Want to go totally asynchronous? Sidharth Kakkar on remote teams & autonomous cultures

 So I I'd love to maybe start by zooming out and, and having you share a little bit about the, the subscript, uh, founding story.

 yeah. Um, the subscript came out of, uh, my last company in a sense. Um, and that's a problem I experienced, uh, when running that company, I made a lot of mistakes running that company, apologies to everyone who had to work for me. Um, and one of those mistakes was I, uh, didn't hire a finance team, um, really at any point. And then eventually I started thinking about it, we ended up getting acquired. and what that meant that I was defacto CFO, apologies again to everyone who had to experience the other side of that. but as a result, I ended up doing all the things that you want a great, uh, finance leader to do. well I did 'em poorly, but I tried doing them, uh, specifically around using, um, financial data and information and collecting sort of your subscription information to make really good decisions. And I'm a pretty data oriented person. My team was a pretty data oriented team. but we were sort of very starved for high quality information and data to make the decisions off of. Um, and that, that was, it, it sort of like felt like this big lost opportunity, like got unforced, um, a source of unforced errors that the data existed. We just couldn't get it collected and like processed fast enough. and so we tried, you know, the usual path of, um, lots of people work on it and having them spend a lot of time in spreadsheets, sort of doing really manual stuff, stuff that was honestly Ray Ray below their skillset. and of course that leads to happiness for no one. And so that pain is what led, uh, me to think about. do other people experience this problem? And the answer turned out to be a resounding yes. And then is the problem even solvable? Um, we think it is, and we've

 working on it for a little bit and, um, And then how do you go about actually making this much, much, much easier for finance teams, leadership teams and CEOs for others who are the thing that I did, which is sort of playing defacto CFO themselves. So that's where subscript came from. And now we help, finance leaders at subscription companies get a much better handle on their data. Uh, get a much better handle on what's going on in the business and be able to actually advise their counterparts in sales or success or, um, even product and engineering on what's working, what isn't working, um, and down to the decision decisions such as like sometimes even like deal level, sort of deal level discount decisions, all the way to prioritizing a particular segment versus another, um, to thinking about the ICP, like all of those things are things that we help with.

 given this was your second company, uh, How did you think about what are the pieces of your experience building freckle from either a way that you worked culture people, sort of all of the component parts, what are the pieces that you wanted to bring over when you started again versus wanted to rebuild?

 Uh, it's funny. So after, uh, freckle was acquired, I, I spent a bunch of time putting together this, like, 35 page doc that no one, but me has seen. Um, and it's just like this brain dump of everything that I can think of that I learned. And there's lessons that span everything from how to be a better leader, to how to be a better manager, to how to product better, to, um, hire better, um, to how to make tough decisions, all the way to, how to build sort of a culture that does all of these things and grows and how to transition from the

All of these things went into this like giant talk. Uh, and so when I was working on. First, there was a sort of like the product and the space and the idea on subscript. And then there's sort of the company building side of things. And on the company building side of things, I spent a lot of time sort of re-reviewing all of those things.

So it's, it's in subscript is very much a reflection of sort of all the things that I've learned, but also in the way that, you know, year six of running freckle was a reflection of the first five years.

 so can you talk about some of the, those key learnings and how it applied specifically, maybe to the, the people and culture piece of, of subscript.

 Yeah. Um, so a few things that are definitely very different at subscript. So some, some things that are different from like ground up subscript is a totally remote culture. Freckle made that transition. So freckle started out as a San Francisco only based team and in the office sort of five days a week. And it transitioned eventually to a hybrid. Um, there's a San Francisco team and then the rest of the us team, uh, we had only a couple of members outside the us, so largely it was in the us and, um, That transition, uh, sort of, it was almost sort of like the next phase for me, which is, uh, I, I personally went from a person who believed, oh, you have to all be in an office.

And everyone to be together, you know, hours a day or whatever. And now I'm very much on the, on sort of the other end of the spectrum. And, um, I'm, I've sort of fully embrace the full remote, but then we started thinking a little bit more about, okay, so if you're gonna go fully remote, the next thing you could do is not have to have everyone kind of work at the same times, because that allows everyone to kind of do things in their own way.

