Ali Rowghani, head of YC Continuity, talks to Gitlab CEO Sid Sijbrandij (W15) about how Gitlab has built a completely distributed company with 160 people (and growing). Sid's biggest tip for success in scaling a distributed company: write everything...
2:41 – GitLab values boring solutions: our product should be exceptional, but the company structure should be run-of-the-mill.
3:46 – Take an extra minute to write things down, so that you can save time and give people the tools they need to succeed. Everything from who starts a video conference, to OKRs for the whole company.
8:28 – What has been the most difficult part about building a company this way? Fundraising. It was difficult to convince investors that GitLab could continue to scale the completely distributed company. They kept hearing, “You tick all of our boxes, except for this remote thing. That’s new and we can’t take a risk.”