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Description
Traction Conf Vancouver 2019: http://tractionconf.io presented by Launch Academy, Boast.AI, and Microsoft for Startups.
GitLab is extreme, even for Silicon Valley: It has no headquarters and everyone works remotely, even the CEO.
The startup has more than 700 employees in 54 countries and plans to raise its headcount to about 1,000 by year-end.
In this session, CEO Sid Sijbrandij shares his playbook for building a hypergrowth company entirely remote, explaining how they adapted from remote engineering to remote sales, how they keep their culture in check, why being remote-only leads to higher company productivity, and key measures to have in place to drive growth with a remote team.
Moderated by Frederic Lardinois, TechCrunch.
A
A
A
B
B
A
B
My
first
business
was
open
source,
infrared
receivers
and
it
was
a
PhD
student
in
my
university
who
made
them
and
he
had
a
gear
Cities
page
and
on
that
page
it
said
I'm
not
selling
these,
but
he
was
selling
them
at
the
local
marketplace.
So
I
started
buying
from
him
asking
people
to
email
me
dollar
bills
with
some
cardboard
behind
it
in
an
envelope
to
the
Netherlands
and
I
sent
them
the
infrared
receiver.
A
B
Was
successful
at
every
thought,
but
I
want
to
get
back
to
studying
and
later
on,
I
started,
I
didn't
start
the
basis.
I
started
the
business,
but
it
was
never
a
shareholder
in
it,
but
I
saw
submarine
on
a
boat
show.
So
for
five
years
we
built
recreational
submarines.
That's
still
going
so
today,
if
you
buy
summary
you're
most
likely
to
buy
it
from
you,
boat
works.
B
So
you
have
a
trailer,
you
have
a
submarine
and
you
can
go
diving
yeah
or
you
most
people
have
a
really
yards
large
yacht
and
they
want
to
impress
their
guests
and
you
can
take
them
out
for
a
spin.
Do
you
have
one?
No
there
we
try
to
make
them
for
twenty
thousand
dollars
and
we
filled
by
two
orders
of
magnitude.
B
B
In
2007,
I
saw
Ruby
and
I
always
wanted
to
get
into
programming.
I
saw
Ruby
and
Ruby
on
Rails
and
I
looked
at
the
code
and
I
said
this
is
beautiful.
This
is
this
reads
like
poetry.
This
is
the
time
to
get
into
programming.
So
I
was
a
software
programmer
started
consulting
and
then
at
a
certain
point.
I
saw
get
lamp.
B
B
B
B
So
fluffy
all
the
other
things
yet
lab
used
to
be
version
control
and
then
dmitry
never
wanted
to
upgrade
another
Jenkins
server
again.
So
he
made
his
own
CI
CD
platform
and,
as
someone
said,
let's
combine
the
two
and
Dmitry
was
against
it.
I
was
against
it,
but
he
managed
to
convince
us.
That's
how
we
got
into
that
business.
Nice.
What's
Y
Combinator
worth
it
for
you,
it's
very
much
worth
it!
It's
seven
percent
delusion,
but
you
get
150
bucks.
You
get
great
advice
from
the
mentors
there.
You
get
great
peers
for
us.
B
So
we
were
just
off
three
months
of
having
the
whole
company
in
one
house,
so
the
whole
company
and
my
wife
is
remarkable
how
how
we
survived
and
then
Y
Combinator
told
us
that
the
remote
thing
we
were
doing
before
worked
for
engineering,
but
not
for
sales
and
marketing
and
finance
right.
So
we
said
okay,
that
makes
sense.
B
So
we
got
an
office
and
people
started
coming
in,
but
they
were
there
for
like
three
days
or
something,
and
then
they
just
started
working
from
home,
because
there
were
no
rules
about
coming
to
the
office
and
everything
we
did
was
online
anyway.
They
were
on
video
calls
the
entire
day.