And I personally find this. Uh, a bit where there's just times of the day where I am much less productive than other times in the day. Uh, one of our earliest engineers, Brandon likes to dance after lunch. And so he, he just spends a bunch of time dancing and then he comes back to work refreshed, and with sort of like a much. In a much better place and that's sort of what you want, right? You don't want people sitting in front of their when they're not gonna be able to be productive. So that was like the second part we layered on. Well, you can work anytime you want, because you want you to work when you're most productive, but then you have this question of like, well, what do you, how do you do meetings? so the next step was, let's just not do that. So let's get rid of meetings. Um, and so subscript is a zero meetings, culture, which means that we have zero internal meetings. the only exception to that is meetings for fun. So we'll do like board games together, we'll do like team fun activities together, but that is it, uh, zero other kinds of meetings. Um, and then if you're doing zero meetings, then you sort of go, okay, well, do you have to keep everyone in the us? and you have this realization you don't because, um, the person working in no longer needs to wake up in the middle of the night to come to an all hands anymore. so we went fully globally remote. and so now we have this culture that has fully globally. And has no meetings, and everyone can work whenever they want. Uh, there's like, there's this sort of, um, I, I can get into a bit more about my, my opinions on micromanagement later. Uh, but there's this very sort of full autonomy culture than layered on top of it.

Because if you have people working whenever they want, means that other people who, if they need someone else to make a decision for them is not working when they're working. Right. So, uh, we've emphasized that everyone gets to make their own decisions as a result of that. And so from that follows, well, if everyone can make their own decisions, then you have to make sure that you're hiring people who are going to be able to make those decisions.

And so that changes that hiring philosophy, a decent. And then if you're gonna hire people who can make their own decisions and empower them to make their own decisions, well, then you have to make sure that they have all the context they need cuz in a traditional organization, often peop reason people aren't allowed to make the decisions is because they don't know all the things they need to know. so then we go really hard on the context side of it, but that means now you have to have a large amount of transparency. And so as a result, we have an extremely transparent culture where everyone can sort of know everything. and so all these things, like all these pillars kind of follow each other, you know?

Um, and what's really nice is when you're starting out a new company and you've kind of done this before, you can look at that story and you can see how all those pillars follow each other. And so from day zero, all these things were true about subscript.

 What was your process in landing on this? What was sort of the reflection process, I guess of looking back at freckle and, and sort of figuring out the bits that worked and maybe the bits that could be improved.

 There was a lot of, sort of my own evolution as a CEO, um, FAL, being a first time founder CEO is like a really, it's a very tough gig. I, um, really empathize with everyone doing it because so much you need to learn. And at the same time you have to like be certain enough in it and confident enough in it to like rally a bunch of people around it, whether it's, you know, your customers or your investors or your employees, but at the same time experience has value and you don't have it. and so you kind of have to like, Gro around in the dark a little bit and try to find sort of, find the right things to go after, uh, or the right beliefs to have almost. and then there's the fact that there's like multiple right answers, right? Like just landed on an answer that's right for me for now.

Right. I will continue to evolve. but there's people who believe the exact opposite of me and they are, many of them are much smarter than me. Um, and I don't think one of us is writing. One of us is wrong. And so there's multiple answers. That means there's multiple sides of advice and you get all of these and you kind of have to sort through it.

So very hard job being the first time being the first time founder, CEO. And for me, that meant like there was a whole lot of evolution that happened in the six years, that I was building freckle sort of as an independent company and even in the year and a half I was, uh, building it within, um, within my acquirer. And one of those ways that I evolved quite a bit was how I manage people. So I started out in a, the way a lot of people start out as managers, is as fairly micromanaging. I didn't call myself that at that point, if you had asked me if I'm fairly micromanaging, I would've scuffed and said absolutely not. but I was, I'm like in reflection, I did a lot of things that I would now consider quite micromanaging. Um, I do now use this term way too liberally though. And I will sort of like call almost everything micromanagement. So like to take an extreme example, um, our engineering team doesn't do a traditional standup, you know, one where it says like, what did you do yesterday?

