I’ve left the executive team of Grow Remote.
Grow Remote is a CLG because we began as a social change movement started by many, I mean hundreds, of people. It quite literally belongs to no one, and through that, everyone.
In leaving, I wanted to share three points that stand out to me:
- Belief and energy is the #1 thing you could give a founder in the early stages. We were so lucky to have that in spades, and I am wildly appreciative for every ounce of it.
- The team is the most important thing — I am extraordinarily proud of the team and board we built. It was (and is) the privilege of a lifetime to work alongside them.
- Remote work is in a contraction period which is needed. Grow Remote was pre-pandemic, pandemic, and we’ll be post-pandemic. The hype cycle it went through had pros and cons, and from here the sector will come out stronger.
Grow Remote solves the problems of remote work in order to maximise the impact. We’ve solved and scaled two problems to date, but social change is hard. Social problems are often intangible, wicked problems. Stanford University did research on social change and I love this summary:
Agitation without innovation means complaints without ways forward, and innovation without orchestration means ideas without impact.
An agitator brings the grievances of specific individuals or groups to the forefront of public awareness. An innovator creates actionable solutions to address these grievances. And an orchestrator coordinates action across groups, organizations, and sectors to scale the proposed solution. Social change requires all three.
While building for all three parts of what you do, you need to be deliberate in how you do it. As you build, the aim is to move into the middle of a venn diagram between income, impact and capacity. To do that needs significant time and a focus on doing the right things for the right reasons (to quote Padraig Boland in LOETB who lives by that motto).
Today, we’re in the centre of that venn diagram. We’re earning strong recurring revenues with a team of 12 who rate us 4.7/5 on loving coming to work everyday. We have unlocked 6,878 jobs to be available without location, landed 89 jobs directly, and operate in 81 active local communities. We have just opened up an entity in Spain, and run the largest training programmes in Ireland for remote work.
6 years in, we are just at the beginning of a journey that will no doubt culminate in what others may call an ‘overnight success’.
I am leaving a better person than I began and for that, for the journey and for the people we met I am beyond grateful.
Thank you, thank you, thank you. In particular to our first major philanthropist, my mother.
Cooking for our first ever Meitheal in Kinvara
