Taylan Pince

Founder of Hipo

The Interview

  • Tell us about what you do and where your team is located.
    We are a remote-first product agency, with teammates currently residing in Ireland, Spain, Germany and Turkey. We specialize in solving complex product problems and launching complete platforms, with a focus on fintech and blockchain industries.
  • What's a modern benefit you offer your team that isn't mainstream yet?
    Despite the fast pace of our products, we are proud to maintain a "marathon" mindset at work. We make time for self-growth and hobbies, never work on weekends or after hours. We have a "delete Slack" policy when on vacation. We offer education and conference budgets, as well as organizing our yearly in-person retreat for the whole team. This year it's happening in Bodrum, Turkey, at a beautiful resort.

    Perhaps most importantly, we have an innovative equity distribution program that allows all of our teammates to benefit from the equity partnerships that Hipo makes. We have significant ownership of every product we develop, and when we have an exit scenario, we redistribute 20% of the value of the exit to our team, every time.
  • Tell us about your approach to meetings vs async communication?
    We keep synchronous meetings to a single, half-hour meeting per week. This is mainly for alignment and making sure priorities are good to go. All other discussion is on Slack, with sync Zoom calls whenever needed (usually 5-10 minute quick chats). Our strength comes from a detailed product spec documentation and ticketing process, since shared documents allow the team to sync without having to talk things through all the time.
  • What's your favourite tool for remote collaboration?
    No surprises here: Work revolves around Slack and Zoom at Hipo. If I had to pick one, it would be Slack since it allows asynchronous communication.
  • Can you give us one prediction for the future of work?
    I believe that teams that can straddle the fine line between centralized culture and processes with decentralized / async decision mechanisms with small, remote and independent work groups will win the future and deliver exceptional products.

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