What are you gonna do today? Uh, and do you have any blockers? only find one of those questions helpful. I find differ first two to be quite micromanaging. and so we

 talk about blockers, but no, like, what did you do yesterday? And like, why didn't you do more? Like, are you doing it? Like, we don't do any of that type of stuff. and we think that. The there's almost, there's very minimal benefits to micromanaging people. Um, but there's quite a lot of downside to it. so that's sort of one example of like a thing I learned that like played heavily into the autonomy based culture that we're building at subscript. Um, but once again, it's like part of that whole set of pillars that all are interconnected to each other.

 you reflected on what was working or what didn't did, did you spend time contemplating the idea of did this thing work because of the thing that I did or in spite of the thing that I did. And I think that that's often, when you think about very complex organisms like startups, I, I think that is one thing that is underappreciated.

Right. In the sense that, you know, a founder chooses to have no levels, uh, excuse me, no managers for the first four years of the company. And so the head of engineering had 65 direct reports and the company was successful. And so it's easy to say, okay, the next time I build a company I'm having no, uh, managers until five years in, or no product managers until period X.

Um, and, and maybe it, it, the company was actually successful in spite of that philosophy versus because of, and is that a, do you meditate on that in any ways you thought about what you want to do in this new company in terms of how you operate and behave.

 It's funny because, um, I feel like you constantly relearn this idea that life is always very nuanced and the like one way or the other answer is usually wrong. And it's funny, cuz I still though in this case, have a, um, a. Not perhaps as nuanced as it should be type of answer. I think that the primary determinant in success of a startup more than pretty much everything else is, um, the strength of, uh, the initial product market fit. everything else improves or, or like takes away from that. But I don't know, like product market fit really does seem to solve everything. And, um, I've, sure we all have come across companies that seemed and sounded extremely poorly run or, or have had like, you know, our summer, like very publicly. around or have made decisions that make you gasp a little bit and ends up being reported later, or like these com they, you know, have this like big moment where like it all comes to head. Um, and the company still end up being super successful. And I just feel like product market fit just solves everything, uh, or maybe not everything, but solves a lot and can hide a lot. Um, so I, I am very much like, as I approach this very much of the ability of that, the, the level and quality of the product market fit, you have ends up being primary then everything else is a little bit of like, well, what kind of culture do you want to work in? Can you commit to a set of coherent philosophies, right?

This is where I was saying, like, there's a lot of ways, there's a lot of your answers to this, it definitely helps to have coherence here. If you have, um, a set of philosophies that are a bit of this and a bit of that, like if you try to do what we do with the no meetings thing, then you're not doing things, um, asynchronously, uh, or sort of like in different time zones or whatever, you're gonna start defaulting back to meetings.

You're gonna be like, oh, why isn't this working or whatever, you know, like there's so many different ways. Or like if you don't document things really well, but you're not doing any meetings that it's not gonna work really well. So there's like, you kind of need a coherent set of principles. And as long as you sort of have a coherent set of, sort of principles to operate the company by, I think then. That part will work. Um, the question is like, what do you want? Like how, what kind of company do you want to work in? And it's, it's one of the nicest things about being a founder. You kind of get to in the kind of company you want to work in because you know, you made it. so that, that part is amazing.

Um, so my, my biggest sort of recommendation would be a coherent set of things

 Do do you think that the choice that you made in terms of a sync remote, et cetera, will increase the likelihood that you get to really strong product market fit or to the point that you just made? It's just more your own working style and preferences.

 I'd like to think it would, um, I gotta say I, I, I think, yes, but I will say that I am not super confident in this opinion. I, I could easily be convinced that, there's advantages to helping get to product market fit and other styles. The reason that I think yes, for this style is for example, in our product market fit journey, there's no pretending anything in our company, right?

Like we are not, we're not like this is a thing that sort of founders or leaders often do where they're like the real truth, the real unvarnished truth, like sits amongst them and maybe like in their conversation in our doc or whatever. And then they think about like, oh, how do I massage this message?

The rest of the company? There's none. And subscript, right? Because everything is public. So sort of everyone gets the full unvarnished truth. And what's, what's amazing about that is like, everyone's always afraid of like, well, what will people think if they, if they realize you know, on the product market fit survey, we're currently only at like a 30% or a 40% or whatever. like, will they lose heart or whatever? I, I just think that if you treat people like adults they'll act like adults, and if you don't treat them like adults, well, you're gonna get what you asked for. and so we have this culture of like, everyone knows exactly where in our product market fit journey.

