#RemoteFounder

[fellington21]

Ashkan Rajaee explains why your legal setup could be your biggest risk.

[saifawaisi3211]

LLC Formation for Global Entrepreneurs: Why BizSimpl Global is Your Best Bet

In today’s digital-first world, setting up a business shouldn’t be limited by borders. Entrepreneurs, remote teams, and online businesses are going global faster than ever. But with global expansion comes the need for proper legal structures—and that’s where LLC formation becomes crucial.

Whether you’re building a SaaS product from Singapore, running an eCommerce store from Dubai, or offering design services from India, forming an LLC gives your business structure, legitimacy, and legal protection. And when you need to do this across multiple countries without legal headaches, BizSimpl Global makes the process seamless.

In this post, we explore new perspectives on LLC formation, the challenges it solves, and how BizSimpl Global transforms complex paperwork into a borderless opportunity.

What Makes LLC Formation So Valuable in 2025?

With the rise of global remote work, borderless commerce, and decentralized finance, LLC formation is more relevant now than ever. Here’s why founders around the world are prioritizing it:

1. It Builds Global Credibility

Clients, investors, and marketplaces trust legally structured businesses. An LLC gives your business a verified legal identity, which opens doors to platforms like Stripe, Amazon, Upwork, and more.

2. It Enables Cross-Border Payments

Want to receive USD in a U.S. bank account? Or open a Wise or Payoneer account in your company’s name? LLC formation in the right country makes this possible.

3. It Future-Proofs Remote Teams

A distributed team needs a formal company to manage payments, IP ownership, and compliance. An LLC gives you a scalable foundation for your global team.

4. It Supports Digital Nomads and Solopreneurs

Digital nomads often lack a fixed address, which makes business registration difficult in their home country. With BizSimpl Global, they can register in the U.S., UK, or UAE easily and legally.

Global Challenges in LLC Formation—And How BizSimpl Solves Them

Many entrepreneurs avoid international LLC formation because of red tape. Here are some common challenges and how BizSimpl Global removes the friction:

🛑 Lack of Local Presence

✅ Solution: BizSimpl provides registered agents and virtual office addresses in the U.S., UK, UAE, and more.

🛑 Confusing Tax Systems

✅ Solution: We guide you on choosing tax-efficient jurisdictions and assist in filing necessary tax forms like EIN (USA) or VAT (UK).

🛑 Multiple Platforms and Consultants

✅ Solution: Everything—formation, compliance, banking guidance—is handled on a single, easy-to-use dashboard at BizSimplGlobal.com.

🛑 Unclear Compliance Responsibilities

✅ Solution: Our system sends timely reminders and automates renewals, annual filings, and reporting requirements.

LLC formation doesn’t need to be complex—it just needs the right global partner.

Best Countries for LLC Formation (And Why They Matter)

🔹 United States (Wyoming, Delaware)

0% state tax in Wyoming

Quick LLC registration in 3–7 days

Perfect for non-residents targeting U.S. clients

🔹 UAE (Free Zone)

Ideal for tax-free operations and global payment gateway access

Offers residence visas and full foreign ownership

🔹 United Kingdom

Fast, digital registration

Internationally trusted for B2B services and fintech

🔹 Estonia (e-Residency)

Offers digital-first business infrastructure

Ideal for European clients and EU compliance

With BizSimpl Global, you can compare and choose from 25+ countries for your LLC formation, based on your target audience, tax preference, and banking needs.

New-Age Entrepreneurs Using LLCs to Scale

The typical entrepreneur of 2025 isn’t stuck behind a desk. They’re global, mobile, and digital. Here’s how different professionals use LLC formation to their advantage:

eCommerce Founders: Form a U.S. LLC to access Amazon FBA, global payment solutions, and warehousing.

Consultants: Use a UK LLC to invoice EU and U.S. clients professionally.

Crypto Startups: Choose UAE for a friendly regulatory environment.

Remote Teams: Base operations in Singapore for strong IP protection and regional access.

With BizSimpl Global, it doesn’t matter where you are—you can start legally anywhere.

What You Get with BizSimpl Global’s LLC Formation Service

Here’s what sets BizSimpl Global apart from traditional legal firms and DIY platforms:

✔️ Unified Global Dashboard

Track formation progress, submit compliance documents, and manage renewals all in one place.

