July 14, 2024 • 38 mins
FROM THE ARCHIVE:Ever wondered how remote teams can truly bond and feel connected despite the physical distance? This episode of Remote Worker Life features Badri Rajasekhar, former CEO of Jam, who shares his remarkable journey from Chennai to Microsoft and beyond. Learn about his bold decision to join a startup during the 2008 financial crisis and how it led to the creation of Jam, a video collaboration app that promises to make remote teamwork fun and effective. Badri's story shows how Jam combined the best aspects of Slack and Zoom, ensuring that distributed teams don't just work together but actually enjoy doing so.....
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Alex Wilson-Campbell (00:01):
Hey, it's Alex from Remote Worker Live
here and I'm really happy.
Today we have a really goodguest, a really great guest.
I've got Badri Rajasekhar withme today.
He's the CEO of Jam.
Now, jam is a tech business andJam's very different, and the
reason I've got a massive smileon my face is because Jam is all
(00:22):
about having fun, and you know,when we're as remote workers,
especially in this currentclimate, we not many people are
speaking about having fun.
But this is what jam is allabout, because jam is a
lightweight video collaborationapp for remote teams.
So think about if slack andzoom were to have a baby.
(00:45):
This is basically what jamoffers.
So, like I said, massiveswallow my face because we're
going to be talking today abouthaving fun with remote teams.
So, badri, I just wanted to saya massive thank you for for
joining us today thank you somuch, alex.
Badri Rajasekhar (01:01):
Super excited to be here and I hope
everybody's safe out there, butsuper, super pumped to be here.
Alex Wilson-Campbell (01:06):
No, excellent, I'm so excited to
have you.
As I said, I can't take theswallow off my face.
No, so, badri, like I said,he's the CEO of Jam and he's had
a really interesting backgroundand he's overcome some
challenges actually, we weretalking just before, before we
got on air and he's overcomesome really tough challenges to
(01:27):
really create something that isvery much needed, not just in
the remote world in general, but, like I said, now in in a sort
of this sort of day and age thatwe're in and the sort of
changes that we're going throughnow, fun is a really important
thing.
So what I wanted to do reallyis just, really, badri, just to
(01:48):
find out about you and how youprogressed in your career,
because you've had a verysuccessful career to being where
you are now as CEO of Jam.
Badri Rajasekhar (02:00):
Yeah, it's been an interesting journey for
me and it's a lot of irrationaldecision-making, as I was
talking to you about.
So, at my heart, I'm mostlylike a product technologist,
right.
So I grew up in Chennai, whichis like a small city in southern
India.
Like a lot of kids in mygeneration, I was super into
(02:21):
coding and technology andplaying video games and stuff
like that, eventually moved tothe United States to go to
school, studied computer scienceand then went on to work for
Microsoft up in Seattle and hada great time working for
Microsoft and sort of being inSeattle.
I didn't like the weather inSeattle, of course, but outside
of that it was fantastic.
Seattle, of course, but outsideof that it is fantastic.
(02:43):
But sometime around 2007, youknow, I was into photography and
video and stuff like that andthat was sort of the big sort of
boom of YouTube and I got thisbee in my bonnet that video
communication.
The next step to YouTube isgoing to be, hey, people are
just going to be having thesevideo calls online.
(03:04):
Youtube is going to be hey,people are just going to be
having these video calls online,almost sort of Jetson style,
and so I had that idea.
I found extremely sort ofintriguing.
Obviously, it turned out not tobe true.
It took more than 10 years forthat reality to pan out, but at
that point I was super excitedabout this idea and so in
November of 2008, actually, Iquit Microsoft, decided to pack
(03:26):
up my bags, move back toCalifornia, join a small group
of people who are building acompany called TalkBox, which is
a video API platform.
September of 2008 is when wehad the financial crisis, and
(03:47):
November of 2008, I decided toquit my cushy job at Microsoft,
move to the Bay Area.
Everybody thought I was nuts.
I probably was nuts for havingdone that, but it was mostly
driven by this excitement aroundsort of video and the future of
(04:08):
video.
Like I said, you know, we spenta bunch of years building our
talk box and somewhere along theway we got acquired by
Telefonica, which is the Spanishcarrier, and all of a sudden we
went from having this fairlylocalized team in California to
now being part of a much moreglobally distributed team that
is spread across London, madrid,barcelona, perth, sydney, a
(04:31):
whole bunch of locations right.
And so I, like a lot of people,got thrust into sort of the
remote work, sort of movement,and at the same time, we were
also a video API platform.
We were also a video company.
We were trying to do a lot ofvideo conferencing in the early
days and what I quickly realizedwas A.
The remote work movement is thefuture.
(04:54):
There's no question about it.
Right?
There's incredible talentavailable all over the world.
It is a lot of fun to actuallysort of work in a remote and
distributed team.
You have a great deal offlexibility.
But at the same time, because wecame from a video background,
we were also thinking about whyis why?
You know, what can we do tomake it much more fun and
(05:16):
lightweight?
In a way, slack did that toemail.
If you look at Slack and email,slack just made something
stayed like email much moreinformal, fun, engaging.
And why does video conferencingimply that we're all sitting in
a Zoom call for 60 minutestwiddling our thumbs right Like
people put out of the wits?
(05:36):
And so the genesis of what wewere trying to do with the jam
actually came out of thisexperience of not only working
in a remote team but also sortof marinating and thinking about
real-time audio and video.
And so eventually, that's whatgot us to sort of thinking about
hey, what's the future of videoin the workplace look like.
And large parts of that wethought was about being
(05:59):
intentional about culture, andlarge parts of building that
culture is about enabling thatcamaraderie and the fun element
you spoke about no, it's aninteresting story and, like you
said, um, it is a, it is achallenge, um, building
camaraderie.
Alex Wilson-Campbell (06:15):
It's a challenge building a team, even
when you're sort of sitting infront of somebody in the same
office or next to somebody in acubicle or wherever it may be.
So it does make sense that you,you had those sort of uh,
almost like um I guess you couldcall them um, visionary moments
uh, back in 2008.
(06:36):
You know, you were right, youwere ahead of the game, I guess
back then.
And now it's come.
I mean, you've got so manydifferent, I don't know.
There's so many different toolsand applications and plugins
that are appearing.
But I think there's real valuein this because, like I said to
you before, right now and I saidthis to you before we got on
(07:00):
the call, when I'm speaking tomy colleagues, my colleagues,
and trying to get that banterand and those sort of uh, really
lightweight conversations going, I end up having to look for my
phone and getting like asending a whatsapp audio message
.
It's not ideal, I mean it works,but you you still?
As a remote worker, you stillyearn for those conversations,
(07:20):
don't you?
Badri Rajasekhar (07:22):
right, that's exactly right, and I think you
hit the nail on the head.
And if you actually think aboutwhat is driving a lot of this
as well, as not just the remotework movement is, but also what
I call sort of theconsumerization of the workplace
, our expectations have changedin a way where in our social and
consumer lives with our friends, we might be hanging out in
Discord, or we might be in houseparty, or we might be sending
(07:44):
Instagram stories, and then, theminute you come into work, the
only sort of incarnation ofvideo in the workplace happens
to be a conference call, whichis incredibly boring, has a
whole bunch of issues with it interms of how it's run, how it's
structured, and so it's almostas if we have we have already
used all of these expectationsin social and consumer apps, and
(08:07):
why can't I have the same kindof casual interaction, those
micro interactions that banterin the workplace?
And so, to some degree, wethink it's even more important
because of expectations beingchanged and the fact that we're
all moving to an increasinglyremote and distributed future.
It's enabling these microinteractions getting short form,
(08:29):
facetime, the ability to sortof express myself over audio and
video, with the tone andcontext becomes super important.
And the one thing I would alsoadd is I think there's too much
emphasis being placed on sort ofproductivity.
And how do you make teamsproductive and how do we, you
know, drive like more efficiency?
And I almost think productivityis sort of an emergent behavior
(08:52):
of trust.
If you had a team thateverybody had like a high degree
of trust there's a lot ofsocial bonding, camaraderie and
alignment you're naturally goingto be more productive.
You're going to trust peopledoing their jobs.
You're going to be moreproductive.
You're going to trust peopledoing their jobs.
You're going to be more aligned.
So I think there's got to be ashift.
