Rajiv Ayyangar: Understanding Hybrid-Remote Work & Building Trust In A Virtual Office # 179

Hello, hello everyone. This is your host, Akeel Jabbar, and welcome back to another episode of SaaS District by Horizon Capital, where we partner with B2B SaaS companies and help them scale with both capital and our growth marketing playbook. This episode is also sponsored by our partners at Build, a startup development studio that helps early-stage startups build and launch scalable revenue-generating software businesses. Product development is often a challenge for non-technical founders who don't have a tech person internally. That's where Build comes in. They help founders build and launch their MVPs, test the market, and find product-market fit. For $15K and roughly a month's work, Build will get your validated product up and out. We've all been burnt by the companies that promised this for years, but Build is focused on finding product-market fit and will do that by keeping you away from the feature creep and escalating costs that doom most initial products. They keep costs low with the block structure, but more importantly, they have already built great products on scope and on time for founders. Companies they've worked with have generated hundreds of of dollars in revenue, gotten into Y Combinator, or raised money at 8-figure valuations. If you have an idea and want to see it come to life as a product, head over to builddd.com. That's B-Y-L-D-D dot com today. In today's episode, we'll be talking about understanding hybrid remote work and building trust in a virtual office. Today we have our guest Rajeev Iyengar joining us. Rajeev is the co-founder and CEO of Tandem, a desktop app for distributed teams that simulates a virtual office. They allow users to see who's around, what they're working on, talk, and which more importantly, collaborate in one click. Rajeev studied bioengineering at Princeton, and then from there worked at both Fairchild and Yahoo. He's also a rock climbing, classical piano player, and probably an expert on blind wine tasting. Interesting. So welcome, Rajeev. Super excited to have you on the SaaStrick Show today.

Yeah, great to be here. A lot of those other side pursuits have kind of faded as I've started the company, but that's, that's cool to be reminded of.

Sure, priorities change, right? Now it's all about the money, all about the business. Yeah, I mean, that takes over. That's cool. I mean, you gotta put that passion somewhere where you, where you love it, right? So cool. I mean, uh, I love your product. I mean, this is an interesting topic. A lot of people are interested, you know, kind of trying to navigate through this virtual hybrid workforce, um, you know, teams kind of distributed all over and how to maximize that and keep the productivity and the fun of it. So since COVID triggered a massive migration away from traditional workplaces, and it seems like it's not kind of going back into full rebound to offices, how did that affect kind of the Tandem team? I mean, tell me more. How did you guys navigate the remote hybrid work effect of that?

Yeah, it's been a huge acceleration of the future. That's kind of what we've seen from our perspective. So a little bit of backstory. We started out building Tandem in early 2019, before the pandemic. We were working on a cryptocurrency project, and we're, we're all good friends from Yahoo. And, um, you know, my other co-founders had kids around the same time and started working from home. So we trans— we felt that transition from working in person every single day, really thinking together, to all of a sudden working from home. We're trying different tools, but nothing's really working. We don't, we don't feel like we're in the same room. So we started building Tandem. The, the, the thing that we saw then was we felt like hybrid work was the future. Like there were some initial teams using Tandem at like Autodesk and Spotify, and these were not remote companies, but at a certain scale, you got people traveling, you got distributed offices, companies start to be hybrid. And what we did not expect was that every company would go remote, uh, and kind of that hybrid transition would again apply to every company just a couple years later. Um, so that's been very interesting to watch, and, you know, Weave has caused us to move very quickly to build the team, build the product, and execute. Um, I, I think, you know, we had a little bit of a head start on the pandemic, but not nearly enough to build out the kind of product that we want. And so it's taken building the team to really accelerate us to the point where we actually deliver on that virtual connection.

Yeah. So it seems like you've kind of navigated and kind of been riding the wave, right? I mean, it seems like when you guys started, it just happened to be kind of— did you kind of have some kind of trends before that or something you were kind of looking at and kind of noticing, or was this kind of like, hey, this is what we want to build for us? Our team, the people we work with. And it just happened to be that there's a few companies that were also interested at the time. And obviously timing with the pandemic just kind of added fuel to the fire at that point, right?

There was a secular trend, a macro trend, and then there was a very personal problem. The very personal problem was the inspiration and the thing that gave us, I think, the inspiration to break down that problem into why aren't we talking presence? Like, what's missing from presence? What's missing in terms of friction? Like, what are some mechanics that could be That could unlock this, but the macro trend we saw seemed almost like, like physics, which is that because of the, the, you know, high cost of living in a certain area and the desire for flexibility, more and more people and more and more companies were going remote, even without the pandemic.

Hmm.