Everyone knows exactly like all the things that are positive developments in that journey and negative development developments in that journey. So they're exposed to that full unvarnished truth. But as a result, one, we, we sort of communicate to the whole company. Like think. Your, um, are, you're a huge part of this journey, just like the everyone else here that you have significant things to contribute to it.

And we trust you with this sort of like, you know, information that's sometimes difficult and sometimes not difficult. what we really want here is we all want us all to work towards this like very clear goal of market fit. And I'm not going to like, sort of transform that or like turn it into something more localized for you, right?

Like I'm not gonna go over working towards product market fit. And what I really want, Emily on my team to do is X, Y, Z. I'm not gonna do that. I'm basically gonna go to Emily and say, Hey, we're working towards product market fit. And here's how we'll know we get there. Uh, and here's sort of all the data that's available. Please figure out what you think makes sense in your role to help the whole team get towards product market fit. Um, and so I, I think we sort of like, um, subscript is more of a, of like a collective brain rather than, um, a traditional organizations where like maybe just me or Michelle would me and Michelle would know all the things and then everyone else would get like, you know, processed information here.

It's sort of like, no, no, the brain isn't me and Michelle, the brain is like all 15 people at subscribe and they all have all the information and they sort of are exposed to the parts they're exposed to, but they also have the ideas that they have. And they kind of like, we, we think together and everyone's, exposed to all the decisions made, being made across the organization and they can contribute wherever they feel like they have things to contribute. Um, and so all that means

 together. I, I think. dunno, this is, this is who we, as human beings are, right? Like we're, we're a collective brain that, does really, uh, amazing things that no one individual can do. And that's essentially, we're like subscript is a microcosm of that at 15 people. And we, every company is, but we try to really bring that out, by making sure that, um, everyone has full context and full autonomy and full, um, all of these things.

And so now everyone can just like go full force.

 before we get into to the sort of how you're executing on it, I, I, I'm interested to talk a little bit about what maybe someone's gut instinct or gut reaction or immediate reaction would be when they th when they hear remote and ay, and I think, you know, you could probably cluster it into a few, but one would be.

so much of, of working at a company and specifically a startup is about these deep relationships that you have with coworkers and friendships that you develop with coworkers. And what, what happens to that in this context? And do you, do you ultimately sort of just not think that it matters or you're able to nurture that thing in, in the way that you're building the company?

 If you were to take our slack and sort of the conversations that happen in that slack, um, many of them, you know, asynchronously in that, like responses are come a few hours later kind of thing. Um, you, I don't think you would feel like, oh, this company culture is different than the culture of a company.

That's all in person. Like you would, you would feel the, know, like the emojis would like feel natural. Um, and you know, not just like. Not just, you know, the check mark emoji or something like very, uh, dry, but like, you know, the gift emojis or the hearts or the whatever, you know, um, and then you would feel like the banter, um, that exists in like our food channel or like our parents channel, uh, is quite a lot of parents at, at subscript, not shockingly this type of approach, appeals to parents quite a bit, where they can have actual control over their schedule. because God knows no one has control over a kid's schedule. like all of these things, these, these like of, um, water coolers would look just like they look to on a, in a regular, in, in a more traditional company. And then when we do our sort of like, uh, monthly, uh, what we call it live time, um, for an hour, an hour and a half. and we, like, I don't know, do like, get to know each other activities or like, um, board games or stuff like that, it feels just like any other company. It does not feel stiff or awkward in any way. It feels like, oh, this is, this is just like every other company I've worked in. Um, I think on top of that, you have, um, oh, I lost my train of thought.

 You, I mean, you were just talking about how, if you were to join the 60 or 90 minute. Monthly, um, live session. It would feel it wouldn't feel stiff, et cetera.

 Oh yeah. On top of that, a couple of other things that we do are, you know, some of, sometimes these like live sessions involve, um, uh, homework and the homework is like, you spend an hour with, uh, you know, randomly assigned team per teammate, uh, the company. And you like do uh, we did this one interview of like favorite toys from your childhood.