And we think there is a shifthappening where, you know, we've
(09:13):
got to think in terms of sortof social cohesion, we've got to
think in terms of trust, we'vegot to think in terms of
alignment and culture.
And how do you put in the toolsin place, how do you hire for
those characteristics, how doyou build the team with that as
sort of your foundationalprinciple?
Alex Wilson-Campbell (09:28):
and then productivity and efficiency, and
all of that has got to be sortof emergent byproducts of
building out that organization Ilove that and I think
well-being actually is isanother conversation that this,
that jam, could get involved inas well, because all those
things you just mentioned there,um, badri, you know, when you
(09:49):
can have just those spontaneousconversations and spontaneous
interactions, then you can justit's easy to have a conversation
, isn't it?
Because what we find as remoteworkers is and remote managers,
we find that what I often hear,that the expression sort of like
you have to be deliberate, soyou have to be deliberate about,
(10:09):
um, you know your productivity,you have to be deliberate about
even create, creating watercooler moments, you know those
kinds of things where thatshouldn't you, you don't really
want that.
You just want that sort ofspontaneity, but you don't want
to have to say let's create thismeeting and all get together
(10:30):
and talk about something that'sfun, that's right, that's right,
that's right and that's what'shappening in a lot of
organizations.
Badri Rajasekhar (10:35):
if you look at it right now, it's like people
are scheduling social events andto some degree, that's sort of
uh, that's sort of um.
You know the opposite of whatyou want to do.
You don't want to say, hey,let's get on a call between 4
and 5 pm and then we're gonnahave fun.
Right, it's got to be.
It's got to be much morenatural and it's got to be about
(10:56):
how do you enable thosespontaneous moments of magic?
Alex Wilson-Campbell (10:59):
definitely and well, like I said, it's
something that this um, thistechnology, this, this way of
thinking, I suppose, is, I guess, what a lot of these apps are
trying to create.
But it looks like you'vemanaged to nail it.
So what I wanted to know, Imean, there have been challenges
getting here for you, haven'tthey?
Because, like you said, you'reemerging, or your ideas were
(11:22):
emerging, at a time when it wasquite um, I guess, quite tough
um, with economic downturn righthow?
how did you know I mean, Isuppose that this was because I
guess between 2008 and now it'squite a lot of time has passed
there what challenges you facethere yeah, it's.
Badri Rajasekhar (11:44):
It's kind of an interesting question you ask.
Right like when we firststarted out, we had this like
crazy vision.
Right like at that point in2008, we were like hey, youtube
is big, people are uploadingvideos, the natural next step is
people are going to haveconversations in the browser.
Now that didn't work out for amultitude of reasons back then,
because a network connectivitywas not as good as it is right
now.
(12:05):
Right like 10 years ago, likepeople were on really crappy.
There were people who are stillusing like dial-up modems and
stuff like that, in certain ways, cable modems, right?
Um, I think the, the entire sortof the, the mobile movement has
also sort of driven the needfor people to have like much
more spontaneous conversations,and so the entire smartphone
(12:28):
movement also drove a lot oflike sort of communication apps
and different modalities ofcommunication being explored.
And, purely from a technologyperspective, I think we've come
a long way in terms of like justvideo, audio technology that
makes it sort of much moreefficient to have these
conversations with high quality,with blurred backgrounds.
(12:49):
You know, there's a whole bunchof advances that have happened
in technology, so almost Ialmost treat it as sort of a
confluence of happy factorswhich have finally sort of come
together and I think finallyit's.
It's been a cultural shift, um,in terms of people being OK
with video, in a way where 10years ago video was sort of just
(13:11):
novelty right, like peoplewould you know, get on a call
and just try it out and that'sabout it.
It was not sort of a seriousmodality of communication.
But now I think video hasarrived right.
It's more than arrived, it'sprime time.
I think video is has arrivedright, it's more than arrived,
it's prime time, and I thinkthis entire work from home
situation is just going to makethat, it's going to normalize
video even more.
(13:32):
My three-year-old daughtercomes up to me and says I want
to zoom with my my friends, ohmy god so you know, you know,
videos arrive and
Alex Wilson-Cam (13:41):
three-year-olds are using it as a verb tell me
about it and it's almost like um, it's like second nature now.
It's almost like they've that'sall they know as far as, and
that's what they've become usedto and correct.
What I'd say is, as well is, um, you know the, the whole idea
of, of, I guess, remote workitself.
(14:02):
You, you, you talk about acultural shift.
I think there's a, there's alike a, even within this whole,
I guess, crisis.
I suppose you could say thatwe're we're going through at the
moment.
There's even a new culturalshift, even within that, because
, you know, there's those peoplethat, okay, we were already on
board with, with remote work, sowe've been doing it for such a
long time.
(14:22):
But then there's certain people,through no fault of their own,
have been forced to workremotely, so they're having to
get used to even things likeZoom and things like Skype and
all that sort of thing.
And I think people are stillgetting used to video.
That's my opinion.
But even this, now, what we'retalking about in terms of Jam,
this is even further than that.
(14:44):
This is like almost your, it'salmost like it's taking the
friction almost out of the, theconnection you know.
So it's, it's new, it's totallynew in terms of or totally
different in terms of that.
That, uh, you know, becausewith with skype, you have to
(15:04):
that, you have to you downloadit and then you right have to
arrange that meeting and allthis sort of things.
So this is the new, the newcultural shift, I would say
that's right and I think it'salso.
Badri Rajasekhar (15:17):
It's also driven by the fact, and I think
it's to your point.
But this crisis, one of thethings I have personally
observed and I think we weretalking about I have a
three-year-old daughter and a12-month-old daughter and one of
the one of the things youquickly realize as you're
working from home, if you havekids at home, you're a strong
compartmentalization of work andnot work.
Those lines get blurred alittle bit when you work
(15:58):
remotely, especially with peopleacross these time zones, right.
And then you couple that withthe fact that not all of us are
available at the same time.
And I take it one step furtherand I always say to people
availability is not the same asattention.
The fact that I'm availabledoesn't mean you are now
entitled to my attention,exactly.
And so it becomes all the moreimportant to create tools that
(16:22):
adapt to sort of your fluidschedule, rather than the other
way around, where you've got toadapt your schedule just so you
can be on a meeting or just soyou can sort of land up at an 8
pm call, right.
So we are taking almost oppositeapproach to say the new reality
is that schedules are going tobe fluid.
People are going to be remote,people are going to be working
(16:45):
across time zones, people wantto feel connected without having
to be always on how.
How?
How would you create theculture?
How do you think about tools?
How do you think about process?
How do you think about yourentire organization that
accommodates, that accommodatesthat new reality without
(17:05):
introducing a whole bunch offriction?
Because I think what we haveright now is the opposite.
Right like we're to your point,we're all getting used to
meetings, but people are havingzoom fatigue and they're like I
don't want to hop from meetingto meeting.
Or you know, calendaring is apain, you know I I think the
tools have not adapted to thereality of what we face well, I
(17:25):
think this is going a long wayto to sort of bridging that gap.
Alex Wilson-Campbell (17:28):
And, like you said again, um, when you,
when you're working remotely,you're, you're scheduling
everything, aren't you?
Everything is is in, is in yourcalendar, even those, those fun
moments.
So wouldn't it be great if youcould just not have to schedule
the fun moments and just do themand that it's, it's done, and
then you just carry on with yourwork and all that's right, you
(17:49):
know.
So that's right love it.
I love it so, but with you.
How was your transition toremote work?
I know some people take to iteasier than others.
How did you find it?
Badri Rajasekhar (18:03):
Yeah, it's been sort of an interesting
journey for me.
In the beginning, when, youknow, when I started working
with a large, remote anddistributed team, it was very
difficult for me, like a lot ofpeople, just getting used to the
fact that, you know, I was sortof I felt a little bit
disconnected in terms of whatwas happening and, as a lot of
like, like a lot of leaders do,I was trying to solve that using
(18:24):
process right, how do you makethings more efficient?
How do you document things youknow in a more structured way?
And to some degree, my epiphanywas things you know in a more
structured way, and to somedegree, my epiphany was it's not
about process, right, cultureis process, and I was trying to
sort of take a sledgehammer toyou know to solve this problem,
and then you really can't solveit through process.
