Blog
How to Pay Remote Employees
Running a remote company in the US requires using terrible government websites and filling out onerous paperwork. Tortuga [https://www.tortugabackpacks.com] has seven US-based employees across four states. Four of those employees have moved between states while working for Tortuga. In total, we've registered with seven state-level
Made at the Same Factory As...
The clothing company Everlane has a world map of the factories [https://www.everlane.com/factories] on their website. That level of transparency is commendable. I've noticed a recent trend, particularly among bag and luggage companies, of a pseudo-transparency noting not which factories they work with, but their
Metrics That Don't Matter
> [Company] raises $X, now valued at $Y That's probably the most common headline for startup coverage. That coverage focuses on the wrong numbers. Startup founders and employees have already chosen to play the VC game. That's their call. Good luck. I worry about bootstrapped founders
Attempting Sanity: Farewell to My Feeds
> The best thing about the internet is that it gives everyone a voice. The worst thing about the internet is that it gives everyone a voice. I’m tired of listening. I need a break. After unhealthily bingeing on politics during the 2016 campaign, I was looking forward to
The 4-Hour Workweek: 10 Years Later
Last week, a writer who was doing a story on direct-to-consumer brands [https://www.fredperrotta.com/v-commerce/] raising venture capital, asked why Tortuga [http://www.tortugabackpacks.com] didn't raise any money. In 2009 and 2010 when Jeremy and I were starting the company, I was living in San
Working Remotely Means "Your" Schedule, Not “No” Schedule
If you think that working remotely means lying in bed [https://open.buffer.com/work-bed/] in sweatpants, you also probably think that it means starting late and quitting early. For colocated employees, a work from home (WFH) day is like a vacation. Everyone at the office knows that you'
5 Habits to Break Before Working Remotely
Before you can learn to work remotely, you must unlearn habits from your previous, colocated jobs. My company, Tortuga [http://www.tortugabackpacks.com], is remote. We advocate for working remotely [https://onyourterms.com/why-we-work-remotely-19d9bd2077b0] but know that the transition from colocated to remote [https://onyourterms.com/transitioning-to-remote-work-at-tortuga-d15160e7a17f] isn't
The Sound and Fury of Startup Marketing
Ben Thompson of Stratechery, my favorite tech writer, recently covered the success of Stitch Fix [https://stratechery.com/2017/stitch-fix-and-the-senate/]. > I am in fact deeply impressed by Stitch Fix: it seems quite clear that early on [CEO Katrina] Lake realized that the company was not an aggregator, which meant
Sorry Uber, That's Not How Culture Works
I heard about Uber's new cultural norms [https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ubers-new-cultural-norms-dara-khosrowshahi/] from a series of Sarah Lacy [https://twitter.com/sarahcuda] tweets. > "We’re also calling these cultural norms, rather than values, because we fully expect them to evolve as Uber continues to grow&
Decision Making Without Meetings
Last weekend, my girlfriend told me about a meeting at her company. The meeting was called to decide on which part to use when their original choice was unavailable. The meeting was an hour long and included 10 people. That's 10 person hours to make a single decision.