So
there
was
no
added
value
and
it
was
a
two-hour
commute,
so
they
just
started
working
from
home.
So
that's
why
we
were
remote,
because
people
stopped
showing
up
to
the
office
at.
B
Yeah
we
moved
I
also
lived
there
because,
like
real
estate
was
super
expensive,
so
I
thought
I'll
take
the
upper
floor,
lift
there.
Then
the
company
expands,
I'll,
move
out
and
then
a
company
expense
more
and
then
I'll
move
back
in
and
make
it
my
home
because
it
was
such
a
long.
Lease
never
had
to
move,
see,
lift
in
the
office
yeah
and
it's
kind
of
weird.
Now
we
have
a
CEO
shadow
program.
So
there's
two
people
from
the
company
in
working
for
my
living
yeah.
A
B
It
really
helps
if
you
have
know
people
at
an
HQ.
Nobody
else
feels
like
they're
at
a
satellite
office.
We
hire
a
lot
of
people
who
say
I
work
in
an
amazing
company,
but
I'm
the
one
remote
and
all
the
decisions
get
made
at
HQ
and
I'm,
not
involved,
I,
hear
about
them
later,
etc.
We'll
get
live
everyone's
on
the
same
level
and
many
times
you
even
work
in
like
public
issue
trackers,
so
that
people
from
the
wider
community
are
on
the
same
level
with
us
and
I.
B
B
B
So
you
got
to
make
sure
you
allocate
that
time
for
people
getting
to
know
each
other.
So,
every
day
of
the
week
we
have
a
group
conversation
where
a
department
talks
about
what
they're
doing
every
workday.
We
have
a
coffee,
a
coffee
breaks
where
people
just
do
25
minutes
with
someone
else
without
an
agenda
every
day
we
have
breakout
calls
where
you're
with
a
group,
and
you
talk
about
things
outside
of
work
that
cost
valuable
time,
but
that's
time
you
would
have
spent
anyway
and
you're
saving
the
commute
plus
yeah
there's.
B
B
We
do
like
that,
every
nine
to
twelve
months
we
bring
everyone
together
and
it's
super
fun.
The
last
time
was
in
New
Orleans
and
we
try
to
not
do
death
by
PowerPoint.
So
there's
an
opening
and
a
closing
ceremony
but
for
the
rest,
is
all
excursions
just
exploring
together
and
unconference,
so
individual
contributors,
they
suggest
something
to
talk
about
and
then
with
a
group
of
15
people.
You
talk
about
that.
No
presentations,
no
slideshows.
So
it's
really
using
that
time
what
it's
best
for
stuff!
A
People
come
to
and
start
at
Gitlin
most
companies.
You
know
you
get
like
an
orientation
and
you
get
your
package
things
like
that.
You
don't
really
can't
really
do
any
of
that.
What
it's
was
it
like
getting
on
boarded
at
get
lab
them.
You
guys
just
sit
in
my
office
with
my
green
screen
at
home
and
yeah.
B
You
do
and
you
get
an
issue
assigned
to
you
and
there's
about
250
check
boxes,
so
we
on
board
a
lot
better
than
other
companies,
but
it's
pretty
intense
instead
of
two
days.
It
totally
takes
you
two
to
four
weeks
to
get
to
all
the
different
tasks
that
are
assigned
the
advantage.
Is
you
learn
a
lot
more
so,
instead
of
a
to
two
day
or
a
week,
long
onboarding,
we
still
need
10
100,
shoulder
taps
where
you
have
to
ask
someone
and
you
get
a
lot
more
information.
A
B
I,
don't
like
repeating
myself
and
after
Y
Combinator.
We
set
this
ambition
to
be
not
a
company
of
50
people
but
of
five
hundred
five
thousand
people
in
the
future.
I'm
like
wow,
if
I
I
can
I
can
say
something,
but
I
will
have
to
repeat
it
many
many
times.
I'm
gonna
write
it
down,
so
we
started
writing
it
down.