(18:46):
So it was hard until I had thatmental shift in terms of how I
thought about remote teams andhow I thought about working
remote teams, and so that, to me, has been sort of the learning
moment is you've got tofundamentally shift a little bit
, I think, in terms of how youthink about the organization and
how you think about culture andthe other thing I would say is
(19:08):
our current team at Jam ispretty crazy in the sense that
it's almost as if we we took aworld map, we picked the worst
possible airplane route anddecided to build a little team
uh across it.
So we're spread across sanfrancisco, sydney, barcelona and
perth oh wow how manycontinents is that?
(19:30):
that's like three, yeah, uh,yeah, that's three continents,
right?
And if you actually think aboutit, the only time we can all
get together as a team is a60-minute window per day, which
is 11 pm San Francisco time tomidnight San Francisco time.
That's the only time we can allget together, right?
So to some degree I've gonefrom one extreme to another, and
(19:55):
I'm such a deep believer insort of remote and hyper remote
teams that we sort of both jamacross a super asynchronous,
super like remote sort of setup,in a way where not everybody
can even get on a call at thesame time.
Right've got to be spontaneous,you've got to be ad hoc.
Alex Wilson-Campbell (20:15):
There's no way for you to schedule stuff
and I think, um, the other thingis you've got to be able to
yeah, you can't be if you'respread across different parts of
the world.
Yeah, you have to also havepeople of that, of that mindset
as well, that are flexible withthat, that way of working.
(20:36):
How did you, I suppose, what isthe makeup of your team, and
how did you go about sort of um,putting that team, um, together
?
Badri Rajasekhar (20:45):
yeah, I told my co-founders I've had sort of
uh, we worked together for for along time, so we we have sort
of a good prior workingrelationship, but essentially,
one of the things we did veryearly on was to really hire for
people who took a strong degreeof sort of accountability and
ownership right.
I think that's sort of animportant trait to have when
(21:06):
you're working in a remote anddistributed team, followed also
by the ability to deal with sortof ambiguous information right
To a large degree.
A lot of what happens in remoteteams is, if people are waiting
for instructions or waiting forthings to be sort of aligned,
it becomes a little bit harder,right, and so I think you've got
to think a little bit about,you know, hiring the right
(21:27):
personalities in large, remoteand distributed teams.
But I think, to a large degree,that can also be offset by the
fact that you know it's aboutdriving alignment.
Let me step back and talk aboutthis a little bit, because I
think this is sort of animportant point.
I think we're all drowning inunstructured data.
We're all drowning in stream ofconsciousness data, whether
(21:47):
it's Slack conversations, githubcomments, google Doc comments.
We're just drowning in data,and one of the problems I think
people have is not the lack ofdata, it's the opposite.
You've got like too much data.
It's a problem.
And so the order of the day insort of modern remote teams is
(22:10):
about how do you quickly drivealignment.
Modern remote teams is about howyou quickly drive alignment.
How do you quickly get colorand context communicated across
in a way where people understandsort of the motives and sort of
the decision making and thethought process behind some of
that information they'represented with.
And I think to your question ofhow you know, we've thought
(22:30):
about it we place a lot ofemphasis on having these
spontaneous conversations, andnot just for fun and banter, but
because people quickly havecolor and context and can be
aligned Right.
So there's not a lot ofambiguity in terms of why
decisions got made, how they gotmade, what's the context behind
it.
And so I think findinglightweight mechanisms to get
(22:51):
people talking to each othervery frequently automatically
drives alignment, and I thinkthat's that's a hugely
overlooked part of of remote anddistributed teams.
I think a lot of peoplefocusing on information.
I don't think it's about moreinformation, it's about it's the
second order context aroundthat information for me, when
you remove that information,it's like removing sort of like
(23:13):
a um.
Alex Wilson-Campbell (23:15):
A weight is if you you know off or the
you know too much informationpeople get, so inundated with it
that's right and lose theirfocus on, on the mission of what
, what they're trying to achievefor the, for the wider team.
I would say so.
No, I like that, I love that.
So you've got, uh, differentelements in your team or
different what's your team madeup of?
(23:36):
So you've got marketing.
You've got.
Talk me through that.
Badri Rajasekhar (23:41):
Yeah, we're a really small team.
We're like a seven person team.
We've got like five full timepeople and two part time
contractors, and the five fulltime people are mostly just
engineers and like one productperson.
We just cross these fourlocations.
Our two contractors part-timecontractors are marketing folks,
(24:02):
but they're based here in sanfrancisco bay area, but our, the
five person team, the core teamwhich we have, is actually
spread across four, four citiesand three continents.
Alex Wilson-Campbell (24:14):
Right, okay, great, and let's, let's,
let's get a bit more into thedetail then about um.
How you guys, how do you guysthen in your team have um, have
those spontaneous moments, howdo you and your team have fun
then?
Badri Rajasekhar (24:33):
uh, it's, it's a lot of.
So we do a couple of things.
Obviously we have, just like, alot of other teams.
We we use slack and we have alot of like banter and giphy and
sort of you know fun stuff onslack which I think is sort of
important.
Um, we also use jam to have alot of sort of asynchronous sort
of.
We record like little goofyvideos and send it over.
(24:53):
We use it to celebrate likeinteresting moments.
You can record little videoavatars for yourself.
So every time somebody didsomething crazy, we record, like
you know, crazy little videoavatars for ourselves to sort of
celebrate those moments.
But I think it's important forpeople to sort of get together
and do fun things in spontaneousways.
(25:14):
The other day, me and myco-founder, adam, we randomly
sort of, you know, we're talkingto each other and suddenly we
started playing this game calledType Racer.
Okay, it's a multiplayer gamewhere both of you start typing
at the same time.
Alex Wilson-Campbell (25:30):
Type.
Badri Rajasekhar (25:30):
Racer, type Racer, and it basically just
shows, you know, who can typefaster, and so there's a
leaderboard of all the peoplewho are asked this type, you
know.
So we have a lot of these likereally crazy ad hoc sort of
situations where we're playinggames together and it's it's
just banter, right.
Sometimes we've got like peopleget together and play
(25:51):
pictionary um.
It just sporadically happens,um, and so we we encourage a lot
of those sort of spontaneousinteractions.
The other thing I would say isI'm very militant about like
sort of not having a backgroundand things like that, and so I
want kids to run around in thebackground of my meeting, I want
your pets, I want to see yourdog, I want to see your cat, and
(26:12):
so just enabling not havingthose backgrounds for us um
introduces a lot of likepersonal conversations, right,
like somebody jumps into theroom, you know your cat, comes
in the background, and then westart talking about it, and so
we try to sort of um have sortof much more informal meetings,
even if we were having a meetingin a way where we're
(26:34):
encouraging a lot of personalsort of social bonding um yeah,
I love that, because I thinkthere's this um, probably a
misconception um about remoteworkers and work from home that
you know it's just about puttingyour feet up or just sort of,
uh, sitting at home with yourdog.
Alex Wilson-Campbell (27:00):
But I think, like you said, it's about
creating an environment thatyou are really comfortable in,
your your that suits you andthat it puts your mind at ease
to the point that you're then soat ease that you can relax and
you can do your best work right.
Badri Rajasekhar (27:13):
So that's right, I love that that's right
and I think you and I think thatalso builds trust and culture
in a way where you don't havethis feeling that sometimes
happens in remote teams wherepeople are looking over other
people's shoulder.
You're always, you know somepeople are thinking about, oh,
is work getting done, you know.
So building that sort ofauthenticity as part of your
(27:35):
culture and as part of yourinteractions, I think just frees
up is exactly like you saidyou're, you're at ease and
people trust each other to getstuff done.
They understand their socialcontext at you know which.
They're in the constraintsthey're working under.
I think it just goes a wholeway to sort of make everything
much better, smoother and moresort of more fun.
Alex Wilson-Campbell (27:55):
No, I like that actually and I was
speaking to an agency CEO remoteCEO agency leader and he was
talking about the creativityside of things and when he first
started working remotely he hadreal creativity blocks and he
couldn't really figure out whybecause he was new to it.
(28:16):
And then he sort of reallystarted to really put his mind
to it and he realized that whenhe was working in his office he
would take his commutes on thetrain and in a sense that was
his moment of sort of thinkingand almost like planning what he
was going to do in his head.
That was his moment of sort ofRight Of thinking and, you know,
almost like planning what hewas going to do in his head.
(28:36):
So when you remove that sort ofmoment, that 30, 40-minute
commute or wherever it was, hesuddenly found himself at a loss
with that.
