The Secret of Distributed Teams (Shhhh!)

**Originally published 9/16/2013

San Francisco-based Sqwiggle recently announced its seed round fundraising and we’re excited to be an investor. It also was AngelList’s first “Syndicates” deal, and 30% of the $1.1M round was raised through this new tool for angel investors on the AngelList platform (we welcome this great new development and continue to love how AngelList is bringing greater liquidity to the early-stage market).

Sqwiggle is an always-on, efficient video and communications platform for remote teams built on WebRTC, and Promus Ventures and thousands of other users love the product. The company is one of several B2D (Business-to-Developer) teams we are backing that are at the forefront of providing picks and shovels for Startupalooza.

The train of distributed teams has left the station, especially in software. Our world will continue to be one of working whenever and wherever, with an always-on connection to anyone and everyone.

US-domiciled companies in the Promus Ventures community have full-time employees on their teams that work in Finland, Russia, UK, Israel, Germany, Slovenia, Canada, Belgium, and India (to name a few) as well as cities all over the US outside of the top tech ecosystems. There is still merit to have the core team in one centralized location, but the ability to quickly scale a team and plug-and-play talented members who are a great fit but live many miles away is getting easier and easier. It’s almost a secret that we don’t want to get out…

While the top local markets continue to be constrained by engineering salary bubbles, founders can now source talented team members in all corners of the globe. Smart companies will arbitrage labor markets to scale more efficiently and better sell their product globally with boots on the ground in numerous regions. In the coming years, teams will be distributed according to discipline and next-gen communication tools will make remote presence seamless.

It’s your choice — scale your team solely in your backyard or scout the world for best-of-breed talent and work with them remotely. We’re seeing it happen now with fantastic results.

You’re ahead of the game if you jump on this train now (but shhhhh, don’t tell anyone).