Building a distributed team – interview with Carly Shuler from Kindoma
The three companies that won best of show at the Canadian Financing Forum 2015 (February 2015) were all led by women. This may be a first for a Canadian technology event, but hopefully in a few years it will not be worth notice!
The three companies were
Kindoma, CEO Carly Shuler
ePact, CEO Christine Sommers
Neurio, CEO Janice Cheam
As British Columbia companies, ePact and Neurio were also on the Ready to Rocket 2015 list (Ibbaka Talent is an emerging rocket).
Ibbaka Talent caught up with Kindoma CEO Carly Shuler to learn from her about building a distributed team. Kindoma is a great example of this as the product is built by a distributed team (CEO Carly is in Winnipeg while CTO Tico Ballagas is in the Bay Area). Even better, it is designed for people who travel a lot and want to stay in close contact with their young children (or for grandparents who live apart from their grandchildren and want to be part of their lives).
Kindoma makes video chat services that let families do things like read and draw, even when apart; think Skype for kids with an interactive twist (check out the video on their website).
Kindoma is growing, and Carly had advice or people who are growing distributed teams.
The number one thing they look for is talent. It is critical that the person already have demonstrated the skills they will need to apply at Kindoma.
And then there is passion. It helps to be a parent of small children (it is great to find a company where that is considered a plus) and in any case everyone at Kindoma has to be passionate about solving the problem that is at the heart of Kindoma’s vision – helping people have meaningful interactions with children over mobile devices.
With a distributed team, it is critical that everyone have 21st C collaborative working skills. This means everything from being able to communicate effectively by text and e-mail to being comfortable in virtual hangouts and on collaborative content authoring applications. Using these tools has to be transparent so that the tool fades into the background. Of course, the team uses Kindoma itself to collaborate.
Most people are found through the personal networks of the founders and its close advisors, like computer human interaction legend Terry Winograd. Trust is paramount in hiring a distributed team, and one of the easiest ways to establish trust is through people we know.
Carly said that the biggest challenge in building a distributed team is that you miss that casual riffing off each others ideas, and the creative sparks that occur when creative and committed people work together under pressure.
And distributed teams need extra care and attention on communication. At Kindoma they spend a lot of time making sure that they have communicate clearly and that ideas a clear. Even more important than the idea, is the why of the idea, and the why it matters to what Kindoma is doing.
As Kindoma scales up they want to add people that will bring in different perspectives who will take them out of their comfort zone. Carly said that having people with different perspectives and styles of thinking and feeling is the most important form of diversity. Different perspectives, so long as they have passion for children, and how to make communication with children on mobile devices as natural and rich an experience as possible.