And when you're remote, people don't talk as much. When you don't talk as much, you don't build trust anywhere near the same speed. It's like trust builds half as fast when you're on video, a third as fast when you're on voice, and you never get to the same level when you're just chatting. There's some really interesting research on this, right?

Interesting.

And in an organization, trust is speed, right? Psychological safety is velocity. And also, when you don't understand your coworkers, it's just terrible. Right. Because we spend 8 hours a day working. If we don't know the people we're working with, that's just a very, very different world. Right. So we saw this gap kind of emerging, but we thought it would unfold over the next 5 to 10 years, not the next 2 years.

Hmm. So, I mean, yeah, I mean, obviously without that level of trust that, you know, it kind of, uh, inhibits kind of the level of connection of how deep you can work and, you know, that kind of fuels kind of the the quality of your work, I think, sometimes. So you mentioned some interesting stats about 50%, 30%, and then almost none with the different kind of tools of how we communicate. Is there any other metrics or data that you can talk about of how using Tandem's app maybe changed before or after the pandemic, or any stats you can share?

Yeah, the product has changed so much and improved so much that A lot of the changes have been due— it's difficult from the data to separate out, like, the changes due to the pandemic and the changes due to the product itself.

Right.

But we kind of know from talking to users, the— I think the most interesting thing is that over half of the conversations, the calls on Tandem, are under 15 minutes. So it really unlocks those hallway conversations, the taps on the shoulder. The meeting before the meeting where you say, hey, are you leading? Am I leading? Debrief after the meeting where you go like, that was insane, or like, oh, that was awesome. You know, these, these little moments that, hey, how are you doing in the morning? Or pulling in a 3rd person, a 4th person, a 5th person listening into a meeting that, that you didn't realize was happening. You know, all of these interactions start to become very, very possible and very, very common because they're easy. in tandem. So that's, that's been a really interesting thing to see emerge.

Okay, and let's go, let's go deeper into the product itself. I mean, uh, so like we said, you know, working remotely versus the human factor, you're in person, you know, you see feeling the energy, seeing their faces, expressions, spending time together, and, you know, the, um, you know, just building rapport and, you know, chatting and having the time, quality time, I guess, together versus, okay, look, this is the reality of what it is. We don't have that as much. But now we have technology to maybe help as much as we can. So technologies and services like Tandem, how are they helping build that trust, I guess what you talk about, in the workplace environment for a team? What are you guys doing to help build that?

2 things. There's building presence, giving you a sense of what's happening with your team, and then there's reducing the friction to talk. So put very simply, On the presence side, you can see who's around. Mm-hmm. You get a sense of which of your teammates is online, who's in a meeting versus not in a meeting, who's on do not disturb, who's working in which app. We have integrations with hundreds of collaborative apps, so work-related apps. So for example, you can see when a developer's in VS Code. You can see when somebody's in Figma designing. And that gives you an intuitive sense of who's in deep focus and who can I maybe interrupt or tap on the shoulder. And then the last thing is removing the friction to talk. And there is talking in one click. That was kind of the core initial feature. But we've also added a lot of different ways to sort of tap somebody on the shoulder. You can, you can, you can send them a little DM. You can wave at them. That's one of our most popular features. We just see if they're free. And it lets you do these little handshakes that you would kind of do in real life, right?

Mm-hmm.

Like in real life, I'd wave at you. Or even just eye contact is a handshake because I look at you, we make eye contact, and you can go like, I mean, like 2 minutes, you know, or, hey, can we talk later? Uh, or I can send you a message. Um, I can swing by your desk with 2 other people. All of these things we do in real life and we're very used to.

Yeah.

And what we on the Tandem team have been doing is translating and adapting these to build a language of social interaction. at the team level, at the company level online.

Yeah, I love that. So you're basically— yeah, I love how you describe that. So building a new language of how to communicate through technology, that's essentially what it is, right? Is what you're saying. That's an interesting language to learn.

Yeah, new manners. Yeah, new customs.

Yeah, new working cultures. Okay. And I guess you probably see the differences, right? You work with quite a few companies around the world. The differences between successful teams who are able to implement, you know, the hybrid system and the ones who would say are maybe less successful? And what are the differences? Like, what do you see that why one are doing well and the others aren't?

So the— this goes beyond, absolutely beyond Tandem because we're just one part of the stack.

Sure.