And we had like all these pictures of, to toys and stuff, or places that you lived when you were growing up. And so we have, like, we get to know each other in all these, um, deeper levels. and then we also do, um, we do in person offsite. We, we're still trying to figure out what the right cadences given. COVID and stuff. Our goal is three or four a year. um, and we spend a whole week together, uh, where we just bring everyone together to the same place. And, we do, you know, mix of the usual offsite stuff like working together, brainstorming together, culture norms together, having fun together, all that stuff. we have like a bunch of different ways that we kind of that, um, fill that hole of like being close to your teammates. And we, we, like, I feel like most people feel quite fulfilled around that. Um, and I do too. And, um, my, you know, Michelle is like an extremely social person and she feels quite fulfilled around that.

So I feel quite good about this. Um, I feel like it works really well.

 So, what are your observations in terms of what are the, the key downsides to this methodology thus far, or sort of the explicit trade offs that you've been willing to make?

 Yeah, I think maybe the, the biggest thing is, um, at an, at an extreme, if you are the kind of person who has to be in an office every day, surrounded by your coworkers in order to feel excited, motivated, whatever, this doesn't work for you. Um, I think, as I mentioned that the social part is totally there, but it's not there every hour or every day.

Right. Um, you're not gonna have lunch with your coworkers every single day. So if, if like that is really important to you, then this doesn't work. But I generally have this belief that hiring is always, uh, segmentation, exercise, just like finding a market for your product is a segmentation exercise, but what's even nicer about hiring is that you can really micro segment.

Like you basically find a very small segment because you're never, you're not looking for a big Tam when you're hiring. You're looking for a very tiny, but it's few people, uh, but you just need there to be overlap, mean the people you need and the people who are interested in, in the sort of product you're offering or the product you're offering is the culture that we they'll work in. And I, I feel like basically this gives us like a very. segmentation. Um, we hire people who really care about, um, managing their own who are very good at motivating themselves, who are very comfortable making their own decisions and ambiguity, uh, who are very good at, um, writing and communicating in a written asynchronous way. Communicating a synchronously via video and who, uh, have,

 sort of the, the type of skill sets that we're looking for. and the things we don't need is we don't need anyone who lives in San Francisco is willing to move to San Francisco. Um, that is not a thing we need. Um, we don't need someone who, uh, like, uh, has to be in an office from, I don't know, nine to five or We don't need someone who has to wake up for a all hands at a particular, like we don't need any of those things. So basically we're like we picked our segment and, um, the it's both a PO positive and a negative, I guess. Um, the negative is that, uh, we can't hire people outta that segment, but I think that's mostly just a positive in that we have a very specific type of person, who really loves

 with that as a little bit of a backdrop, let's talk about

 how you would describe like the component parts or the operating stack or rituals, um, to make this happen.

 Yeah. Um, A lot of this also came outta learnings from last company. So eventually developed a pretty good documentation culture at freckle, but we didn't have one on day zero. Um, at subscript we had one on day zero. Uh, everything gets documented subscript, and we try to make sure. All the logic of every decision we make is reflected a, um, in our sort of collective Wiki and this like EV everything, even the smallest things.

Right. And there's a preserved record of the discussion that was surrounding it because there wasn't a meeting where people discussed, what we should do. There's a written record with comments and, you know, other comments and sort of like evolution of thought that all gets written. And so the written culture is a huge part and I think should be a part, whether you're synchronous or a synchronous.

In my view, uh, this, this becomes, you know, at, in year six of freckle, there were so many things that we basically ended up that we had figured out like three years ago, It's a lot of different teammates and, uh, you forget what you decided, you forget why you decided you're asking the same questions again.

It's so good to have a good documentation culture, um, early. so we did that on day zero, but also it's for us, it's not even optional in that. Um, all, all of discussions are in writing. and the one thing we did also differently is, um, in most like most companies at Africa, we used a lot of Google docs.