So
now,
if
you
want
to
communicate
something
and
get
laughs,
a
change,
you
don't
send
an
email,
you
don't
do
a
PowerPoint,
you
don't
do
a
slack
message.
B
It
is
open
source,
it's
Creative,
Commons
you,
so
you
can
copy
it.
You
can
copy
relevant
parts.
For
example,
we
have
a
global
compensation
calculator.
So
if
you
want
to
know
what
we
pay
and
200
locations
all
over
the
world,
you
can
use
that
as
a
reference.
But
all
of
the
things
you
can
incorporate
yourself
it's
on
github.
A
B
B
B
B
B
Especially
if
they're
in
the
Bay
Area
at
such
a
low
cost
thing
so
then
they
they
tend
to
come
by
and
you
cook
them
a
good
Dutch
meal.
Yeah.
It's
a
bit
awkward
to
invite
people
over
to
your
house,
but
we
have
a
ruse.
We
made
a
data
wall
with
665
inch
monitors
the
display
our
latest
like
dashboards,
and
things
like
that.
So
people
come
in,
they
forget
about
being
in
my
living
room
they're
like
wow,
that's
interesting,
and
we
talk
about
that
and
that's
a
good
opening.
A
A
B
It's
much
lower
than
you'd
think
we
fought
like
okay
day.
This
remote
is
gonna,
be
a
thing
we
have
to
interview
for
that
turns
out
not
to
be
the
case.
We
do
interview
for
like
manager
of
one.
We
need
people
who
can
work
independently,
but
that's
the
same
as
any
other
fast
growing
company.
You
want
people
who
can
manage
themselves
to
a
great
extent
who
don't
need
day-to-day
hand-holding.
If
they
can
do
that,
they
can.
They
can
work
that
way.
B
It
is
a
change,
though,
so
we
hire
people
are
very
ambitious
and
in
the
first
few
weeks
they
have
to
learn
how
to
work
with
get
lab
and
other
things,
and
it
slows
them
down
and
it's
frustrating
them
so
the
first
month
is
hard,
but
it's
not
hard
in
the
sense
that
people
quit
people
stick
with
it
and
they
get
better.
They
get
to
it.
It's
just
not
it's
a
it's.
A
tough
thing
to
kind
of
you've
worked
for
10
20
years.
They
have
to
start
doing
things
differently.
Sure
now.
A
B
We're
not
there
yet,
but
we
did
a
nan
deal
roadshow
recently
and
we're
on
track
we're
ahead
of
where
we
wanted
to
be.
We
made
a
plan
in
2015
to
get
to
this
point
and
we're
ahead
of
that.
Did
you
actually
set
the
date
in
2015
yeah?
We
publicized
in
2015
that
we
wanted
to
become
a
public
company
2020,
but
not
the
exact
data,
not.
A
B
It's
it's!
It's
both
it's
it's
it's
a
goal,
but
you
know.
If
you
go
to
our
leadership
page
at
the
bottom,
it
will
have
a
link
to
about
how
we
talked
about
being
a
public
company.
It
says
it's
like
graduating
from
high
school,
it's
a
great
day,
but
it
shouldn't
be
the
biggest
thing
you
achieve
in
life
and
we
already
set
goals
for
2023
want
to
be
at
five
hundred
billion
dollars
in
revenue
and
a
couple
of
other
goals
by
that
time.
So
we're
gonna
the
closer
we
get
the
more
we'll
start.
Looking
past
it.
B
A
B
Bit
but
I
think
what's
happening
is
that
our
space
is
going
from.
You
choose
many
separate
DevOps
tools
to
you,
pick
one
DevOps
tool
and
we're
the
leading
single
application,
so
I
think
we're
more
and
more
we're
becoming
a
leader.
But
this
consolidation
is
starting
to
happen
and
it
will
attract
more
attention.
What
other
companies
don't
have
is
they
don't
have
an
open
source
model?