{"id":7420,"date":"2020-07-13T18:27:11","date_gmt":"2020-07-13T18:27:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ringcentral.com\/small-business\/blog\/?p=7420"},"modified":"2025-07-03T04:16:45","modified_gmt":"2025-07-03T11:16:45","slug":"successful-remote-companies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"\/us\/en\/blog\/successful-remote-companies\/","title":{"rendered":"The habits of highly successful remote companies"},"content":{"rendered":"

Think you haven\u2019t really figured this remote work thing out yet? Fret not, you\u2019re in good \u201ccompany\u201d: along with Twitter, Shopify, Amazon, Facebook, Coinbase, and thousands of other organizations finding themselves working remotely with little skills or experience and no emergency work-from-home policy.<\/a><\/p>\n

Some are thriving with the transition, while others can\u2019t wait to get back to the office. Historically, remote work experiments have either succeeded wildly or failed miserably.1<\/sup> But going forward, most companies won\u2019t have a choice but to learn to do it right, even if they\u2019re hesitant to continue with remote work post-pandemic.<\/p>\n

Why? Three quarters of remote employees aren\u2019t emotionally ready to return to offices post pandemic.2<\/sup> Millennials are clear that they want more flexibility going forward.3<\/sup><\/p>\n

Matt Mullenweg, CEO of Automattic, predicts that \u201c\u202690% of all the companies that are going to be changing the course of the world are going to function (in distributed teams). They will evolve to be distributed first, or they’ll be replaced by those that are.\u201d4<\/sup><\/p>\n

And it might not be far from the truth. WordPress, a product of Automattic, powers a third of the internet. It\u2019s also been fully remote since its inception more than 15 years ago. Incredible, but possible.<\/p>\n

Companies like Automattic know something that others don\u2019t. They\u2019ve mastered the very things that make remote work so attractive to employees\u2014work-life balance, autonomy, motivation, and so much more\u2014and they\u2019ve been acing it for years before the pandemic began. So what makes them tick?<\/p>\n

In this article, we\u2019ll take a look at six companies that have been successfully remote (either totally or partially) since the pandemic and see what your small business can take away from their success stories:<\/p>\n

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  1. Doist: Think \u201cremote-first,\u201d not \u201cremote-friendly\u201d<\/a><\/li>\n
  2. GitLab: Think handbook-first<\/a><\/li>\n
  3. Automattic: Organize wildly amazing company meetups<\/a><\/li>\n
  4. Zapier: The art of distributed decision making<\/a><\/li>\n
  5. ghSMART: Hire rigorously<\/a><\/li>\n
  6. Mattermost: CEO listening tours<\/a><\/li>\n
  7. Sticker Mule: Onboard remote employees efficiently<\/a><\/li>\n
  8. Collage.com: Encourage vulnerability to build trust<\/a><\/li>\n
  9. Acceleration Partners: Make the most of face-to-face time<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Don’t feel like reading? Here’s a quick clip on the best remote teams that are doing it right:<\/p>\n