The most successful companies think about the remote employees first. They think about how to create connection, how to be inclusive of remote employees, both in the meeting setting, outside the meetings, in major decisions, in onboarding, in team activities and team bonding and culture building. And you really think about the remote employees first. And that, from that starting point, you can kind of unfold all the things that the most successful companies do. Um, you know, everything from how do you arrange the office and set culture in the office to what technology do you adopt and how do you adopt it to what are the people processes around your employees that, that, that matter. Uh, the manager relationship, like the employee lifecycle, hiring, onboarding, the, the manager relationship. Um, performance, you know, all of these things. If you think about the remote person first, that, that is the big unlock. And it's very difficult if you're in the office to have empathy for the remote experience. Um, but yeah, and then at a meta level, I think because every company culture is a bit different, the the degree of internal versus external versus cross-team collaboration is different. You need to experiment more than we have ever done in the past because this is dynamic, right? So companies that are willing to experiment, get feedback from the teams on a very fast cadence and change their culture practices, tools, and try new cultures, practices, tools, and Companies that prioritize the remote experience. Those would be kind of my 2 observations.

Um, have you, have you seen— so I mean, a couple of things have happened, I guess, have transpired in the last couple of months even. You know, companies like, I guess, think like PwC, you know, Facebook have said, okay, you know, we're moving kind of permanently remotely. And you have guys like, you know, you know, Elon Musk, for example, is like, you know, everybody back to the office in Tesla, no more remote work or you're fired. And then you have, uh, I think the UK where they just announced like a huge announcement of all these companies, thousands of people are moving towards 4-day workweek. In terms of overall productivity, I know it's a lot of macro-level questions, but from your data and just kind of your insights, what have you seen as kind of an optimum way of working and performing in terms of whether it's back to the office and with that rebound effect, the hybrid work, anything you can share?

So it's changing weekly. You kind of need popcorn to hear the swings of different companies. Like the Apple saga could continues. And then we've got Tesla starting its own saga. And by the way, the way I stay on top of this is our own newsletter, This Week in Hybrid.

Love it.

I mean, it's free. And, you know, Rim spends a ton of time just staying, keeping on the pulse of hybrid work. And it really is changing weekly. Every week, she tells me, like, I think I'm going to run out of things to write. And there's a ton of stuff happening.

Okay.

I think ultimately everybody needs to— flexibility will win, uh, both in terms of kind of the company economics of being able to hire from anywhere, get the best people from anywhere, and in terms of what people want as employees, which is flexibility. Um, people want to be in the office some of the time. Some people want to be in the office some of the time.

Right.

And getting from where we are now, like, I also very much understand the company pressures because being in person does build trust much more than anything else.

Sure.

And while there's a lot of interesting technology that, uh, you know, bridges the gap, like we've done with hybrid spaces, lets you teleport around the office if you're remote, what companies like Tenari are doing where you bridge 2 offices with a virtual wall, And like in the meeting rooms themselves, there's a lot of innovation happening. The technology and adoption are not there yet. It's still very different to work remotely than work in person. And so companies have this tension right now and they're trying to navigate it. I think ultimately we'll shake out to completely flexible. And in terms of what people tend to do, you know, maybe some segment of the population will go into the office. 2 to 4 days a week or 2 to 3 days a week, somewhere in there. But getting from where we are now to there is going to be a lot of swings in company policy and kind of as we figure out that balance for every company.

Yeah, I mean, it's hard for me to believe that, you know, there's virtually no drop in productivity, um, going completely remotely. I mean, I know for myself, like we've been remote at Horizon Capital even before the pandemic, since, you know, we launched over 2 and a half years ago. And, you know, I've been working this kind of world for the last 5 years, so it's been kind of normal for me. But I know when we're together and we have those get-togethers and working in person for, you know, sprints or weeks, um, things move way faster. I mean, you can— and I think once you're at that point where you're just kind of in execution mode and you're like, okay, everybody knows what they're doing and it's kind of a rinse and repeat, maybe it's kind of easier. It's like, okay, we're remote, it's like we don't need to really see each other, we're just doing things and we're just keeping on top of, you know, updates. But I think if you're in a, you know, more managerial or creation phase, I think Being in person. I mean, my opinion, I think it's more crucial in person. I mean—

That's another dimension of flexibility. So I think flexibility is, you know, the ability to kind of shift where you're working at the team level and org level and personal level. And, you know, you could think about certain teams benefit a lot more from being in person and that collaboration and creativity that comes from being in person. Certain phases of product development, for example, as just one small example, really benefit from being in person. Then, as you said, when you get into an executional phase, it might actually be an advantage to be more remote. Certain demographics of people, like especially people earlier in their careers, younger, if you don't have kids, it can be well worth the kind of additional sort of tacit knowledge absorption that you get from being in the office.

Yeah.

Uh, you know, and, and so there are a lot of different dimensions there.

