosiesherry Is an absolute expert in this. So would love her thoughts too in terms of whether she thinks an onboarding form from a quality purpose isn't smart.
It looks nice, some good initial activity going on there.
It feels a bit plain though, it's a clean UI 'n' stuff, but some kind of personality/vibe would be beneficial. Otherwise it ends up feeling like just another website.
I would think carefully about the discussions you start and really try to focus in on the challenges that people are facing. This takes a lot of practice to get right.
It might also help to define the remote workers you want. It feels like it is targeting entrepreneurs, but remote work applies to so many more than that. Entrepreneurs might be the people you know, but is that the right audience (idk, food for thought).
The top nav links are a bit confusing too, they go off to different domains, which I understand why, but it will get people lost.
Firstly thanks @rosiesherry - I know you are super busy, so appreciate you taking the time to go through our website :)
UI: You are absolutely right. We actually did this without involving any designer to get the functionality going correctly. Tried a few different themes but weren't happy with them. But now, I will try to prioritize the brand change.
Discussions: Totally. The good part is that we have been interacting with these guys through our newsletter for about a couple of years and have a decent idea about their likes. But this is going to be a journey. Any direction you could give me regarding this? :)
Kind of remote workers we want: We absolutely want all remote workers - you are right. We really need to get our game on in terms of stimulating different kinds of discussions. I, for one, largely write articles catering to startup enthusiasts and that's why share posts in that domain. I will ensure that we have a wider range of topics.
<Been trying to learn a lot from you in this regard :P>
Top nav: Again, bang on. We had a lot of discussions about how we should handle this. We wanted to showcase that we have been doing this for a couple of years and are not just nascent nobodies. But yes, the top nav bar does take people away from our community. I think we will redesign that part to make it simpler and more consistent.
Once again, love the comments. I hope to come back stronger for another round of critique from you 🙏🙏🙏