Uh, he was at home with his,with his kids, with his, with
his wife and he didn't have anyway of sort of uh or he couldn't
figure out how.
And then one day he just wentand he just he sat on his ps4,
(28:56):
basically, and he startedplaying, uh, fifa, and he found
he found that that really workedfor him.
He found that, um, that was themoment for him that really
built his creativity and he wasat his peak.
I mean, his wife was completelybewildered because she was like
sitting there thinking to,thinking to herself you're on
the ps4, you're supposed to be,you know, building this business
(29:17):
here, and she was reallywondering what was going on.
But he was in his, his bestcreative moment.
You know, for you, that kind ofis a long way round of me
asking you what, what is the?
I suppose.
How do you and your teams buildthat sort of uh, creative spark
and get, get you know, to getthings, things done with your
work?
Badri Rajasekhar (29:38):
yeah, I, I would say like twofold.
I think the single mostimportant thing, which I think
every everybody's got to be veryintentional in a remote team
and we tried to do it and we'veseen other teams uh do it is
actually unplugging.
Uh, it's, it's sort of doingthe opposite, which is you, you
I would almost say, instead ofscheduling time to like have fun
and stuff like that, you wantto schedule time to completely
(29:58):
unplug.
And so, um, one of ourteammates, he loves to bike and
and and run.
He basically takes a block offin the afternoon, the middle of
the day, and he goes running orhe goes biking.
It's a forced time for him tocompletely unplug from
everything and just do what heloves doing, and then that
(30:20):
clears his mind and he can thinkthrough things.
So I think it's super importantto be intentional about
unplugging as a mechanism todrive creativity, to be
intentional about unplugging asa mechanism to drive creativity.
The other thing I would saywhich is sort of work is, again,
(30:41):
if you actually think about thecreative process, it doesn't
happen in one go, it's a seriesof iterative back and forth
where you riff on an idea withsomebody, you go, think about it
, then you come back the nextday, you build a little
prototype, you show it tosomebody, they give you some
feedback, you keep going.
So there's a lot of iterativeprocess that actually happens in
creativity.
It's not like, hey, I'm goingto block off five hours and
(31:01):
finish this right.
I would encourage teams toactually spend a lot of time
with small show and tellsessions, and whether you do
that synchronously with littlehere's a 10 minute demo of
something cool I built orwhether you do it asynchronously
by recording a little show andtell video, I think it's
important for you to communicateor get teams to communicate.
(31:25):
Little ideas and little bitsdoesn't have to be fully fleshed
out, it doesn't have to befully big, but that sort of
culture of sharing littlesnippets of information in high
frequency, I think actuallydrives a lot of creativity, and
we've found that super usefulwhen we do hackathons, when
people are working on cool ideas.
People are even bouncing ideas.
(31:46):
Hey, you know thought about acool idea in the shower this
morning.
Wouldn't it be cool if we didthis and people record a little
snippet and send it out?
And then people responded andsometimes people forget about it
and move on to the next idea.
But it's.
It's the ability to have thoselittle brainstorming sessions
asynchronously, which I think issuper important.
I think what does not work isgetting everybody in a call and
(32:10):
saying we're going to take abunch of sticky notes and do
brainstorming right.
That works in theory, never inpractice.
Alex Wilson-Campbell (32:17):
No, I like that when you talk about that
and the show and tell side ofthings.
I wish we could just show howJam could actually make that
work, and I think you shouldhave a look at Jam in fact.
So you should go across tojamapp and that's jam, with two
m's um dot app and that's app,just to have a look.
(32:38):
And um madrid, how does thatwork then with with jam?
Because I mean, I described howI sort of do sort of
spontaneous conversations withum, with whatsapp, with with my
friends or my colleagues andco-workers.
How does that work in practicewith, with the, with jam?
Badri Rajasekhar (32:57):
yeah and jam.
You can almost think of likethree sort of core elements to
that, uh, to the applicationitself.
You have a very simple contactlist that that's always on top,
and we have a whole bunch ofpresence and conversational
discovery.
If, if jane and joe are talkingto each other, you know that
they're having a conversationand you can quickly jump in if
you want it.
So there's there's spontaneousconversational discovery built
(33:19):
into it, and once you get into aconversation, uh, video doesn't
become front and center.
You just have a bunch offloating heads that float around
and so you can have off in acorner as you're doing something
else.
And then you could also recordlittle instagram stories like
snippets of video, talk throughstuff and just blast it out to
your team.
Hey, you know, yeah, I wasthinking about this idea this
(33:42):
morning.
Look what I built and that's it, and that automatically gets
aggregated.
So it's this super simplemixture of presence, live
conversations and recordedmessaging, sort of bundled into
one lightweight experience.
Alex Wilson-Campbell (33:57):
So everybody, just have a look at
jamapp.
That's J-A-M-M dot app and okay.
So it sounds like.
I mean Jam is very good forDifferent kinds of teams,
obviously different kinds ofremote teams.
You've got product teams,engineering teams, leadership
teams, sales, marketing,customer experience Lots of
(34:21):
different applications for it.
I mean and I'm looking here nowit says huddle with your team.
Is that what you were justdescribing then, the huddle side
of things, or is that adifferent sort of module?
Badri Rajasekhar (34:33):
No, that's right.
It's all part of the sameapplication where you can
quickly jump into like a huddlewith somebody, you can do a
one-click sort of conversationwith them, you could use
whiteboarding and collaboratewith them, or you could send
recorded messages, right.
So it's all sort of bundledinto one lightweight experience
where we're saying, um, let'ssay, you use slack, you don't
(34:54):
really think about am I going totext you synchronously or am I
going to text you asynchronously?
Right, I'm just going to textyou.
If you happen to respond, yourespond, if you don't, you don't
.
And so we're trying to bringthat same sort of modality in a
very lightweight audio visualexperience.
And, like one of our users said, real work happens in between
meetings, so it's about enablingthose conversations in between
(35:17):
meetings.
We're not we're not about, likemaking more efficient meetings
or driving a better meetingexperience like we want you to
have less meetings.
We want you to be talking moreand meeting less.
Alex Wilson-Campbel (35:28):
Essentially , I like that, I that I like
that idea.
So what are the plans, then,for Jam?
Where do you stand at themoment and what are your plans
for the foreseeable?
Yeah, it's difficult right now,obviously, with what's going on
, but what do you foresee forJam in the coming months?
Badri Rajasekhar (35:45):
Yeah, we're just excited to play a part in
sort of the remote workecosystem.
Right, we really think that theentire remote work ecosystem is
undergoing like a really goodrenaissance in terms of people
thinking about process, culture,tools, the entire ecosystem.
And we just want to play asmall part in sort of enabling
that ecosystem.
And so we're excited about sortof evolving Jam with all of our
(36:08):
features in our product roadmapto enable much more
lighter-weight conversations,public links, much more
shatterable external sort ofcontent.
But just generally excitedabout the space and generally
excited about what's happeningwith the entire remote work
ecosystem.
Alex Wilson-Campbell (36:25):
And finally, what about you?
What are you?
I mean, I know you recently.
Well, you're your father.
What are your plans, or anyanything?
Uh, personally, I know againit's, it's not.
It's not an easy time to sortof make too many plans for ahead
.
But what about you?
Badri Rajasekhar (36:41):
no, I'm just eager to like, once this is all
over, we can't wait to take avacation somewhere.
You know I've been like, stuckat home for a long time.
Um, you know it's it'shopefully the dust settles soon
for everybody's sake and we canall go out there and, you know,
uh, do something fun.
So I'm just balancing.
I think I was telling you when,when I started jam my um, my 12
(37:03):
month old second daughter wasjust born, and so, you know,
we've been like wrangling, bothtrying to build a company and
have a newborn baby at home,which has been sort of an
interesting, interestingchallenge.
So I'm looking forward to oncethe dust settles, you know, and
taking a couple of days off and,you know, traveling somewhere
(37:24):
you and me both.
Alex Wilson-Campbell (37:25):
Well, we will certainly be keeping our
eye, uh, on jam, and you as well, badry, just to see your
progress and um, what I will dois I will put the, the url to
jam, in the show notes, um, anda link to your profile as well,
so people can learn a bit more.
So that is um.
You can find jam at j, a doublem dot app.
(37:49):
That's a a sorry app, so that'sjam dot app.