Uh, we don't use that here. Um, it's it's for like a reason that sounds trivial, but it's really not. Um, and the reason is that. Google, you can create a doc, and you can share it with someone that doesn't live in any folder or hierarchy. and that means a lot of things basically go into the ether, uh, and you will never find it again. Uh, and we basically picked there's lots of, uh, products you can use. Uh, we use notion last time you used confluence, both are great. Uh, but basically the main thing that they do is they enforce a hierarchy. So I can't a doc with some, I mean, I can share a doc with someone without putting in the hierarchy, but it's just not a thing you do. and so everything goes into the hierarchy and so you can always find things easily. that's such an important thing about sort of the, the documentation heavy, uh, culture, other big, big lesson that plays a really big, uh, factor in this is like how to do really good goal. So most companies, I think go through many iterations of goal setting.

And, uh, it's interesting. OKRs are a tool that are very simple sounding, uh, but actually executing on them can be quite hard and nuanced. Um, cuz there's sorts of like little things, uh, about how you frame your OS, how you frame your KRS and um, like how outcome based you are versus how, um, sort of process based you, all these things matter a lot.

Um, and I, I also think that this is another one of those things where there's a lot of right answers, but you have to find what's right for you. And mostly it just takes experience to do that. Uh, so luckily I have the experience, the entire experience of freckle to draw upon here. and so at this point I have like a pretty strong philosophy on OKRs, um, that, um, is fairly coherent, at least more coherent than it used to be. so that philosophy is sort of infused across how we, sort of. Set the context for what we're doing. so a part of our kind of operating cadence is we have monthly OKRs. Um, so right now we're working through our June OKRs. Um, and very simple, usually only one or sometimes two objectives.

And then like two to three KRS per objective, because focus is really, really important. uh, so we're focused on two things in June. Um, off those two things, we every week do a, um, sort of, uh, oh, sorry. Uh, usually me, but sometimes other members of the team will do a context setting video for that week. uh, so this is something that goes out, every Sunday night, uh, PST. So like Monday morning for a bunch of people, uh, who start in Asia. Um, and this, this video essentially is like, here's what our goals are. Here's our KRS, here's where we are on those KRS roughly right now. Um, and then we go down to, here's the things here's like, uh, a set of ideas for this week that can probably help us move towards those KRS. So everyone gets this level of context. Right. Um, and that the set of ideas isn't like. Do X, Y, Z, it's more like, um, problems a or B or C are like the types of things that are standing in our way. and then occasionally, if there's like a really big project, that'll be like, okay. On like making progress on these projects will probably help. so that's like, you know, five, six lines of, of like context and, and bulletted format. and then. The last part of this weekly, um, video is reflections from the previous week. So everyone collects all the reflections at the end of each week, uh, in the doc from that week. Uh, and then we basically like in the video, um, we pick a few of the, uh, reflections that it, it makes most sense for sort of everyone to, to have context on.

Um, so these reflections can be anything from like an awesome win that we had, that like is just a great thing to celebrate together. Uh, or it can be like a, oh, like someone saying I'm really, um, I'm really drowning in notifications. Right. Which is a problem that almost everyone has. Uh, and then sort of like, uh, using that as a prompt for a more, um, a more in depth discussion that obviously also happens asynchronously on like, how should we think about, um, managing notification. Sort of, overload. Um, that video is like maybe 15 ish minutes and that's our replacement for all hands. Um, it's weekly, uh, and, uh, it's short,

 um, people comment on it, uh, and people comment on the doc. Um, and so there's robust discussion on it. And so like, it's just my view, a significantly more powerful thing, uh, than an all hands, because you can do it way more frequently, which I think is quite important.

All hands are very important in my view. and you can keep it much shorter, and you can get really good back and forth on it.

 there's a lot to sort of dig in from what you just shared. Maybe we could go back to the, the documentation culture.

 how, what is the hierarchy in terms of how you organize this information? And I think the number one challenge is always, you know, you have hundreds and hundreds of documents or thousands over time.

Um, how does someone find something? How do things get sorted? Um, and so I'm interested. What have you figured out, or how have you designed this, the, the, this sort of, I, I guess in this case, very pragmatically, your notion, you know, if I were to go in, what would I see? How is it organized and maybe how did you land on that?

 Yeah. So there's a few main sections. Um, the, the first one is overall company level and here generally there's, there's not much information sort of like, you know, what's our company address and stuff like that. but the main sort of functional sections are there's the goals and planning, which, uh, I just talked about.