✔️ Transparent Pricing

No hidden fees or confusing packages—just clear, country-specific pricing and honest timelines.

✔️ Premium Support

Work with a dedicated expert who understands your business model and recommends the best formation strategy.

✔️ Document Templates

Receive customized operating agreements, ownership certificates, and compliance checklists with every formation.

✔️ Fast Turnarounds

Get your company formed within days—not weeks—with expedited processing in popular jurisdictions.

We don’t just help you form an LLC—we help you run it confidently, legally, and globally.

What Happens After LLC Formation?

Too many entrepreneurs stop at formation, ignoring the ongoing responsibilities of maintaining an LLC. BizSimpl Global continues to support you post-formation with:

Bookkeeping & Virtual CFO Services

Compliance Calendar Integration

Registered Agent Renewals

Business Bank Account Assistance

Legal Contracts & NDAs

It’s not just about launching—it’s about thriving. That’s the BizSimpl Global promise.

Ready to Go Global? Start with LLC Formation Today

If you’ve been waiting to take your business global, now is the time. Don’t let paperwork or compliance hurdles slow you down. With BizSimpl Global, LLC formation is efficient, affordable, and fully remote.

From choosing the right jurisdiction to filing the final paperwork and staying compliant—we make it simple. You bring the idea, we build the legal foundation.

👉 Get started at www.BizSimplGlobal.com and take the first step toward building your global business legacy.

✅ Keywords Used:

LLC Formation, BizSimpl Global, LLC registration, international LLC setup, LLC for freelancers, LLC for startups, global entity formation, USA LLC, UAE Free Zone LLC, UK business formation, LLC compliance

[russelperez10]

Not all setbacks are disasters. Some are detours toward something better.

[alessandrabenshoof]

A guide that shows you where the smart money is incorporating.

[topicprinter]