So, badri, I just wanted to saya massive thank you to you for
joining me today on the remotework life podcast and all the
best with jam, and we'll keep intouch to see how you're getting
on with the in the future thankyou so much, alex.
Badri Rajasekhar (38:05):
It's been like incredible sort of being the
podcast, so thank you so muchfor having me and stay safe out
there thank you anytime.
Hey, it's Alex from Remote Worker Live
here and I'm really happy.
Today we have a really goodguest, a really great guest.
I've got Badri Rajasekhar withme today.
He's the CEO of Jam.
Now, jam is a tech business andJam's very different, and the
reason I've got a massive smileon my face is because Jam is all
(00:22):
about having fun, and you know,when we're as remote workers,
especially in this currentclimate, we not many people are
speaking about having fun.
But this is what jam is allabout, because jam is a
lightweight video collaborationapp for remote teams.
So think about if slack andzoom were to have a baby.
(00:45):
This is basically what jamoffers.
So, like I said, massiveswallow my face because we're
going to be talking today abouthaving fun with remote teams.
So, badri, I just wanted to saya massive thank you for for
joining us today thank you somuch, alex.
Badri Rajasekhar (01:01):
Super excited to be here and I hope
everybody's safe out there, butsuper, super pumped to be here.
Alex Wilson-Campbell (01:06):
No, excellent, I'm so excited to
have you.
As I said, I can't take theswallow off my face.
No, so, badri, like I said,he's the CEO of Jam and he's had
a really interesting backgroundand he's overcome some
challenges actually, we weretalking just before, before we
got on air and he's overcomesome really tough challenges to
(01:27):
really create something that isvery much needed, not just in
the remote world in general, but, like I said, now in in a sort
of this sort of day and age thatwe're in and the sort of
changes that we're going throughnow, fun is a really important
thing.
So what I wanted to do reallyis just, really, badri, just to
(01:48):
find out about you and how youprogressed in your career,
because you've had a verysuccessful career to being where
you are now as CEO of Jam.
Badri Rajasekhar (02:00):
Yeah, it's been an interesting journey for
me and it's a lot of irrationaldecision-making, as I was
talking to you about.
So, at my heart, I'm mostlylike a product technologist,
right.
So I grew up in Chennai, whichis like a small city in southern
India.
Like a lot of kids in mygeneration, I was super into
(02:21):
coding and technology andplaying video games and stuff
like that, eventually moved tothe United States to go to
school, studied computer scienceand then went on to work for
Microsoft up in Seattle and hada great time working for
Microsoft and sort of being inSeattle.
I didn't like the weather inSeattle, of course, but outside
of that it was fantastic.
Seattle, of course, but outsideof that it is fantastic.
(02:43):
But sometime around 2007, youknow, I was into photography and
video and stuff like that andthat was sort of the big sort of
boom of YouTube and I got thisbee in my bonnet that video
communication.
The next step to YouTube isgoing to be, hey, people are
just going to be having thesevideo calls online.
(03:04):
Youtube is going to be hey,people are just going to be
having these video calls online,almost sort of Jetson style,
and so I had that idea.
I found extremely sort ofintriguing.
Obviously, it turned out not tobe true.
It took more than 10 years forthat reality to pan out, but at
that point I was super excitedabout this idea and so in
November of 2008, actually, Iquit Microsoft, decided to pack
(03:26):
up my bags, move back toCalifornia, join a small group
of people who are building acompany called TalkBox, which is
a video API platform.
September of 2008 is when wehad the financial crisis, and
(03:47):
November of 2008, I decided toquit my cushy job at Microsoft,
move to the Bay Area.
Everybody thought I was nuts.
I probably was nuts for havingdone that, but it was mostly
driven by this excitement aroundsort of video and the future of
(04:08):
video.
Like I said, you know, we spenta bunch of years building our
talk box and somewhere along theway we got acquired by
Telefonica, which is the Spanishcarrier, and all of a sudden we
went from having this fairlylocalized team in California to
now being part of a much moreglobally distributed team that
is spread across London, madrid,barcelona, perth, sydney, a
(04:31):
whole bunch of locations right.
And so I, like a lot of people,got thrust into sort of the
remote work, sort of movement,and at the same time, we were
also a video API platform.
We were also a video company.
We were trying to do a lot ofvideo conferencing in the early
days and what I quickly realizedwas A.
The remote work movement is thefuture.
(04:54):
There's no question about it.
Right?
There's incredible talentavailable all over the world.
It is a lot of fun to actuallysort of work in a remote and
distributed team.
You have a great deal offlexibility.
But at the same time, because wecame from a video background,
we were also thinking about whyis why?
You know, what can we do tomake it much more fun and
(05:16):
lightweight?
In a way, slack did that toemail.
If you look at Slack and email,slack just made something
stayed like email much moreinformal, fun, engaging.
And why does video conferencingimply that we're all sitting in
a Zoom call for 60 minutestwiddling our thumbs right Like
people put out of the wits?
(05:36):
And so the genesis of what wewere trying to do with the jam
actually came out of thisexperience of not only working
in a remote team but also sortof marinating and thinking about
real-time audio and video.
And so eventually, that's whatgot us to sort of thinking about
hey, what's the future of videoin the workplace look like.
And large parts of that wethought was about being
(05:59):
intentional about culture, andlarge parts of building that
culture is about enabling thatcamaraderie and the fun element
you spoke about no, it's aninteresting story and, like you
said, um, it is a, it is achallenge, um, building
camaraderie.
Alex Wilson-Campbell (06:15):
It's a challenge building a team, even
when you're sort of sitting infront of somebody in the same
office or next to somebody in acubicle or wherever it may be.
So it does make sense that you,you had those sort of uh,
almost like um I guess you couldcall them um, visionary moments
uh, back in 2008.
(06:36):
You know, you were right, youwere ahead of the game, I guess
back then.
And now it's come.
I mean, you've got so manydifferent, I don't know.
There's so many different toolsand applications and plugins
that are appearing.
But I think there's real valuein this because, like I said to
you before, right now and I saidthis to you before we got on
(07:00):
the call, when I'm speaking tomy colleagues, my colleagues,
and trying to get that banterand and those sort of uh, really
lightweight conversations going, I end up having to look for my
phone and getting like asending a whatsapp audio message
.
It's not ideal, I mean it works,but you you still?
As a remote worker, you stillyearn for those conversations,
(07:20):
don't you?
Badri Rajasekhar (07:22):
right, that's exactly right, and I think you
hit the nail on the head.
And if you actually think aboutwhat is driving a lot of this
as well, as not just the remotework movement is, but also what
I call sort of theconsumerization of the workplace
, our expectations have changedin a way where in our social and
consumer lives with our friends, we might be hanging out in
Discord, or we might be in houseparty, or we might be sending
(07:44):
Instagram stories, and then, theminute you come into work, the
only sort of incarnation ofvideo in the workplace happens
to be a conference call, whichis incredibly boring, has a
whole bunch of issues with it interms of how it's run, how it's
structured, and so it's almostas if we have we have already
used all of these expectationsin social and consumer apps, and
(08:07):
why can't I have the same kindof casual interaction, those
micro interactions that banterin the workplace?
And so, to some degree, wethink it's even more important
because of expectations beingchanged and the fact that we're
all moving to an increasinglyremote and distributed future.
It's enabling these microinteractions getting short form,
(08:29):
facetime, the ability to sortof express myself over audio and
video, with the tone andcontext becomes super important.
And the one thing I would alsoadd is I think there's too much
emphasis being placed on sort ofproductivity.
And how do you make teamsproductive and how do we, you
know, drive like more efficiency?
And I almost think productivityis sort of an emergent behavior
(08:52):
of trust.
If you had a team thateverybody had like a high degree
of trust there's a lot ofsocial bonding, camaraderie and
alignment you're naturally goingto be more productive.
You're going to trust peopledoing their jobs.
You're going to be moreproductive.
You're going to trust peopledoing their jobs.
You're going to be more aligned.
So I think there's got to be ashift.
And we think there is a shifthappening where, you know, we've
(09:13):
got to think in terms of sortof social cohesion, we've got to
think in terms of trust, we'vegot to think in terms of
alignment and culture.
And how do you put in the toolsin place, how do you hire for
those characteristics, how doyou build the team with that as
sort of your foundationalprinciple?
