In Spring 2022, Founder Institute selected us as one of the best startups in EMEA. Additionally, Feedspot recently named our blog one of the best blogs for webinars.
Founder Institute
Founder Institute is the world’s largest pre-seed accelerator. With timz.flowers, we graduated in the Berlin Chapter of the FI in the fall of 2019. This was a very exciting time for us. A time existed before the pandemic, if anyone remembers. Remote work was almost unheard of. However, we developed a remote work tool.
Week after week, we cited surveys indicating a 50% remote work rate by 2026. It seemed a bit ambitious to us.
Then we graduated in December, which was an accomplishment in itself because the Founder Institute has a really tough selection process.
In the spring of 2020, the pandemic hit, and larte parts of the world switched to remote work. Our software wasn’t finished yet, so that didn’t help us much at first. Although we had a prototype, what good is it if the entire market suddenly turns in your direction with multimillion-dollar budgets? We got to work.
Feedspot Has Selected Our Blog as One of the Best
After many iterations, our open beta MVP (minimal viable product) was ready by April 2021. We have positioned timz.flowers as an asynchronous meeting platform at this point. Why?
At the time, Zoom had already passed the peak of its stock market value, but was still flying high. At the same time, everyone was talking about the now-famous “Zoom fatigue”. Something new was needed.
We found that remote work had many advantages, but the methods were not mature enough yet. Students and employees were now sitting in back-to-back meetings and getting extremely tired. For hours, they stared at screens.
Meanwhile, they were unable to take advantage of remote work because of the numerous synchronous meetings they had to attend at times that were sometimes difficult to schedule. This is particularly problematic in teams that span multiple time zones. For example, Dubai and San Francisco don’t have overlapping work hours. To attend a meeting, someone has to get up in the night. That’s where our solution comes in.
{Founder Kateryna Levina and Martina Camilleri talking about async meetings}
As a result, we began writing a blog about the benefits of asynchronous work. Remote-only and sync-first work cultures and remote readiness of good employees have been discussed.
Now, Feedspot has selected our blog as one of the best blogs for webinars. As we are in the process of prelaunching in May 2022, we are delighted to receive such links.
Hybrid Meetings
The genie is out of the bottle, even though companies understandably want their previous work cultures back. Remote work has been proven to be efficient. Innovative companies will no longer have only local teams. They will mix distributed and onsite teams.
However, we extend the concept of hybridity to the dichotomy of synchronous versus asynchronous processes. The concept becomes much more impactful in this way.
The more workers can manage their own work-life balance, the more efficient their work will be. Especially in capitalist societies, we have come to understand the importance of self-regulation between supply and demand. Central control undermines the efficiency of self-regulation. This can also be applied to the regulation of working hours. When workers can decide for themselves when they are most productive, they will get better results faster without burning out.
Stay tuned.