Hey - Pat from StarterStory.com here with another interview.Today's interview is with Fred Perrotta (u/fred_tortuga) of Tortuga, a brand that makes carry on travel backpacksSome stats:Product: Carry On Travel BackpacksRevenue/mo: $300,000Started: May 2010Location: RemoteFounders: 2Employees: 9Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?Hi, I’m Fred Perrotta, the co-founder, and CEO of Tortuga.We help travelers avoid the cost and hassle of checking luggage with carry-on-sized travel backpacks and daypacks. Our flagship product and the Wirecutter’s recommendation for Best Carry On Bag is the Outbreaker Backpack.Over the past nine years, we’ve bootstrapped our way to seven figures in revenue.imageTeam Tortuga on a retreat in MontrealWhat's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?In 2009, before we ever knew we’d start a travel company, my best friend Jeremy and I went on a backpacking trip to Eastern Europe. We learned how hard it is to travel with the wrong gear. The shoulder strap ripped off of Jeremy’s bag on the first day. I had to check my giant hiking backpack. The bag arrived on time but was a disorganized mess.Our trip was a blast, but our luggage was a disaster. Despite weeks of pre-trip research, we couldn’t find the perfect travel backpack. So after the trip, we decided to make it ourselves and co-founded Tortuga.During the trip, we talked about our dream travel backpack. Both Jeremy and I had recently read The 4-Hour Work Week. We thought that we could use the book as a blueprint to build a passive income business selling the ultimate travel backpack despite not knowing anything about product design or manufacturing.At the time, I was working in advertising at Google, and Jeremy was in film school. Tortuga started as a side project. We expected it to be easy: we’d find an existing bag, white-label it, run ads to drive traffic to the website, and collect a check every month. Exactly zero parts of that plan worked out.Take us through the process of designing, prototyping, and manufacturing your first product.We were clueless about design and manufacturing.The design stage went quickly. We hired a designer on eLance and went from idea to tech pack (the blueprint for a physical product) in a few months. Sampling and manufacturing turned out to be a real problem.We started our search for a factory in China, where most bags were made at the time. Without any connections in Asia, we were stumbling in the dark emailing random factories and working off of unreliable referrals. Finally, after months of trying to get a sample made, we got an email with a picture of our first ever physical sample.imageFirst Tortuga sample aka The Great MonstrositySeeing that image attached to an email was a gut punch. We now refer to that bag as “The Great Monstrosity.” We almost quit right then.But we didn’t. Instead, we moved our search for a factory to the US. The language barrier was no longer a problem, but the factory that we found was slow, uncommunicative, and not interested in working with us.After months of redesigns, we were running out of money. We had to choose: either place an order of the bag that we had or run out of money before production. Imperfect seemed better than non-existent, so we placed our first order for 100 bags. Tortuga V1 wasn’t perfect and wasn’t pretty. But it did exist and eventually went on sale. In retrospect, V1 was our minimum viable product.We sold a few units every month which proved to us that our initial hunch — that people would want a backpack designed specifically for travel — was right. We kept going.imageTortuga V1Describe the process of launching the business.We had the idea for Tortuga in the summer of 2009 and launched the business in the summer of 2011. Kickstarter wasn’t big yet, so we financed our first order out of pocket and with a small loan from the Jewish Free Loan Association. Yes, that’s a real organization, and yes their loans are interest-free.Our launch went well despite not having any strategy. We announced our launch to friends and family which led to a few sales. Later in our first week, Thrillist wrote about us then Vagablogging posted a review. Those features led to 7 sales, which was exciting for us at the time.Then everything went quiet. Sales went to zero. For the next year and a half, we tried a bit of everything without much success. Every month, we sold one or two bags. I got excited about every Shopify notification, but they were also a reminder of poorly we were doing. We thought many times about giving up. As you can see from our first homepage, we still had a ton to learn.imageTortuga website V1. Circa 2010The few people who bought the bag liked it. Our reviews were good. Feedback confirmed that we had identified a real problem that other people had and we're solving it for them. We knew that we were on to something, but we were also aware of the shortcomings of the product. It looked bad and turned off all but the most desperate of customers. We kept going because we understood our shortcomings and thought that we could solve them.In the fall of 2013, we relaunched with a new website and redesigned product. Sales picked up immediately and kept growing into the holiday and the following year.All of the blogging that we’d been doing for the last two years started to pay off once we had a product worth buying. Having a good product led to a new problem, however. We couldn’t keep Tortugas on the shelf.We went from unsellable to sold out.For the next year, we battled months-long stock-outs as we tried to scale through cash flow alone. Eventually, we hit a scale where we could order enough bags to keep them in stock until the next order was ready. We had a successful product. With this success, we decided to keep going by adding more products and starting to build a team.Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?Having worked at Google prior to starting Tortuga, I expected to be able to run ads to our site to drive sales. People were searching for our target keywords “travel backpack” and “carry on backpack.” I set up the ad campaigns. They drove traffic but didn’t convert. Refer to our original backpack and website above to see why. We knew the problem but didn’t have the resources to fix it. We had 100 backpacks on hand and needed to sell those before we could design and make a nicer product. We didn’t have the money to redesign the website again, and Shopify’s theme store didn’t exist yet. So we would have to change our marketing channels.I tried a bit of everything including blogging and SEO based on Pat Flynn’s THE Backlinking Strategy That Works. Yet, nothing worked. Both channels need long-term investment, and we were just trying to stay alive.imageTortuga Air, 2015In 2014, after we launched the new product and site, we began to see signals that our content and SEO efforts were paying off. Potential customers were finding our blog posts.After experimenting with every type of travel content, we landed on a niche that was underserved yet in demand and adjacent to our products: packing tips and gear recommendations.Our blog is now a resource for travelers looking for packing tips, packing lists, and guides to the best travel clothes and gear. Travel bloggers and influencers write inspirational posts and pictures. Our content, like our products, solves specific problems that people are facing. In this way, our blog became the perfect extension of the rest of our brand.imageSetout Divide Backpack, 2019Now we find new topics to cover based on what we would want to read and what travelers are searching for. Rather than churning out endless new posts, we revisit and update our best performing posts and ones that are doing well but could use a boost in the rankings. We update the information, fix broken links, and add more details where needed. Our goal is to create the most authoritative guide to each topic that we cover.Through our Tortuga Traveling Photographer program, we commission custom photography so that we aren’t using the same stock images as everyone else. A recent post on What to Wear in Thailand includes custom photography of our bags in Thailand. Most posts that we’re competing within the SERPs use a single stock photo at the top.From our posts, we link to our products where appropriate and never egregiously. To turn visitors into subscribers, we offer a free packing list for subscribing to our email list.How are you doing today and what does the future look like?Tortuga is a totally different company from its early days. Today we are a fully remote team of 11 people spread across the US, Canada, and China.imageTeam Tortuga on a retreat in LisbonDespite the proliferation of Kickstarter products and VC-backed direct-to-consumer brands, we have remained bootstrapped and profitable.While we’ve sold through Amazon in the past, we sell exclusively through our own Shopify website.Our small team is spread across customer service, product, design, marketing, operations, and leadership.We’ve learned valuable lessons through trial and error to figure out what works for us. Our growth hasn’t looked like a hockey stick or even been linear.In 2019, we focused on expanding our product lines through new variations: colors, sizes, and our first-ever women’s fit backpack. In 2020, we’ll expand on that strategy and launch our first bag for students and budget travelers. We started as budget travelers and will be celebrating our 10th anniversary with a product for them. Beyond 2020, we’ll be building more products to solve unique problems for travelers as well as entering new markets like business and adventure travel.Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?Our success is due to not giving up and learning from our mistakes. We’ve always kept moving forward, even during our toughest times as a business. We started with zero experience and learned everything through trial and error. Most importantly, we have always tried to be honest with ourselves about our shortcomings and what was not going well. Then we focused on fixing it. You can’t ignore your problems. Your success is determined by how quickly and accurately you can diagnose your problems and if you can fix them.After our initial traction, our next hurdle was a mental one. Did we want to grow the company and hire a team? We started with the dream of a 4-Hour Work Week business generating passive income. I left Google in part because my only career path was becoming a manager, which I didn’t want to do. Now I had to decide if I wanted to hire a team and build a real company. As our success has grown, so has our ambition. The first inflection point was creating a second product. The next one was hiring a team.I brought this challenge to a small retreat that a friend was hosting. I was nervous about hiring and managing. Who would even want to work with us? Could we get anyone good if we only had a part-time job to offer? Everyone at the retreat understood my fears but assured me that I could do it. A few months later, one of the attendees joined the team as our second employee. We’ve worked with another attendee for years as an affiliate and podcast sponsorAs we grew the team in 2015, we set out to relaunch the product line, website, and entire business. However, we changed too much too fast. When we assessed what went wrong, I learned about optimal newness. Since then we’ve made a point of trying to balance innovation with familiarity.What platform/tools do you use for your business?Asana for project managementSlack for our watercoolerZoom for video calls15Five for checking in every Friday, tracking progress on OKRs, and conducting reviewsGusto for HR, Transferwise for paying international employees, and Workable for hiringShopify for our ecommerce storeWhat have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?The 4-Hour Work Week for inspirationTraction for running effective meetings and quarterly/annual planningWho? to hireThe Hard Thing About Hard Things for managementAdvice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?Context matters. What worked for us won’t work for you. The hot new thing everyone’s talking about probably won’t work either. You will only find success by optimizing your own business, not copying others.The tools above don’t matter. Your business’s success isn’t dependent on choosing the right tool. You must be able to find and fix problems.Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?We don’t have any open positions right now, but you can learn more about working at Tortuga and join our Job Alerts list to find out about future openings.Where can we go to learn more?Visit the Tortuga store or blogRead my blog or follow me on TwitterIf you have any questions or comments, drop a comment below!Liked this text interview? Check out the full interview with photos, tools, books, and other data.For more interviews, check out r/starter_story - I post new stories there daily.Interested in sharing your own story? Send me a PM