That's what we use to actually do, like kind of our, all hands for the, for the week or our OKRs for the month. and there's almost all these sections have like a um, area where sort of, uh, you can dump any doc you want in there that pertains to that area. you were having a discussion on like, is there OKR process working and in what ways should be it Arian in it, it'll go in that discussion section. Um, and we've had basically that discussion before, then there's product and design. Um, yeah, it's kind of obvious what that is. Uh, but within there there's like a discussions or, um, that one also has, uh, RFCs section, uh, is requests for comments. Um, and there's a lot of those. And we specifically name all of these things, request or comments.

I mean, obviously we didn't come up with this, uh, this term, but I really like it because it sort of like very explicitly says, this is not decisions or something of that sort. This is, a place where I'm looking for input from other people. um, and that in product, we also have things like discovery interviews or feature requests or, um, and then there's, uh, within there's one of my favorite things, which is what we call our journal of product market fit. so in that journal, there's essentially like entries that are, at a very high level, uh, what is, what is going, what is working towards our product market fit and what are the things that we need to think through? and it's very fun to read because basically we started doing this in like month two of the company. so early 20, 21. uh, you know, some of the other ear early, like discussions in there, uh, are called things like, um, you know, lighthouse, customer problems and solutions, or like, um, Uh, for whom are rebuilding, uh, things like that. Right? So like very high level, like Hmm. Where we, what should we think about?

Uh, and then more recent discussions are more like, uh, our core buyer, which is the finance leaders and other stakeholders and how they work together. And what does that mean for our journey in product market fit? Um, so this is, this journal has been like one of the coolest things, cuz you can watch um, thinking and our business evolve.

And there's usually like, I'd say like four or five entries a month in here. So there's quite a bit now. Uh, in fact June has six entries already. and there'll probably be at least one more. Uh, so like getting a lot of really good, hard thinking done. Um, and then the next sort of high level section is engineering.

A lot of discussions happen here. So tons and tons of RFCs, every sort of big, uh, or small engineering decision that gets made. That's not at the level of a code review happens. In notion. Um, so if something's like, you know, oh, we should like make sure, uh, I dunno, some, a comment someone left in my code review recently is like, I used a lot of string literals where I should be using constants.

Uh, and that was like a mistake I made, cuz I didn't realize that was all set up. so that happens, not here, but for anything that sort of like, how should we, how should our NetSuite integration work? Um, because NetSuite is quite hard to integrate with, um, that would show up in the discussions on the engineering section. then the go to market section, mostly just discussions, but also a lot of like any document that we share with a customer, tools that we're thinking about using, um, if we have for that functional area will go there. Um, and like how we thought about those goals. So, you know, if you ever, like, if we're ever like, oh, why was. May goal X, uh, you can actually just go, you know, exactly where in the hierarchy could to go to see exactly what the may goal was and why it was that and how we did against it. Um, and this is like history that will be here forever. Right? Um, we'll, you know, six years hence or 10 years, hence, uh, we'll be able to see, oh, in may 20, 22, if you were curious, uh, what things look. Then there's a cus a client success section, uh, and here there's everything from a lot of ho how tos, to like, uh, more RFCs, notes from specific customer calls, stuff like that, that all goes here as well. Um, so we actually do keep, sort of. Our, uh, running log of how specific customer relationships are going in here. Um, we have a section on culture and another one on team. Um, so on the team, one, it's more about like hiring and have a sort of subscript hiring guide, um, and this continues to get improved. So every time someone makes a HigherEd subscript, we say like, oh, can you go back and add things you've learned in the process back to the hiring guide.

So we like do a lot of just continuous iteration on all of these things, explicit and there is our compensation philosophy. So no one is ever wondering how, uh, their compensation came about. There is a very explicit philosophy that you can read. Um, and it's right in there. Uh, our buddy program documentation is in there, um, on the culture side there's things like, uh, our core principles and, what we call our guide to being a stellar subby, um, and things like that. Uh, and then. There's like a general operations and a security section and, stuff like that.