Alex Wilson-Campbell (09:28):
and then productivity and efficiency, and
all of that has got to be sortof emergent byproducts of
building out that organization Ilove that and I think
well-being actually is isanother conversation that this,
that jam, could get involved inas well, because all those
things you just mentioned there,um, badri, you know, when you
(09:49):
can have just those spontaneousconversations and spontaneous
interactions, then you can justit's easy to have a conversation
, isn't it?
Because what we find as remoteworkers is and remote managers,
we find that what I often hear,that the expression sort of like
you have to be deliberate, soyou have to be deliberate about,
(10:09):
um, you know your productivity,you have to be deliberate about
even create, creating watercooler moments, you know those
kinds of things where thatshouldn't you, you don't really
want that.
You just want that sort ofspontaneity, but you don't want
to have to say let's create thismeeting and all get together
(10:30):
and talk about something that'sfun, that's right, that's right,
that's right and that's what'shappening in a lot of
organizations.
Badri Rajasekhar (10:35):
if you look at it right now, it's like people
are scheduling social events andto some degree, that's sort of
uh, that's sort of um.
You know the opposite of whatyou want to do.
You don't want to say, hey,let's get on a call between 4
and 5 pm and then we're gonnahave fun.
Right, it's got to be.
It's got to be much morenatural and it's got to be about
(10:56):
how do you enable thosespontaneous moments of magic?
Alex Wilson-Campbell (10:59):
definitely and well, like I said, it's
something that this um, thistechnology, this, this way of
thinking, I suppose, is, I guess, what a lot of these apps are
trying to create.
But it looks like you'vemanaged to nail it.
So what I wanted to know, Imean, there have been challenges
getting here for you, haven'tthey?
Because, like you said, you'reemerging, or your ideas were
(11:22):
emerging, at a time when it wasquite um, I guess, quite tough
um, with economic downturn righthow?
how did you know I mean, Isuppose that this was because I
guess between 2008 and now it'squite a lot of time has passed
there what challenges you facethere yeah, it's.
Badri Rajasekhar (11:44):
It's kind of an interesting question you ask.
Right like when we firststarted out, we had this like
crazy vision.
Right like at that point in2008, we were like hey, youtube
is big, people are uploadingvideos, the natural next step is
people are going to haveconversations in the browser.
Now that didn't work out for amultitude of reasons back then,
because a network connectivitywas not as good as it is right
now.
(12:05):
Right like 10 years ago, likepeople were on really crappy.
There were people who are stillusing like dial-up modems and
stuff like that, in certain ways, cable modems, right?
Um, I think the, the entire sortof the, the mobile movement has
also sort of driven the needfor people to have like much
more spontaneous conversations,and so the entire smartphone
(12:28):
movement also drove a lot oflike sort of communication apps
and different modalities ofcommunication being explored.
And, purely from a technologyperspective, I think we've come
a long way in terms of like justvideo, audio technology that
makes it sort of much moreefficient to have these
conversations with high quality,with blurred backgrounds.
(12:49):
You know, there's a whole bunchof advances that have happened
in technology, so almost Ialmost treat it as sort of a
confluence of happy factorswhich have finally sort of come
together and I think finallyit's.
It's been a cultural shift, um,in terms of people being OK
with video, in a way where 10years ago video was sort of just
(13:11):
novelty right, like peoplewould you know, get on a call
and just try it out and that'sabout it.
It was not sort of a seriousmodality of communication.
But now I think video hasarrived right.
It's more than arrived, it'sprime time.
I think video is has arrivedright, it's more than arrived,
it's prime time, and I thinkthis entire work from home
situation is just going to makethat, it's going to normalize
video even more.
(13:32):
My three-year-old daughtercomes up to me and says I want
to zoom with my my friends, ohmy god so you know, you know,
videos arrive and
Alex Wilson-Cam (13:41):
three-year-olds are using it as a verb tell me
about it and it's almost like um, it's like second nature now.
It's almost like they've that'sall they know as far as, and
that's what they've become usedto and correct.
What I'd say is, as well is, um, you know the, the whole idea
of, of, I guess, remote workitself.
(14:02):
You, you, you talk about acultural shift.
I think there's a, there's alike a, even within this whole,
I guess, crisis.
I suppose you could say thatwe're we're going through at the
moment.
There's even a new culturalshift, even within that, because
, you know, there's those peoplethat, okay, we were already on
board with, with remote work, sowe've been doing it for such a
long time.
(14:22):
But then there's certain people,through no fault of their own,
have been forced to workremotely, so they're having to
get used to even things likeZoom and things like Skype and
all that sort of thing.
And I think people are stillgetting used to video.
That's my opinion.
But even this, now, what we'retalking about in terms of Jam,
this is even further than that.
(14:44):
This is like almost your, it'salmost like it's taking the
friction almost out of the, theconnection you know.
So it's, it's new, it's totallynew in terms of or totally
different in terms of that.
That, uh, you know, becausewith with skype, you have to
(15:04):
that, you have to you downloadit and then you right have to
arrange that meeting and allthis sort of things.
So this is the new, the newcultural shift, I would say
that's right and I think it'salso.
Badri Rajasekhar (15:17):
It's also driven by the fact, and I think
it's to your point.
But this crisis, one of thethings I have personally
observed and I think we weretalking about I have a
three-year-old daughter and a12-month-old daughter and one of
the one of the things youquickly realize as you're
working from home, if you havekids at home, you're a strong
compartmentalization of work andnot work.
Those lines get blurred alittle bit when you work
(15:58):
remotely, especially with peopleacross these time zones, right.
And then you couple that withthe fact that not all of us are
available at the same time.
And I take it one step furtherand I always say to people
availability is not the same asattention.
The fact that I'm availabledoesn't mean you are now
entitled to my attention,exactly.
And so it becomes all the moreimportant to create tools that
(16:22):
adapt to sort of your fluidschedule, rather than the other
way around, where you've got toadapt your schedule just so you
can be on a meeting or just soyou can sort of land up at an 8
pm call, right.
So we are taking almost oppositeapproach to say the new reality
is that schedules are going tobe fluid.
People are going to be remote,people are going to be working
(16:45):
across time zones, people wantto feel connected without having
to be always on how.
How?
How would you create theculture?
How do you think about tools?
How do you think about process?
How do you think about yourentire organization that
accommodates, that accommodatesthat new reality without
(17:05):
introducing a whole bunch offriction?
Because I think what we haveright now is the opposite.
Right like we're to your point,we're all getting used to
meetings, but people are havingzoom fatigue and they're like I
don't want to hop from meetingto meeting.
Or you know, calendaring is apain, you know I I think the
tools have not adapted to thereality of what we face well, I
(17:25):
think this is going a long wayto to sort of bridging that gap.
Alex Wilson-Campbell (17:28):
And, like you said again, um, when you,
when you're working remotely,you're, you're scheduling
everything, aren't you?
Everything is is in, is in yourcalendar, even those, those fun
moments.
So wouldn't it be great if youcould just not have to schedule
the fun moments and just do themand that it's, it's done, and
then you just carry on with yourwork and all that's right, you
(17:49):
know.
So that's right love it.
I love it so, but with you.
How was your transition toremote work?
I know some people take to iteasier than others.
How did you find it?
Badri Rajasekhar (18:03):
Yeah, it's been sort of an interesting
journey for me.
In the beginning, when, youknow, when I started working
with a large, remote anddistributed team, it was very
difficult for me, like a lot ofpeople, just getting used to the
fact that, you know, I was sortof I felt a little bit
disconnected in terms of whatwas happening and, as a lot of
like, like a lot of leaders do,I was trying to solve that using
(18:24):
process right, how do you makethings more efficient?
How do you document things youknow in a more structured way?
And to some degree, my epiphanywas things you know in a more
structured way, and to somedegree, my epiphany was it's not
about process, right, cultureis process, and I was trying to
sort of take a sledgehammer toyou know to solve this problem,
and then you really can't solveit through process.
(18:46):
So it was hard until I had thatmental shift in terms of how I
thought about remote teams andhow I thought about working
remote teams, and so that, to me, has been sort of the learning
moment is you've got tofundamentally shift a little bit
, I think, in terms of how youthink about the organization and
how you think about culture andthe other thing I would say is
(19:08):
our current team at Jam ispretty crazy in the sense that
it's almost as if we we took aworld map, we picked the worst
possible airplane route anddecided to build a little team
uh across it.