[topicprinter]

Hey - Pat from StarterStory.com here with another interview.Today's interview is with Max Rice of SkyVerge, Inc., a brand that makes software tools for ecommerceSome stats:Product: Software Tools For eCommerceRevenue/mo: $350,000Started: March 2013Location: RemoteFounders: 2Employees: 32Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?Hi all, my name is Max Rice, and I’m the co-founder and CEO of SkyVerge, where we build software tools that help over 100,000 eCommerce brands manage and grow their online stores. Our customers are mostly small to medium-sized businesses in all kinds of verticals.We’re the largest seller of plugins for WooCommerce, like WooCommerce Memberships, a complete membership solution for WooCommerce stores. We also run Jilt, an all-in-one email marketing platform built for the unique needs of eCommerce stores.My co-founder Justin Stern and I started SkyVerge in 2013 and we’re a globally distributed team of over 30 people, with revenue of $350,000 per month.imageTeam SkyVerge at our 2019 team retreat* in Scotland.*What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?In 2012 I was working for a small company as an IT Director, and they tasked me with rebuilding their eCommerce website. As I started looking at available platforms, I found an article by Justin comparing WooCommerce to another platform. He seemed really knowledgeable, so I reached out to him to ask some questions and I ended up bringing him on as a consultant for the project.We worked really well together and the project had a very successful outcome, so we stayed in touch. A couple of months later we had a chance to work together on a joint consulting project, which led to more consulting for companies that needed help with their eCommerce stores.A lot of these projects involved building extensions for WooCommerce to add functionality or integrate with another service, and we decided to abstract some of that client work into plugins we could offer to others. We started selling those extensions on WooCommerce.com (originally WooThemes.com) and about a year after I had first reached out to Justin, we formally started SkyVerge with about 10 plugins in our portfolio.We expanded over time to build tools for other eCommerce platforms, like Shopify and Easy Digital Downloads, and a couple of years later we started work on Jilt.imageOne of the earliest photos of team SkyVerge, circa 2014. Left to right: Justin, Max, and Beka.Controlling our own destiny has always been important to us, so we’ve been fortunate to be able to bootstrap SkyVerge from the start. We took the approach of identifying specific problems that eCommerce stores have, often ones that our existing customers would tell us about, and then building focused solutions for those problems. We then used the revenue from our extensions to grow the team and expand our product line using the same philosophy.Take us through the process of designing, prototyping, and manufacturing your first product.Our early products grew out of consulting projects for clients. A lot of clients wanted small customizations or additional features for their store that weren’t built into WooCommerce. Once we’d built enough of those, we could group them together into a single product that was a bit more general so any store could use it.For example, we built Cart Notices after a client wanted to show a “free shipping” notice when the cart total was over $50, for the public version we added more flexibility and customization, along with a UI to design the notices.Because we were getting paid to develop the bulk of these products, there wasn’t much risk in making the more general plugins available for sale, and we found that if one client was willing to pay us to build a custom feature for them, it was really likely that other stores would also pay for the same feature. Even better, clients deeply understood the problem they wanted us to solve, so we were able to rapidly create prototypes, get their feedback, and iterate.In exchange for the ability to re-use code from these client projects for the on-sale versions, we offered a 50 percent discount on our normal rates and also offered a lifetime license to the eventual product, so clients were more than happy to work with us. The revenue from selling the product helped fund ongoing development and maintenance, so they wouldn’t need to pay another developer to maintain the customization. It was a true win-win.imageThe original whiteboarding session for what became *WooCommerce Memberships*, one of our flagship products.Describe the process of launching the business.One of the most unique things about the launch of SkyVerge is that Justin and I didn’t actually meet each other in person until about nine months after we formally organized the company. I was living in the Philadelphia area at the time, and he was living outside of Boston, and we collaborated remotely to develop our extensions. It’s due to that experience that we decided SkyVerge would be a distributed company.Because we started by doing consulting and built our initial products based on that work, we had an initial stream of revenue that we used to fund expansion. And because we sold our initial products mainly through the WooCommerce marketplace, we didn’t have to do a lot of the legwork of finding customers—we were able to associate with the strong brand that WooCommerce already had and tap into their sizeable and growing customer base.imageWe brainstormed names for the company in a shared Google Doc. Why we thought so many names with “crash” in them would be good for a software company is a mystery.While we built a lot of products in the early days, we also grew by acquiring small products from other developers. The deal sizes were small, anywhere from $5k to $100k, and didn’t require a lot of due diligence. We knew the market really well and had already worked with many of the other developers, so we were able to move quickly. About half of the products we have in our portfolio (including Jilt!) were acquired from other developers.We were able to fund most of the acquisitions through cash flow from the existing products we had, though we did borrow money in a few situations when we needed to stretch a bit. In general, we were (and continue to be) fairly debt-averse and when we did borrow money it was a high priority to pay it back as soon as we could.One of the biggest lessons we learned as we grew the company and started bringing on more people to help us, is that everyone has to be involved in building the culture. One of the most appealing aspects of starting SkyVerge for Justin and I was the idea of building the company we wanted to work at. So as the company grew, and we began to think about things like culture, benefits, and what we work on, we always started from the question, “If this was another company I was an employee at, what would I want to do?” And we spend a lot of time asking our team the same types of questions and incorporating their feedback into our decision-making.imageAn early iteration of SkyVerge.com.Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?Because we sold our products mainly through the WooCommerce marketplace, and later through the Shopify app store, we didn’t have to spend a lot of time using traditional paid acquisition channels like search or social media ads. We focused most of our early marketing efforts on content, including writing a lot of blog posts about eCommerce and the platforms we developed tools for, as well as detailed documentation for each product. Across SkyVerge.com, Jilt.com, and a separate blog we launched in 2013 about eCommerce for WordPress, we’ve published over 1,100 posts.Content marketing remains a very big part of our overall marketing strategy for SkyVerge, and it’s been effective at building our reputation as a trusted provider of tools in the eCommerce space. We often hear from customers that they found us or decided to buy one of our products because of an article or guest post of ours that they read.One thing we’ve found helpful in driving app store conversions is reviews. The app stores we’re in tend to use reviews as part of their algorithms for listing and search results placement, and in our experiments we’ve seen that reviews have a lot of impact on increasing trials. We’ve spent a lot of time this year designing ways to positively impact the number of reviews for Jilt without directly incentivizing them, by doing things like asking for reviews after positive support experiences and at key times during our app onboarding.We also made a commitment early on to provide excellent support to our customers, which we think it’s a core reason we’re able to attract and retain customers so successfully. Any time we can go above and beyond during a support interaction with a user, that customer becomes both more likely to stay a customer and more likely to become an advocate for our products and tell users about us. One of our company values at SkyVerge is empathy, and that means we always try to align ourselves with the customer. We like to go the extra mile and make sure that we understand customer problems and get them solved, even if that means that sometimes our products aren’t the best fit.More recently, especially with Jilt, which operates under a software as a service business model, we’ve explored additional marketing channels. That includes things like events, partnerships, and webinars.imageThe first step of Jilt’s new onboarding flow, designed to get users sending emails more quickly.This year, we’ve made a concerted effort to focus more on retention and reducing churn. We completely redesigned our onboarding flow from the ground up, starting with research into what steps our most successful users took when they first signed up for Jilt. We realized that customers that create and send an email campaign within the first three days converted to paying customers at a rate that was nearly 3x those who don’t set up and send an email.So we developed a new onboarding set up, including email campaigns, in-app messages, product tours, and a special escalated support protocol for early trial users, all designed to get new sign-ups sending emails as quickly as possible. The result has been a dramatic increase in trial-to-paid conversion and a decrease in churn.How are you doing today and what does the future look like?SkyVerge has grown rapidly over the past couple of years, and we’re now at over 30 people, in over half a dozen countries. We’ve grown the team by more than 50 percent in just the past six months, and this year we were named to the Inc. 5000 for the second year in a row as one of the fastest-growing, privately-held companies in America.We’ve been profitable since day one and we’re on track yet again this year to set revenue records, continuing the pattern of steady growth since we started the company almost seven years ago.We’re very excited by the growth we’ve seen from Jilt this year, with over 250 percent annual growth, and in 2020 we expect to continue rapidly scaling up Jilt and shift our marketing focus more toward user acquisition.Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?One of the most important lessons we’ve learned over the years is that you rarely get it right the first time. You make decisions based on the best available information, then you learn from the results and iterate. As long as you’re constantly improving both the work that you produce and the way that you work, you’ll be successful.We’ve made a ton of mistakes over the years, from marketing to product development to strategy, and each time we tried something that didn’t work, we took a step back, assessed what went wrong and thought about how we could improve next time.This approach of looking at everything through an experimental lens and striving for learning above perfect results, has allowed us to grow both faster and in a more calm and rational way.What platform/tools do you use for your business?We use a massive number of tools across our tech stack (for making and delivering our products to users) and internally for things like design, development, analytics, etc. We’re probably be here all day if I were to list them all out. Instead, I’ll focus on the our communications tools.Internal (with each other):Clubhouse - Our engineering team started using Clubhouse last year when we transitioned from a waterfall approach to a more agile project management methodology. It’s a fantastic tool for tracking progress and communicating project plans, and it has a fantastic GitHub integration, which has been very useful for us. Our product, support, and marketing teams have also begun to utilize Clubhouse.GitHub - We use GitHub for source code hosting, code review, and version control for all our products.Figma - Figma is a fantastic tool we’ve added over the past year to design and prototype our user interface for Jilt, as well as collaborate around design decisions. It’s helped us to move toward a functional design system that has allowed us to improve the user experience in Jilt and iterate much more quickly.Basecamp - We use Basecamp for company-wide communication, including weekly check-in questions, team meeting agendas, and progress reports. We also use it to collaborate with external teams.Slack - Like most startups, Slack is our go to for real-time communication. It’s a great place for the team to chat through problems, seek help from one another, and hang out and talk about non-work things.Zoom - We’ve found that Zoom is the most reliable way to connect via video. We use it for small team meetings, one-on-ones, and our weekly, whole-company stand-up.Google G Suite - We spend a lot of time in Google Docs and Sheets. As a remote team, communication is very important, especially asynchronously. Our team needs to have ready access to all the information they need to make decisions, and Google G Suite makes it easy for us to collaborate and share vital information with each other. Our company email infrastructure also runs on Gmail.Segment & Zapier - We use Segment and Zapier to connect tools and data sources together and automate processes. They’re not really communications tools, but vital in making the rest of our tools work well together and help us work more efficiently.External (with customers):Intercom - Intercom is the primary tool we use to communicate with Jilt customers. We use it for customer support, as well as in-app and email messaging to users during onboarding and at vital points throughout the customer lifecycle.Lookback - This is a fantastic tool that our product team recently started using to gather feedback from our users about new features and better serve their needs.HelpScout - On the WooCommerce extensions side, HelpScout is our choice for customer support. We’ve been using it for years and have numerous custom apps built to help us better serve customers, such as a CRM view that allows us to see information about the customer’s store so we can diagnose their issue faster.WordPress - All our websites are built on WordPress, including our internal team wiki called HQ, which houses all our operational documents about things like benefits and team culture. We’ve made much of this wiki public, which has been extremely beneficial for recruiting.What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life by Alice Schroeder and Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. by Ron Chernow are two biographies that were greatly influential to me. I’m a big fan of biographies, especially those that present a balanced perspective and avoid the “hero worship” that some biographies tend to have.We’ve recently invested a lot of time and effort into building more leadership capacity and two books we found especially helpful in this regard are Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity by Kim Scott and Turn the Ship Around!: A True Story of Turning Followers into Leaders by L. David Marquet. Those books became required reading this year for our leadership team and have influenced our thinking about management style and culture building.I also read numerous websites each day, and two I regularly find particularly helpful are First Round Review and SaaStr.Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?The most important metric we look at when it comes to success is customer happiness. If we’re not making our customers happy and solving problems for them in the ways they expect, we’re not doing our jobs.The only way you can successfully build products that make people happy and solve real problems is by talking to your customers. So the best advice I can give to other entrepreneurs is to spend as much time as you can talking to your customers. Don’t just understand their problems; dig into their motivations, their fears, their desires, and truly try to empathize with them. If you can do that, you’ll have a much better chance at building a successful business.Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?Yes! We’re generally always hiring these days, and you can find current open roles here. We expect to post a few more open positions in Q1 2020.Where can we go to learn more?Websites: SkyVerge / JiltFacebook: SkyVerge / JiltTwitter: @SkyVerge / @JiltLinkedIn: SkyVergeBlogs: SkyVerge / JiltIf you have any questions or comments, drop a comment below!Liked this text interview? Check out the full interview with photos, tools, books, and other data.For more interviews, check out r/starter_story - I post new stories there daily.Interested in sharing your own story? Send me a PM