 And so when you say, you know, many of these, uh, top level sections have lots of areas, that discussions are happening, it, it, what does that actually look like? Is that just people commenting back and forth on a document that somebody puts together, or what is the discussion format?

 way that'll typically happen is say, um, Say, uh, Emily who runs client success is thinking about, uh, changing the process a little bit for how, um, how client success starts to become involved in a customer relationship during the, the sales and the data set phase. Right. and so what she might do is like, uh, have a little bit of background on like, why she's thinking about this and, uh, maybe a little bit of additional reading, maybe like things she found on the first round review of course, or things like that. Um, and that sort of goes into like, here's some interesting reading on it. Um, and then how things are currently working, what's not working about it. And then like what she thinks might work a little better. Right. And very much every discussion is framed as like here's some ideas I have, I would love to hear opinions.

Right. Nothing is like, sort of, here's a decision I've made. It's, uh, here's some ideas I have. To be clear, Emily's the decision maker on this. And, uh, no one else gets to make the decision. And so we're like really big on, uh, each person being sort of the directly responsible individual for a particular idea or a task.

Um, so it's still one person, uh, but it starts out with, I'm looking for input from others on this. Um, and then in that doc, she might like specifically tag the people who, um, need to work with her on this. So that would be, let's say like Lucas from the data team or, uh, it might be, um, uh who in the sales team or, or, uh, it might be, um, Michelle who like, you know, she's, uh, I don't runs a lot of things. and those people then sort of the expectation is within the next day or so. Um, they'll have a chance to go back in. And actually leave comments on the things they agree with, the com things they don't agree with. And then, um, often what people will do is add a section at the bottom, write their name and say like, here's some like other thoughts I have.

And here's, uh, a sort of slightly different idea I have on how we could do this. And then, uh, from there, the discussion will sort of naturally evolve as it might in, you know, any discussion except it'll be like multi threaded and all, any synchronous. Um, so you get in my view a much richer discussion and a much more clear sort of, um, communication, because you misread something, you can ask more questions and then if other people also misread it, then they can also see the explanation.

Um, and you can go, you sort of have a chance to like reread things. And I try to understand rather than like, oh, what I thought you said X or Y or whatever. and then from there, like at some point, um, the discussion, all discussions tend to converge into some like clear solution or next step. And that's where, um, then Michelle will be like, uh, sorry.

Uh, Emily in this case would be like, uh, as the, as a directly responsible individual, the DRI on this, um, I think we're gonna do X, Y, Z. Um, and you know, implicit in there is like, she's now got discussion and, uh, at least. um, at least enough buy-in from the other people who need to be involved in this, um, that that becomes sort of the decision and now that's sort of preserved forever.

Um, and what's really cool is that let's say a new client success person joins and they're like, well, why do we do it this way? You can just be like, oh, check out this doc. And if you have new ideas on it, just create a new section at the top, uh, or create a new doc, reference this one, uh, and then we could continue iterating on it.

Um, and so you're never, once again, you're never like re-lit decisions cuz you can just see everything that was involved and all the considerations that went into it, rather than just like making people repeat themselves. I mean, none of this should be like that shocking. Like writing is a technology.

We as like humans invented a really long time ago and we were like, wow, this thing writing is great. Um, and so we're basically like taking that very, very, very old technology and making the most of it.

 So why do you think I, I, this sort of methodology tends to be fairly atypical, where if you look at the average sort of scaling business, it tends to be meeting centric. It tends to be more verbal or real time versus async versus a sync.

 I think it's cuz it's easier. So if I'm in an office with a bunch of people, this is sort of like the much wanted, um, run in and like, uh, serendipitous conversation that different people can have kind of thing, you know? Um, so if you're like, if I'm in a. Uh, if I'm in an office and I run into people and then we have this conversation, or maybe we have it over lunch or whatever.

Yes. You get the serendipity, but you've also now created a bunch of knowledge between the two of you that, uh, no one else is privy to. And maybe some version of it gets documented, but likely what's gonna happen is, maybe you'll change your behavior in some way and start doing things a slightly different way.

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Subscript founder Sidharth Kakkar shares tactical advice on how to build a totally asynchronous, distributed team with no internal meetings — from increasing transparency and encouraging autonomy, to how hiring and documentation need to change.

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Subscript's Sidharth Kakkar on how to build a totally asynchronous, distributed team with no internal meetings.