And where do you kind of see the— I know this is kind of a, you know, crystal ball question, but, you know, for the next, let's call it 2 or 3, 5 years, because things changing every week, like you said, what are your— I mean, you guys have to build a product. You guys have some product roadmap. What is your team thinking about planning? And how do you guys plan to continue to support the remote hybrid work? And what are the changes you're thinking about?

We have the virtual office and then we have an extension to it, Hybrid Spaces, that has— takes monitors in the physical office and turns them into always-on windows. And so what we see is that the virtual office and physical office are going to become intimately aware of each other and intertwined. Your remote teammates will show up in the physical office, and when you're in the physical office, you can see the virtual office, right, from, from your laptop, from surfaces in the, in the Uh, in the office and the ultimate thing that needs to happen. You know, we mentioned this gap between remote and in-person and the kind of the messy middle we're in with the swings of company policy. The, the, the, the ends, the only end state is we have to close the gap between remote and in-person. So when you look back on the last week of work, when you look back on, when you think about your team and whether you were in the office or not, It shouldn't matter. You don't even remember who's remote and who's in person. But there's a lot of pieces that need to be built to get there. And it's, it's not all like real-time communication and the feeling of like presence. Some of it is like very crucial things like capacity planning, uh, you know, health, health checks, being able to safely come to the office, understand where you can sit, what's, what's the space there. You know, the, these things are, are being built by Companies like Envoy, WorkSphere, and Eden, but they need to be developed further and become normal.

And what about the kind of trend on the VR space and jumping in that? Do you feel like that's a part of it that's going to be implemented, or do you feel that's just a phase?

I think it's interesting, but a little on the horizon. I think for collaboration and communication, what needs to happen first is people need to do the majority of their work in VR.

Mm-hmm.

And I think that's not gonna happen for a while. Um, I think the same principles, like the, there's a user interface and then there's kind of a concept of the virtual office. And I think the virtual office is, uh, as a, as a place where you see, you know, see your teammates' presence, are connected to them and, and work and collaborate in real time. That's here now. You know, we're not the only ones there. There, there's several others in this, in this category. really moving virtual work into the future. But I think phones, laptops, these are the surfaces where a ton of innovation is going to happen over the next couple of years. And then a lot of that innovation on how we connect the habits, the information you show, the UX, will translate very, very well to to VR.

Yeah, makes sense. I'm excited to see what happens there. Last question, Rajeev, before we move into kind of the personal rapid-fire questions, which is more kind of based on your expertise in the field. If I'm a SaaS founder, let's say maybe I'm just starting from today. Now I'm starting to build up my team, and I'm looking to make a decision here. Build in person or build remotely and expand? maybe top tips I need to think about or considerations before making that decision and moving forward?

I think a big part of the decision is personal. What kind of culture do you want to build? And I think as much as there's technology that bridges the gap, I think one of the things that's very valuable in the early days, for example, pre-product market fit, is to have people in person. It's hard to change directions in a team when you're remote. And in the early days, a lot of it is changing directions, whether it's small pivots or large pivots.

Right.

The thing you have to weigh against that is cost, flexibility, who you can recruit.

Availability of talent, you mean? Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay. Yeah, it makes sense.

I always prefer in person. We've had kind of small offices since the beginning, and I think that surprises a lot of people, but a lot of why we've built Tandem and why we've been able to reach such interesting heights of connection and collaboration is that we're a remote team that never wanted to be remote. Our bar for collaboration and thinking together and feeling connected has always been in person.

Yeah.

And that's kind of a unique thing, but maybe a surprising thing about us.

Kind of ironic, right, about the tandem chats.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's cool. I'm with you. I agree. I mean, if I was to do things again, I mean, if I can get the same level of talent and flexibility locally, I would definitely do that. But unfortunately, it's not. Yeah, it's hard. I wasn't able to figure it out. Cool. I guess moving towards the rapid-fire questions, Rajeev, if you can share just in terms of relatability for people to understand where you guys are at for other SaaS founders, where are you guys in terms of size today? And have you guys raised any capital or completely bootstrapped?

Yeah, we're a pretty small team, but we've raised— our last round is about $7.5 million from Andreessen.

Oh, cool. Is there a Series A?

Uh, we call that a large city, but yeah, it's a very large city.

Yeah, you're in the Bay Area, right? I'm assuming so.

Yes.

Yeah, it makes complete sense now. Yeah, cool. Um, what's— I know we talked about this at the beginning, you're kind of very focused on your startup, but, uh, what's one activity you enjoy outside of work that gets you into flow state today?

Rock climbing. Yeah, I think when it's going well, it's like freedom from gravity. Gravity turns off.

Wow. Outdoors or indoors?

Both.

