Remote culture building is here: why we built Hi Right Now

Hey, I’m Stephen, founder and CEO of Hi Right Now.

From London to Prague and Moscow to Bali, I’ve been living and working remotely for the past 7 years. In fact, I’ve never lived anywhere for longer than 3 years since I was born.

In 2013, I met my co-founder George. By 2019, we had launched our first startup together, a social app for digital nomads called Vuybe.

Shortly after launching, COVID happened. Although Vuybe had been thriving, traveling came to a halt and so did our ability to spread and promote our company. Strangely, this unexpected constraint was a blessing in disguise. It created a remote work revolution across the globe and gave us an opportunity to develop a fresh idea aligned with the new era.

Working remotely was natural to us at this point. Over the years, we had numerous methods under our belts for running a lively, connected, and tight-knit remote company. However, we noticed an overall struggle for other businesses to carry forward their remote culture in the same way.

No longer could companies have:

• Spontaneous conversations leading people to naturally bond and generate ideas
• A tangible pulse on their culture
• The feeling that they knew their teammates on a deep level

Without these elements in place, a lot of companies struggled with developing a remote culture that sticks. From our experience, we knew there’s a way around it and went to work helping other organizations create a deep and interconnected remote culture.

This started with sharing a framework that’s worked for us and our friends. One that’s based upon creating fun experiences in the workplace, while also helping your team get to know each other better on an interpersonal level.

Here are three pieces of it you can implement:

1. Host 1:1 Catch Ups: every great connection starts with a focused & authentic 1:1 conversation. Make the time for your co-workers and intentionally block out time for everyone to catch up.
2. Create A Non-Work Related Space: Provide a place for your team to form deeper connections. This could be on any communication tool you’d like (Slack, Discord, etc.). Specifically dedicate channels to music, sports, or other interests that people want to rally around. Getting people to talk about non-work related topics.
3. Connect With Intention: Connect colleagues who normally wouldn’t have an opportunity to cross paths. A designer and a business developer. A marketer and an engineer. Proactively connect the dots with cross department mingling.

Of course, we know it’s difficult to accomplish each of these steps on a consistent basis and in an inclusive way. After using various tools to incorporate this three-step method ourselves, we built a tool to take care of everything for you: Hi Right Now.

With Hi Right Now, you can do everything I’ve mentioned consistently and simultaneously. Now, you and your teammates can finally uncover new things about each other, generate breakthrough ideas that move your company, and build a deeper, tight-knit culture that includes everyone. All while working remotely.

Feel free to check us out at: https://hirightnow.co

You can also watch my quick demo video where I personally run through how it works: