7. Provide Employee Perks

   Over the years, I have witnessed that most startups aim to provide an out-of-box experience for their employees. This varies from free meals to foosball tables, DIY workstations and more. However, these perks hold no true value for a remote employee. According to Joel Gascoigne, Buffer distributes perks like Jawbone UP (to track sleep and exercise), a Kindle Paperwhite (which is also extended to family members) and their famous Buffer retreats. Joel suggests that Buffer retreats not only let the entire team get to know each other, but it helps to reinforce company values.

8. Don’t Be Afraid To Fire

   As Joel explains: “Keeping people around who are not a great culture-fit is one of the worst things that could happen to someone… No matter how awesome our hiring process is, it’s inevitable that sometimes the person is not a great fit… We now know not to be surprised if about 1 in 4 people we hire doesn’t work out. It helps to know this possibility in advance.” An entrepreneur cannot take the risk of high attrition and turnover rates in a growing startup. Having the wrong people on board breaks focus and rhythm associated with a small group of employees. There may be numerous reasons for an employee’s exit, however sometimes the best bet is to let someone go.

9. Make Choices And Stick To Them

   Each entrepreneurial journey is different and unique. In fact, when I look back I can see the contrast in the roadblocks I’ve faced with each of my startups. There is something to learn from each experience. Every decision is a choice. As a founder, it is important to make mistakes and learn from choices. Also as Joel mentions in his blog, do not tie your choices to success. “If we fail eventually, I don’t think we could easily tie it to a single one of these choices, and if we succeed we would be wrong to say it was because of these decisions. I think, therefore, the key is to use our intuition and make the changes we feel are right – both in order to succeed, and also to create the place we want to work.”

Distributed Teams Are The Future

Being a co-founder of a tech startup with a small remote team of 5, spread across 3 locations, I’ve a realized that providing this model to my employees has increased our deliverability many folds without sacrificing growth. In fact, when it comes to remote hires, I am quite an evangelist now.

If you are keen on hiring remote employees, take the time to glance through other success stories like BaseCamp, Zapier and GrooveHQ to widen your perspective. I’m sure that it is a debatable topic. However it is best to explore both sides of the coin before forming an opinion.For starters, you can learn from the brilliant strategy followed by the folks at Compose.

What are your thoughts about hiring remote employees? Have you learned a lesson or two from Buffer? Do share your views on the topic below.

This article has been edited and condensed.

Laxman Papineni is the co-founder of AppVirality Inc., plug and play growth hacking toolkit for mobile apps. A great crusader of start-up ecosystem, Laxman loves to pen down his thoughts and enjoys EA Cricket immensely. Connect with @appvirality on Twitter.