This April our remote start-up got together during a retreat, or Memritreat as we call it, in Amsterdam to spend time together in person, reflect on the last couple of years, work on our business strategy and brainstorm on the product direction. Even though the time we had available was short, being in the same room brought a lot of energy and will help us now that we’ve moved back to our home-offices again. 

Why our remote company does retreats 

This year we opted for a mini version of the “Memritreat”, a tradition that started last year when we visited Barcelona, and something we hope to continue in the years to come. During these retreats our mostly remote team gets together in person to work on our business strategy, brainstorm on the product direction, and team building. 

We’ve learned that these events, aside from a great way to get to know each other better, help us find alignment quicker and easier. At forehand we clearly define some goals for the time that we have available so that we spend it wisely. It’s always a challenge not to put too many items on the agenda, and  it was not any different this time. So being flexible with the agenda is advised! 

Doing a retreat with not all members in the same room 

This year’s edition took place in Amsterdam. Many team-members were, for different reasons, already close to Amsterdam, making a rather ad-hoc edition possible. Unfortunately it meant that not everyone in the team was able to join in person and some had to join via video-call. 

We learned that you don’t need an expensive broadcast setup to include the people who are not on site. We made sure to have enough laptops available in the office so that we could provide different view angles and also switch microphones to let them listen and join in the conversation when needed. By setting up the laptops throughout the room, the remote workers were able to see the presentation on their screen, watch the whiteboard and see+hear people’s reaction at the same time. It also allowed us to record everything, making it possible to use it as a resource later. 

Next time we want to have a better microphone setup.. The built-in mics of the Apple laptops were good enough, but switching the mic from one laptop to another was rather complicated.  A dedicated web conferencing microphone will be a great improvement. 

Reflecting on & learning from our past 

The first session we started with was looking back at our history. Throughout the years some of our valued team-members have left and new ones joined the team. In order for those new people to better understand some of the decisions that have been made in the past, we looked at the history of Memri and specifically focussed on reflecting and distilling lessons we learned. 

Some of the insights we gained throughout the years:

• Memri started as a research company, focussed on technology and  solutions mainly. We learned throughout the years that it makes more sense to focus on the problem you’re solving first. It helps you better connect with your users, and leads to better results. 
• Our larger vision has always been a big motivator for everyone involved. The best way to get there however is not set in stone, and requires constant iteration and validation of our ideas. 
• Working remote is great, but meeting each other in person is extremely valuable for personal bonding and more strategic sessions. Being in the room together makes “things” happen. Some of the best conversations happened during lunch or while walking through the city. It’s hard to mimic that online, but our random donut coffee calls are pretty good as well! 
• Bonus retreat related insight: All of us are actually 3D, and look even better in real life!

Finances & Strategy

Since we find transparency important, we went through a detailed forecast of our finances. Every team-member can access our finances, see how much we spend, how we spend it and what’s entering the company as well. During the session with the person responsible for our finances we  looked into expenditures, how we could save costs and the forecasts for the future.

After that we held in-depth  working sessions to discuss and update our business strategy. By doing so we sought to create alignment and make sure everyone is aware of what is going on so that any decisions they make within their roles are  better informed.

Although there were no dramatic changes to our short-term roadmap, we believe that having this alignment is key and will benefit us a lot in the long run and we strongly suggest doing the same if you’re contemplating organising a retreat.  

Mini- Memritreat 2023 

Even though this was a shorter and less populated retreat we were still very happy to be together and spend some time looking forward to continuing this tradition in more depth, with more people (and in a more sunny place) in the near future!