So we're spread across sanfrancisco, sydney, barcelona and
perth oh wow how manycontinents is that?
(19:30):
that's like three, yeah, uh,yeah, that's three continents,
right?
And if you actually think aboutit, the only time we can all
get together as a team is a60-minute window per day, which
is 11 pm San Francisco time tomidnight San Francisco time.
That's the only time we can allget together, right?
So to some degree I've gonefrom one extreme to another, and
(19:55):
I'm such a deep believer insort of remote and hyper remote
teams that we sort of both jamacross a super asynchronous,
super like remote sort of setup,in a way where not everybody
can even get on a call at thesame time.
Right've got to be spontaneous,you've got to be ad hoc.
Alex Wilson-Campbell (20:15):
There's no way for you to schedule stuff
and I think, um, the other thingis you've got to be able to
yeah, you can't be if you'respread across different parts of
the world.
Yeah, you have to also havepeople of that, of that mindset
as well, that are flexible withthat, that way of working.
(20:36):
How did you, I suppose, what isthe makeup of your team, and
how did you go about sort of um,putting that team, um, together
?
Badri Rajasekhar (20:45):
yeah, I told my co-founders I've had sort of
uh, we worked together for for along time, so we we have sort
of a good prior workingrelationship, but essentially,
one of the things we did veryearly on was to really hire for
people who took a strong degreeof sort of accountability and
ownership right.
I think that's sort of animportant trait to have when
(21:06):
you're working in a remote anddistributed team, followed also
by the ability to deal with sortof ambiguous information right
To a large degree.
A lot of what happens in remoteteams is, if people are waiting
for instructions or waiting forthings to be sort of aligned,
it becomes a little bit harder,right, and so I think you've got
to think a little bit about,you know, hiring the right
(21:27):
personalities in large, remoteand distributed teams.
But I think, to a large degree,that can also be offset by the
fact that you know it's aboutdriving alignment.
Let me step back and talk aboutthis a little bit, because I
think this is sort of animportant point.
I think we're all drowning inunstructured data.
We're all drowning in stream ofconsciousness data, whether
(21:47):
it's Slack conversations, githubcomments, google Doc comments.
We're just drowning in data,and one of the problems I think
people have is not the lack ofdata, it's the opposite.
You've got like too much data.
It's a problem.
And so the order of the day insort of modern remote teams is
(22:10):
about how do you quickly drivealignment.
Modern remote teams is about howyou quickly drive alignment.
How do you quickly get colorand context communicated across
in a way where people understandsort of the motives and sort of
the decision making and thethought process behind some of
that information they'represented with.
And I think to your question ofhow you know, we've thought
(22:30):
about it we place a lot ofemphasis on having these
spontaneous conversations, andnot just for fun and banter, but
because people quickly havecolor and context and can be
aligned Right.
So there's not a lot ofambiguity in terms of why
decisions got made, how they gotmade, what's the context behind
it.
And so I think findinglightweight mechanisms to get
(22:51):
people talking to each othervery frequently automatically
drives alignment, and I thinkthat's that's a hugely
overlooked part of of remote anddistributed teams.
I think a lot of peoplefocusing on information.
I don't think it's about moreinformation, it's about it's the
second order context aroundthat information for me, when
you remove that information,it's like removing sort of like
(23:13):
a um.
Alex Wilson-Campbell (23:15):
A weight is if you you know off or the
you know too much informationpeople get, so inundated with it
that's right and lose theirfocus on, on the mission of what
, what they're trying to achievefor the, for the wider team.
I would say so.
No, I like that, I love that.
So you've got, uh, differentelements in your team or
different what's your team madeup of?
(23:36):
So you've got marketing.
You've got.
Talk me through that.
Badri Rajasekhar (23:41):
Yeah, we're a really small team.
We're like a seven person team.
We've got like five full timepeople and two part time
contractors, and the five fulltime people are mostly just
engineers and like one productperson.
We just cross these fourlocations.
Our two contractors part-timecontractors are marketing folks,
(24:02):
but they're based here in sanfrancisco bay area, but our, the
five person team, the core teamwhich we have, is actually
spread across four, four citiesand three continents.
Alex Wilson-Campbell (24:14):
Right, okay, great, and let's, let's,
let's get a bit more into thedetail then about um.
How you guys, how do you guysthen in your team have um, have
those spontaneous moments, howdo you and your team have fun
then?
Badri Rajasekhar (24:33):
uh, it's, it's a lot of.
So we do a couple of things.
Obviously we have, just like, alot of other teams.
We we use slack and we have alot of like banter and giphy and
sort of you know fun stuff onslack which I think is sort of
important.
Um, we also use jam to have alot of sort of asynchronous sort
of.
We record like little goofyvideos and send it over.
(24:53):
We use it to celebrate likeinteresting moments.
You can record little videoavatars for yourself.
So every time somebody didsomething crazy, we record, like
you know, crazy little videoavatars for ourselves to sort of
celebrate those moments.
But I think it's important forpeople to sort of get together
and do fun things in spontaneousways.
(25:14):
The other day, me and myco-founder, adam, we randomly
sort of, you know, we're talkingto each other and suddenly we
started playing this game calledType Racer.
Okay, it's a multiplayer gamewhere both of you start typing
at the same time.
Alex Wilson-Campbell (25:30):
Type.
Badri Rajasekhar (25:30):
Racer, type Racer, and it basically just
shows, you know, who can typefaster, and so there's a
leaderboard of all the peoplewho are asked this type, you
know.
So we have a lot of these likereally crazy ad hoc sort of
situations where we're playinggames together and it's it's
just banter, right.
Sometimes we've got like peopleget together and play
(25:51):
pictionary um.
It just sporadically happens,um, and so we we encourage a lot
of those sort of spontaneousinteractions.
The other thing I would say isI'm very militant about like
sort of not having a backgroundand things like that, and so I
want kids to run around in thebackground of my meeting, I want
your pets, I want to see yourdog, I want to see your cat, and
(26:12):
so just enabling not havingthose backgrounds for us um
introduces a lot of likepersonal conversations, right,
like somebody jumps into theroom, you know your cat, comes
in the background, and then westart talking about it, and so
we try to sort of um have sortof much more informal meetings,
even if we were having a meetingin a way where we're
(26:34):
encouraging a lot of personalsort of social bonding um yeah,
I love that, because I thinkthere's this um, probably a
misconception um about remoteworkers and work from home that
you know it's just about puttingyour feet up or just sort of,
uh, sitting at home with yourdog.
Alex Wilson-Campbell (27:00):
But I think, like you said, it's about
creating an environment thatyou are really comfortable in,
your your that suits you andthat it puts your mind at ease
to the point that you're then soat ease that you can relax and
you can do your best work right.
Badri Rajasekhar (27:13):
So that's right, I love that that's right
and I think you and I think thatalso builds trust and culture
in a way where you don't havethis feeling that sometimes
happens in remote teams wherepeople are looking over other
people's shoulder.
You're always, you know somepeople are thinking about, oh,
is work getting done, you know.
So building that sort ofauthenticity as part of your
(27:35):
culture and as part of yourinteractions, I think just frees
up is exactly like you saidyou're, you're at ease and
people trust each other to getstuff done.
They understand their socialcontext at you know which.
They're in the constraintsthey're working under.
I think it just goes a wholeway to sort of make everything
much better, smoother and moresort of more fun.
Alex Wilson-Campbell (27:55):
No, I like that actually and I was
speaking to an agency CEO remoteCEO agency leader and he was
talking about the creativityside of things and when he first
started working remotely he hadreal creativity blocks and he
couldn't really figure out whybecause he was new to it.
(28:16):
And then he sort of reallystarted to really put his mind
to it and he realized that whenhe was working in his office he
would take his commutes on thetrain and in a sense that was
his moment of sort of thinkingand almost like planning what he
was going to do in his head.
That was his moment of sort ofRight Of thinking and, you know,
almost like planning what hewas going to do in his head.
(28:36):
So when you remove that sort ofmoment, that 30, 40-minute
commute or wherever it was, hesuddenly found himself at a loss
with that.
Uh, he was at home with his,with his kids, with his, with
his wife and he didn't have anyway of sort of uh or he couldn't
figure out how.
And then one day he just wentand he just he sat on his ps4,
(28:56):
basically, and he startedplaying, uh, fifa, and he found
he found that that really workedfor him.
