Why?

The founding Avo team is from Iceland. We realized early on that, while we would keep our roots in Iceland, we would have a close connection with San Francisco, spending much time there and growing a team there. This meant we typically needed to collaborate across an 8h timezone difference.

Knowing that we wanted to excel at collaborating, even across the 8h timezone difference, an Atlantic ocean, and the North American continent, we made the strategic decision to make shared physical locations and time zones unnecessary. We decided to become remote-first and async-first.

What does async-first mean?

When working across multiple time zones, overlapping working hours become a scarce resource. If we rely on chat messages or meetings to make decisions, the lack of overlapping work hours will risk delayed decisions and resolutions. That is unacceptable in for a startup that needs to move at lightning speed. How do we combat that?

  1. We prefer Clear written communication [public] that drive fast resolution, over chat messages.
  2. We prefer async communication over meetings.
  3. Built for varying working hours.
  4. We keep each other up to date through async "daily"
  5. We #wave each other when we arrive and leave

What does remote-first mean?

  1. Meetings are remote-first.
  2. Built so you can live where you want while working on something cool with people who excel and inspire

How do we stay close as a team?

  1. Fridays are team days.
  2. We have an active Slack presence
  3. We spend time together outside work