Remote Entrepreneurship Providing Startups With Unparalleled Flexibility

A business branching out into multiple locations is hardly a new concept. Corporations setting up offices in cities around the world is both the driving force behind and a natural consequence of globalization. But as technology affords people all over Earth a means of getting to know someone on the far side of the planet just as well as (if not better than) their next door neighbor, the concept of opening business outposts is trickling down to startups. As a matter of fact, it’s becoming more and more common for small businesses to spring up and prosper without their architects ever physically shaking hands.

Wade Sikkink is in charge of sales and marketing for Collaborative Health Solutions, LLC, a company building a social network for chronically ill patients called Medizzle. Sikkink works out of Lincoln. But CHS’s analytics expert is stationed in Ames, Iowa. The chief information officer and the IT staff live in D.C. And the company’s software vendor is based out of India.

Sikkink has never had a face-to-face conversation with half of his coworkers.

“Employees are going to be a lot happier if they’re where they want to be,” Sikkink said, adding that he’ll have his first in-person interaction with most of the Collaborative Health Solutions staff members when they all meet up for a TechCrunch event in New York later this month. “I think this trend is one of the big things that traditional, bigger companies don’t have. Those places have a mindset of  ’if you’re not here, you’re not working.’ But tech companies are more along the lines of ‘if you’re getting done what you need to do, we don’t care where you are.’”

Jake Stutzman, owner of web design firm Elevate, acknowledges the positive impact of remote employees. People working from home or some other location of their choosing will more than likely experience greater job satisfaction; a happier worker is a more productive worker.

“With Skype and email and Basecamp and all the other tools that are out there, we find it just as easy to work with somebody from far away than in person,” Stutzman said. “Obviously, as an owner, I’d prefer that everyone was in-house, collaborating in person all the time. But you don’t want to force people to move somewhere that they might not want to live, or someplace that’s pulling them away from family. Plus, I think people are more production when they’re alone. Office environments are fun and engaging and stimulating, but there has to be a point where that gets capped and you go off and get some work done.”

However, not everyone is sold on this new business paradigm. Lateef Johnson, CEO of online referral service Deckerton, is a bit apprehensive about his employees literally phoning it in. Although he does outsource his company’s exigencies to freelancers, they all reside in the same city as he does.

“If you’re far away from each other, if you haven’t worked with them before, if they don’t directly know your customers, if you can’t meet with them face-to-face on a regular basis, there are a lot of risks to that,” said Johnson, who managed outsourcing at the company where he worked prior to Deckerton. “Unless you have a professional relationship with the person in question, or your company is at a very large scale, this just isn’t the sort of thing I would suggest, and I personally would not recommend any of this for a startup.”

In that regard, Sikkink concedes Johnson may have a point. But in the end, he feels the benefits outweigh the drawbacks.

“You do create more of a bond and build camaraderie with your team when you get to see them in person,” he said. “But doing things remotely, you have the ability to recruit people regardless of where they live. If you had to have everybody in the same place, then you’re limited to the local talent pool. In Austin (where Collaborative Health Solutions, LLC is based) , that wouldn’t be such a big deal. But trying to start a tech company in Lincoln might be hard if you said everyone has to be here.”