Introduction
In 2025, starting fully remote is still the smartest way to launch fast, access global talent, and keep overhead low. But it’s not easy. Building a fully remote company from the ground up is fundamentally different from managing an office-based team. It demands intention, discipline, and a strong foundation from day one.
This guide is for founders, operators, and early-stage teams who want to build remote the right way. You’ll find a curated list of tools, key decisions to make early on, and a realistic breakdown of costs. The goal is not to make remote sound easy, but to make it possible and scalable.
1. Why remote-first still makes sense
Remote work is no longer a trend or a pandemic workaround. It’s the most efficient path for small teams to build quickly without being limited by geography. In the early stages, what you need most is speed, flexibility, and the ability to find the best people wherever they are.
Going remote removes office expenses and opens up global hiring, allowing you to hire faster and smarter, but it also introduces new challenges: alignment, communication, hiring across borders, and team cohesion. Solving these early is key to building a sustainable company.
2. Core stack to launch and run a remote team
Communication & presence
- Discord: offers real-time voice and chat in persistent channels. Great for recreating team presence and spontaneous interaction. It's free, fast to set up, and ideal for early-stage teams. We strongly recommend starting with Discord alone to keep things simple and lightweight.
- Slack: best for structured communication, integrations, and team scalability. Useful for written async updates and searchable knowledge. Consider adding it only once your team and communication needs become more complex.
Project & task management
- ClickUp or Asana: both tools help you track work across people and functions. ClickUp is more flexible, Asana is cleaner out of the box. Choose one and use it as your team’s single source of truth.
Async video & feedback
- Loom: a powerful tool to share progress, updates, onboarding, and walkthroughs without a meeting. Reduces sync pressure and improves clarity.
Documentation & collaboration
- Google Workspace: shared docs, sheets, and calendars are a simple and reliable backbone.
- Notion (optional): acts as an internal wiki, centralizing processes, guides, and decision logs.
- Miro or Mural: ideal for remote brainstorming, planning, and visual workshops.
Developer collaboration
- GitHub: for code, reviews, issues, and tracking.
- JIRA (if you need structured sprints): best for more mature engineering teams.
3. Hiring and scaling remotely
Jobgether
If you want to scale fast and find the right talent without geographic limits, Jobgether is the right place to start. It connects you with remote-ready professionals from around the world, using AI to match candidates to your roles based on skills, preferences, and culture fit. Jobgether is not a job board, it’s a sourcing engine designed for remote growth.
Oyster or Deel
Once you’ve found your team, you need to employ them legally. These platforms handle payroll, benefits, and compliance across countries so you don’t have to set up foreign entities.
4. Automation and tool integration
Startups move fast, and manual work kills momentum. Use automation early to reduce repetitive tasks:
- Zapier or n8n: connects tools (like moving leads from Typeform to your CRM, or notifying Slack when a GitHub PR is merged).
- Make (Integromat): more powerful for complex workflows.
Automate low-value tasks so your team can focus on building.
5. Cost breakdown by growth stage
Early stage (0–5 people):
- Free tools: Discord, Loom, Trello, GitHub,
- Paid tools : Google Workspace
- Infrastructure: cloud costs around $50 to $150/month
Growing team (5 to 20 people):
- Paid Slack, ClickUp, Deel for hiring
- Add Notion, Miro, Zapier
- Monthly cost: $500 to $1,200
Scaling (20+ people):
- SSO, backups, compliance, internal tools
- Mature HR stack, benefits, time tracking, documentation
- Monthly cost: $2,000 and up
6. Building culture and process remotely
Remote culture doesn’t emerge on its own, you have to design it.
Start by defining how you communicate. Use Discord as the main communication channel. Make sure everyone is online while working, so people feel connected and can casually chat or jump into work discussions naturally. Having both working and casual conversation is key, and Discord might be your best tool for this.
You could eventually use Slack for more structured conversations, but in our experience, most early-stage teams can handle everything in Discord. Avoid using multiple tools for the same purpose. One tool per topic is the way to go.
Avoid unnecessary meetings by documenting decisions and next steps in writing. But make sure your team engages at least once a day. Watch out for the "feel alone" syndrome, building a remote company is really about building relationships between colleagues.
Create rituals that reinforce connection: daily team updates, weekly all-hands, open AMAs, virtual co-working.
Personal tip: set the tone yourself. If you write things down, others will follow. If you give feedback in public, others will too. Culture scales from habits.
Most importantly, invest early in clarity: who does what, how things get done, and how people grow in your company. Document everything. Good process is not bureaucracy, it’s leverage.
Final thoughts
Remote is not easy. But it’s still the most powerful way to build quickly and access global talent. The difference between struggling and scaling lies in how well you set the foundation.
Start with the right tools. Hire the right way. Communicate clearly. And build a company that works from anywhere.