He found that, um, that was themoment for him that really
built his creativity and he wasat his peak.
I mean, his wife was completelybewildered because she was like
sitting there thinking to,thinking to herself you're on
the ps4, you're supposed to be,you know, building this business
(29:17):
here, and she was reallywondering what was going on.
But he was in his, his bestcreative moment.
You know, for you, that kind ofis a long way round of me
asking you what, what is the?
I suppose.
How do you and your teams buildthat sort of uh, creative spark
and get, get you know, to getthings, things done with your
work?
Badri Rajasekhar (29:38):
yeah, I, I would say like twofold.
I think the single mostimportant thing, which I think
every everybody's got to be veryintentional in a remote team
and we tried to do it and we'veseen other teams uh do it is
actually unplugging.
Uh, it's, it's sort of doingthe opposite, which is you, you
I would almost say, instead ofscheduling time to like have fun
and stuff like that, you wantto schedule time to completely
(29:58):
unplug.
And so, um, one of ourteammates, he loves to bike and
and and run.
He basically takes a block offin the afternoon, the middle of
the day, and he goes running orhe goes biking.
It's a forced time for him tocompletely unplug from
everything and just do what heloves doing, and then that
(30:20):
clears his mind and he can thinkthrough things.
So I think it's super importantto be intentional about
unplugging as a mechanism todrive creativity, to be
intentional about unplugging asa mechanism to drive creativity.
The other thing I would saywhich is sort of work is, again,
(30:41):
if you actually think about thecreative process, it doesn't
happen in one go, it's a seriesof iterative back and forth
where you riff on an idea withsomebody, you go, think about it
, then you come back the nextday, you build a little
prototype, you show it tosomebody, they give you some
feedback, you keep going.
So there's a lot of iterativeprocess that actually happens in
creativity.
It's not like, hey, I'm goingto block off five hours and
(31:01):
finish this right.
I would encourage teams toactually spend a lot of time
with small show and tellsessions, and whether you do
that synchronously with littlehere's a 10 minute demo of
something cool I built orwhether you do it asynchronously
by recording a little show andtell video, I think it's
important for you to communicateor get teams to communicate.
(31:25):
Little ideas and little bitsdoesn't have to be fully fleshed
out, it doesn't have to befully big, but that sort of
culture of sharing littlesnippets of information in high
frequency, I think actuallydrives a lot of creativity, and
we've found that super usefulwhen we do hackathons, when
people are working on cool ideas.
People are even bouncing ideas.
(31:46):
Hey, you know thought about acool idea in the shower this
morning.
Wouldn't it be cool if we didthis and people record a little
snippet and send it out?
And then people responded andsometimes people forget about it
and move on to the next idea.
But it's.
It's the ability to have thoselittle brainstorming sessions
asynchronously, which I think issuper important.
I think what does not work isgetting everybody in a call and
(32:10):
saying we're going to take abunch of sticky notes and do
brainstorming right.
That works in theory, never inpractice.
Alex Wilson-Campbell (32:17):
No, I like that when you talk about that
and the show and tell side ofthings.
I wish we could just show howJam could actually make that
work, and I think you shouldhave a look at Jam in fact.
So you should go across tojamapp and that's jam, with two
m's um dot app and that's app,just to have a look.
(32:38):
And um madrid, how does thatwork then with with jam?
Because I mean, I described howI sort of do sort of
spontaneous conversations withum, with whatsapp, with with my
friends or my colleagues andco-workers.
How does that work in practicewith, with the, with jam?
Badri Rajasekhar (32:57):
yeah and jam.
You can almost think of likethree sort of core elements to
that, uh, to the applicationitself.
You have a very simple contactlist that that's always on top,
and we have a whole bunch ofpresence and conversational
discovery.
If, if jane and joe are talkingto each other, you know that
they're having a conversationand you can quickly jump in if
you want it.
So there's there's spontaneousconversational discovery built
(33:19):
into it, and once you get into aconversation, uh, video doesn't
become front and center.
You just have a bunch offloating heads that float around
and so you can have off in acorner as you're doing something
else.
And then you could also recordlittle instagram stories like
snippets of video, talk throughstuff and just blast it out to
your team.
Hey, you know, yeah, I wasthinking about this idea this
(33:42):
morning.
Look what I built and that's it, and that automatically gets
aggregated.
So it's this super simplemixture of presence, live
conversations and recordedmessaging, sort of bundled into
one lightweight experience.
Alex Wilson-Campbell (33:57):
So everybody, just have a look at
jamapp.
That's J-A-M-M dot app and okay.
So it sounds like.
I mean Jam is very good forDifferent kinds of teams,
obviously different kinds ofremote teams.
You've got product teams,engineering teams, leadership
teams, sales, marketing,customer experience Lots of
(34:21):
different applications for it.
I mean and I'm looking here nowit says huddle with your team.
Is that what you were justdescribing then, the huddle side
of things, or is that adifferent sort of module?
Badri Rajasekhar (34:33):
No, that's right.
It's all part of the sameapplication where you can
quickly jump into like a huddlewith somebody, you can do a
one-click sort of conversationwith them, you could use
whiteboarding and collaboratewith them, or you could send
recorded messages, right.
So it's all sort of bundledinto one lightweight experience
where we're saying, um, let'ssay, you use slack, you don't
(34:54):
really think about am I going totext you synchronously or am I
going to text you asynchronously?
Right, I'm just going to textyou.
If you happen to respond, yourespond, if you don't, you don't
.
And so we're trying to bringthat same sort of modality in a
very lightweight audio visualexperience.
And, like one of our users said, real work happens in between
meetings, so it's about enablingthose conversations in between
(35:17):
meetings.
We're not we're not about, likemaking more efficient meetings
or driving a better meetingexperience like we want you to
have less meetings.
We want you to be talking moreand meeting less.
Alex Wilson-Campbel (35:28):
Essentially , I like that, I that I like
that idea.
So what are the plans, then,for Jam?
Where do you stand at themoment and what are your plans
for the foreseeable?
Yeah, it's difficult right now,obviously, with what's going on
, but what do you foresee forJam in the coming months?
Badri Rajasekhar (35:45):
Yeah, we're just excited to play a part in
sort of the remote workecosystem.
Right, we really think that theentire remote work ecosystem is
undergoing like a really goodrenaissance in terms of people
thinking about process, culture,tools, the entire ecosystem.
And we just want to play asmall part in sort of enabling
that ecosystem.
And so we're excited about sortof evolving Jam with all of our
(36:08):
features in our product roadmapto enable much more
lighter-weight conversations,public links, much more
shatterable external sort ofcontent.
But just generally excitedabout the space and generally
excited about what's happeningwith the entire remote work
ecosystem.
Alex Wilson-Campbell (36:25):
And finally, what about you?
What are you?
I mean, I know you recently.
Well, you're your father.
What are your plans, or anyanything?
Uh, personally, I know againit's, it's not.
It's not an easy time to sortof make too many plans for ahead
.
But what about you?
Badri Rajasekhar (36:41):
no, I'm just eager to like, once this is all
over, we can't wait to take avacation somewhere.
You know I've been like, stuckat home for a long time.
Um, you know it's it'shopefully the dust settles soon
for everybody's sake and we canall go out there and, you know,
uh, do something fun.
So I'm just balancing.
I think I was telling you when,when I started jam my um, my 12
(37:03):
month old second daughter wasjust born, and so, you know,
we've been like wrangling, bothtrying to build a company and
have a newborn baby at home,which has been sort of an
interesting, interestingchallenge.
So I'm looking forward to oncethe dust settles, you know, and
taking a couple of days off and,you know, traveling somewhere
(37:24):
you and me both.
Alex Wilson-Campbell (37:25):
Well, we will certainly be keeping our
eye, uh, on jam, and you as well, badry, just to see your
progress and um, what I will dois I will put the, the url to
jam, in the show notes, um, anda link to your profile as well,
so people can learn a bit more.
So that is um.
You can find jam at j, a doublem dot app.
(37:49):
That's a a sorry app, so that'sjam dot app.
So, badri, I just wanted to saya massive thank you to you for
joining me today on the remotework life podcast and all the
best with jam, and we'll keep intouch to see how you're getting
on with the in the future thankyou so much, alex.
Badri Rajasekhar (38:05):
It's been like incredible sort of being the
podcast, so thank you so muchfor having me and stay safe out
there thank you anytime.
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