Both. Love it. Yeah, that's a great activity. What's one piece of advice you wish you had known? And if you can go back, you tell your 25-year-old self.

Yeah, that's an interesting one. I think Prioritize people who you're working with.

If you don't have a choice.

Which I think I did, but I think it would've been a confirmation that even if things don't work out in the short term, you're gonna learn a ton from the people you work with. Even if the role's not exactly right or the company doesn't have the trajectory you'd hoped for. I joined a lot of startups, but the people are, you know, really push you to learn and grow.

And what if you don't have that kind of flexibility and choice, right? You're in a— we kind of have that nice flexibility. We get to choose who we hire and who we want to work with. But if you're in a role and it's like you're kind of stuck with people, what do you say to them? Or if you were stuck in that position, right?

I would try to find a way to maybe do side projects with the people that I find really inspiring or see if you can switch switch companies to a place that does have people that are gonna push you. You know, yeah, yeah, yeah. Or within the company, see if you can work on projects with people who push you.

Sure.

You can, at large companies, it is often possible to do some cross-functional projects. Like, I did some cross-functional data projects. I think I have like 2 patents on human-computer interaction. From just collaboration with one of the research groups there. Large companies are amazing for learning and building your network, figuring out who you like working with.

Yeah, makes sense. What are some of the biggest challenges you're currently facing in order to continue to grow Tandem today? Meaning, what's keeping you up at night these days?

The market changing very quickly in terms of what it looks like to come back to the office, what's the shape there, and, you know, the building technology, right? Like building, scaling our audio-video calls, keeping them the most reliable calls for your team. And I think on the product side, one thing that we struggled with and have gotten a lot better at is initial adoption. So once you, your team, it used to be very, very difficult to try Tandem with your team. And now they're browser calls, like you can just use a link for your next meeting and everybody can have that experience. And so that's, that's been a game changer for us, but also, you know, a lot of work to make that experience seamless and easy.

It's pretty smooth out right now. Are you still kind of, uh, riding the wave?

It's really, it's pretty smooth.

Yeah. It's pretty smooth.

Nice. Yeah. Yeah. The experience is pretty smooth. Nice.

Who or what are some of the best 3 resources? Let's say this can be books, can be people, which you talk about, mentors, people you follow in the space who you'd say have been the most instrumental to your success over these last few years.

There are a few kind of personal friends that I've gotten a lot of very critical advice from at critical stages of the company, but they're not available for general consumption. I think in terms of the public resource that's been the most valuable, Right. Y Combinator has amassed a library, a pretty organized library of just excellent patterns and frameworks for thinking about all phases of early, early stage startup. And generally I've found it by far the best resource for like, what does it look like to start a company and how to think about it?

Okay. So Y Combinator, their kind of library. Um, and you also mentioned your, one of your newsletters. Can you, what was the name of that? Just so we can include that in the description. Yes.

This Week in Hybrid. For staying on the pulse of like company policy, how it changes week by week at the largest and some of the most innovative companies out there this week in hybrid. And you can find it on our website. I think it's tandem.chat/hybrid.

Okay, awesome. We'll add that to the show notes as well. People could check it out. Last question, Rajeev. What does success mean to you today? Whether that's personal, your startup, financially, life. There's no right answer.

I think that's a difficult one to answer. I mean, aside from the usual answers, I think I think constant learning, constant growth. I want to look back in a year and look at my personal notes. I take a lot of personal notes and think that my view of the world was crude and undetailed and impoverished. And that makes me feel awesome.

Okay. So that feeling of growth, yeah, it seems like, you know, the right people around you pushing you to grow. Uh, yeah, it seems like that's your theme. I love it. Cool. Um, Rajeev, this has been, this has been interesting. I love this, this podcast. I think lots of, interesting insights for people to learn from. If people, any founders, marketers, anybody in the SaaS space wants to connect with you, learn more about you and Tandem, where's the best place to get in touch?

You can just email me rajeev@tandem.chat, or I'm also on Twitter. I don't post very often, but Rajeev Iyengar on Twitter.

Okay, awesome. All right, thank you so much. I appreciate you jumping on, Rajeev, on the SaaS District show today. It was great.

Thanks so much, Akeel.

Pleasure. All right, cheers. Thank you all for watching this episode and joining SaaS District today. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and hit the bell for future episodes where we interview top leaders in the SaaS industry. If you're a SaaS company looking to grow and unlock the true value of your business, get in touch with us at Horizon Capital and myself or one of our consultants will provide a free assessment to help you get there and hit your goals. If you have any feedback or suggestions for this podcast, please comment down below and help us improve our content for you all. Thanks again, and see you on the next one.