Running a Virtual Company
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Yakov Fain, co-founder of Farata Systems and SuranceBay, USA
Running a Virtual Company
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“I got an idea. Let’s create a startup”
A friend of a friend
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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
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Let’s create a consulKng company
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Do we need an office like this?
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Or like this?
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Who’s going to work in our office?
Lawyer
Bookkeeper
Payroll
HR
Accountant
Salesman
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Who’s going to work in our office?
A lawyer
Bookkeeper
Payroll
HR
Accountant
Salseman
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Sales force 1. Tech. wriKng, teaching, speaking 2. Former Customers
How did we get projects
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How did we find people 1. Personal ConnecKons in Eastern Europe
2. Speaking at
conferences in Ukraine
3. Recording audio podcasts (non-‐technical)
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Where to Open an Office?
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Where to Open an Office?
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Recrui'ng!!! “Ideas are a dime a dozen. People who implement them are priceless.”
Mary Kay Ash
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How we Aaract Talent from Overseas
• Ability to work flex hours
• Ability to work in your own town
• CompeKKve pay
• Work with seasoned developers
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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
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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
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Firing
• Didn’t become producKve in 2-‐3 months
• Prima donnas
• People who don’t care
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Developers should be traceable
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They Need to Have Self-‐Discipline
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How do we do Time Tracking?
We don’t. Developers send us daily reports:
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Managers
Manager’s role is to produce realisKc esKmates, deliver on Kme and protect developers from mean clients.
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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.)
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Our Always Remote Offices
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Our Always Remote Offices
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Our Always Remote Offices
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Our Always Remote Offices
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Nothing beats face-‐to-‐face communicaKons
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Photos from hap://imgur.com/bJnJN
Nothing beats face-‐to-‐face communicaKons
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Photos from hap://imgur.com/bJnJN
Nothing beats face-‐to-‐face communicaKons
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Photos from hap://imgur.com/bJnJN
Nothing beats face-‐to-‐face communicaKons
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Photos from hap://imgur.com/bJnJN
Face-‐to-‐face rules!
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“I got an idea. Let’s create a startup”
A friend of a friend
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2009
Let’s Automate Insurance Industry
Yeah, right!
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Let’s create a product company
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One person started invesKng money
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One year later
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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.
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Our Product Company (back office)
• No specs for development. Fail quickly. • Sprints for maintenance
• Wiki arKcles describe processes
• QA, CI, releases twice a month
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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
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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
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2013
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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...
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Some URLs • hap://faratasystems.com
• @yfain
• hap://yakovfain.com
Read this book for free now at hap://enterprisewebbook.com