On Friday, August 13, 2010, we passed the 3-month mark of starting the company.

It’s been one hell of a ride.

We’re frequently asked where our office is located and how exactly we get things done, so I thought we’d share.

Our Principles

• Treat everyone in the company like family
• Create outstanding projects
• Work on things we love
• Keep it lean and mean (run a small shop that creates SUMO-sized results)

Our Culture We have no formal office – we work remotely – mostly from our homes, client offices, or at one of our favorite ‘conference rooms’ – Bohdi Coffee or Dark Horse Pub. People ask us if clients have an issue with us not having office space, and if it creates a problem. The straight answer is that it’s never been a problem. We’re very upfront with new clients as to how we work, and at the end of the day it’s the result that you produce, not the amount of Aeron Chairs or fancy espresso machines you have (plus, I’m sure clients like knowing that they’re not funding these sorts of things!).

We know it takes a certain mindset to work this way. Some need the comfort of an office and a ‘place to go’ everyday. Our team and our developers have been working virtually in their own spaces long before we started this company, so there really was no ‘cubicle culture’ issue to deal with.

Our Tools Working the way we do requires a set of specialized tools tailored for remote workgroups. Here’s a few of our ‘tried and true’ applications:

1. 37Signals Campfire – To us, Campfire is the most important communication tool. The three of us are in the “Water Cooler” chatroom all day . It makes checking in easy. Working through an issue is painless when we’re sharing screen comps or writing quick drafts of documents. And it’s great on long client calls when we need to communicate something to each other.

2. 37Signals Basecamp – What can I say… every single project that we are working on – internal or external – gets a project within Basecamp. All of our clients use it and so do our vendors. Quick tip: When you set up one of your vendors you can give them permission to post private messages. This way there can be a conversation between us and the vendor.

3. 37Signals Highrise – I use the tool most often but it keeps every contact that we have and what conversations we’ve had with them. It also serves us as a deal flow system. We have a contact form on our site that uses a WordPress plugin to push new inquiries from our site to Highrise. It also sets tasks for me for the next day to make sure I follow up.

1. Skype – This is our voice and video communication tool. We use it as a regular phone to talk to customers. We also use it talking to each other on video while doing work. There are times that we are on Skype Video for few hours while working on a specific project. To us it feels like we are in the same office. We are currently testing the beta version of Skype on Grandstream phones to see how it works out.

   

   Image via CrunchBase

2. Google Voice – Google voice serves as our company phone number and general voicemail. The number rings our Skype and our cell phones so we are never out of reach. Plus, we get emails when we are in client meeting with the voice mails just in case there is a big emergency.

3. Google Apps – We use Google mail for our mail as well as Gtalk for a lot communication. Gtalk is very useful with our development team. We are considering moving all the developers to Campfire. Since we are virtual sharing document could be a chalenge so we write all of our documents in Google Docs. We like to keep everything simple and Google docs gets us 90% there.

There is also DropBox for company files, Right Signature for contracts, Xero for accounting, internet connections, cell phones, a few Apple products, and the determination to make all this work.

This is just a quick summary of how we make stuff work with no office, a lot of time zones, determination, and the love for what we want to accomplish.

We’ll continue to share the things that work and don’t work for us. If you have any tips or tools not shown here, feel free to share!