We're sick of hearing "Traditional work is dead" but what are the business implications? Lots. Today's business idea will be the most valuable company in the world someday. You heard it here first. Will you build it?
Each week I help founders & marketers spark their creativity by sharing a new product idea & how I'd launch it.
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A few things from me:
First, welcome to 33 new subscribers who joined this week!
Second, I joined Max & Nick on the 7 Day MVP podcast to discuss the founding story of BirdyBots, as well as a few business ideas from previous Looseleaf Cannon issues, including ReviewYou - Yelp for individuals.
Finally, I recently discovered Corey's Marketing Report, & it's become one of my favorite newsletters. Each issue is packed with actionable marketing tips on things like creating a customer persona or converting more website visitors. Sign up here & tell him you heard about it from me!
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Remote work needs no introduction. It's become quite clear that we won't ever completely return to how we worked pre-COVID.
But we've also realized that our existing environments & tools are woefully inadequate for permanent distributed work. Billions are still to be made in building the infrastructure for a remote-first world, & I could have written about any number of business ideas on this topic.
But let's get straight to this week's product idea, RemoteOS - a virtual workplace for distributed-first companies.
The value proposition:
- RemoteOS combines the best of remote work with the things we miss most about an office. You get your own virtual workspace & can signal to others whether you're doing "deep work" or are able to be interrupted. Meetings are as easy as moving over to someone's desk with your arrow keys & clicking on their avatar, which lets them know you want to talk. Virtual "breakrooms" benefit companies by giving rise to ideas serendipitously, & benefit employees by enabling chance encounters to turn into remote friendships.
- The future of remote work is not a bunch of tools that stitch together your day - from Asana, to Slack, to Zoom, & back to Asana. It's a unified platform that doesn't just help you work, but is where & how you work - all-in-one meeting room, file storage, chat, & notes. That's RemoteOS. Whoever builds it will one day be the most valuable company in the world.
How I'd launch:
- RemoteOS is a complex product to build, & one that's hard to "validate" yourself before building. Luckily, COVID & oodles of frustrated tweets about remote work have done the proving for us. Rather than "proving" the idea, build the minimally viable product, launch that, & then iterate on the feedback you get.
- Like it or not, meetings make up the core of our workdays, & also, the core of a product like RemoteOS. The RemoteOS MVP would be a virtual office space with a "whiteboard" for screen-sharing. The user experience for meetings would already be better than Zoom's, reason enough for companies to try it out. Additional features, like chat, file storage, & notes can be fulfilled with Google products for now, & added incrementally.
- Lenny Rachitsky shared a launch tactic used by drop-in audio app Clubhouse: in its early days, normally inaccessible Naval & Marc Andreesen hosted conversations nearly every night, which got early users to come back again & again to to listen. To get people to use a new technology, use it to serve them something they really want. For RemoteOS: host investor demo days to connect start-ups with angel investors. There's nothing start-ups want more than a chance at funding, & they also happen to be ideal RemoteOS customers. Not only do they learn about RemoteOS, but they get to experience the platform right before - hopefully - getting lots of funding to spend on new software. The tricky part will be getting angel investors to attend a no-name event, but if you find an investor in need of deal flow, you've got a shot.
- Making RemoteOS 100% free for companies with less than 10 employees. This will make it an unbeatable bargain for start-ups, & if they like RemoteOS, they won't churn when they grow. With high switching costs, they'll be yours until & through maturity.
How I'd scale:
- To scale, continue hosting exciting events for start-ups, but now it's time to pursue other routes as well. Continue to use your free plan to land start-ups, with the idea that you'll grow with them. Not only will you become a default option for small start-ups, but you're correctly aligning incentives so that you do well when they do well & grow. Connect with start-ups via university incubators & accelerators, who may be willing to promote you as a free tool to university start-ups. The college audience is key as they're more willing to try technology, especially when it's free.
- Cold email newly remote companies. Companies that were remote pre-COVID are less likely to be interested in new remote work technology, but search Twitter & LinkedIn for "going permanently remote" & you'll find companies that have recently announced they're going remote, prime targets for RemoteOS.
- A tactic that helped Slack scale, even as an already mature company, was to facilitate inter-company collaboration. By letting companies host external meetings directly in RemoteOS, every meeting becomes a demo to new potential clients.
Why it would work:
- Offering RemoteOS for free to start-ups is playing a long-term game that works. Packy McCormick has pointed out that this strategy worked well for Slack. With a generous free plan, Slack gets young companies on board, & then grows with them. It works so well for them that each cohort of customers actually pay Slack more money with each passing year, even after accounting for churn. If you want 2030's biggest companies to be your customers, onboard the hottest start-ups of 2021.
Why it might not work:
- The biggest bear case for RemoteOS is not that it won't work, but that someone else will build it first. Teamflow is a virtual office that already has a lot of RemoteOS's functionality. Next, they're working on integrations with all your work apps. Kumospace is a group video chat with spatial sound & virtual office layouts. They're a lot like the MVP I discussed earlier & I wouldn't be surprised if RemoteOS is a part of their long-term vision. If you're excited about the idea of RemoteOS, but don't want to raise money & build it yourself, considering joining one of these companies already working on the idea. Side note: if you (or someone you know) work at Teamflow or Kumospace, I would love to chat!
Btw if you want further reading, Packy McCormick, who writes one of my favorite newsletters, wrote 2 great essays, one on remote work broadly, & another on Teamflow itself.
Question: How can you align your business' incentives with your customers' so that you benefit when they benefit?
Cheers,
Luke
P.S. As always, respond with the biggest challenge you're facing & I'll try to help how I can!
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