The CareSharing Team operates from two offices. Majority of its members work in Cebu where the office is located in the I.T. park of the city. In The Netherlands, the office is located in Amsterdam.

The CareSharing Core Values
Our core values indicate where we stand as a team and what we find important. By pooling together the core values and practicing it, we are creating a unique identity and culture. We believe that people become the best of themselves when they can act as themselves in the team. Therefore, it is important that the CareSharing core values reflect one’s personal values. Do you want to know if you fit into our team? Read our core values and assess whether they coincide with your own. It’s that simple. In another blogpost, we will elaborate on these CareSharing Core values.

How do we deal with the time difference?
There is a 6-hour time difference in the summer, and 7-hour time difference during winter. The team in Cebu starts around 10 o’clock in the morning and work until 7 in the evening. The team in The Netherlands is present around 7:45 for our first cup of coffee and at around 5:00 we conclude our day. So both teams meet halfway to collaborate. For Cebu, that time is after lunch while for The Netherlands it is just before lunch.

How do we manage projects?
Basecamp (see www.basecamp.com) is an important project management tool for us. It is simple, we can create an optimal discussion setting for a project and keep each other informed of all communication. With its great feature, we need not do everything by e-mail and we get to track the complete overview of a certain project.

For bug fixes, we have developed our own micro-management tool which we call the SupportHub. Since its our own program, we can develop our ideal functionalities. We have made an integration with Zendesk (ticket system support) to create our product support and development workflows.

Meetings, they are unfortunately unavoidable
Following the advises of Jason Fried in his inspiring TED talk, we try to hold as little meetings as possible. Whenever we need to have a face-to-face discussion over something very important, Skype is our great friend. We use Skype for quick chats, for one-on-one consultations and group meetings as well. You can actually say that Skype is indispensable for us. There are alternatives but Skype is still our preferred medium for online meetings. Our Cebu team also uses HipChat for group communication.

It is amazing to note that we can work as one team, even though we are 7000 miles apart.

Tijs Rietjens
CEO, CareSharing BV

UPDATE 2012/10/10: We are postponing this event to Oct 20 and 21, instead of Oct 13 and 14.

There are a lot of reasons why a startup can fail. Often founders find ways to destroy it. It typically happens due to unforced errors, rather than market forces or force majeure. One of the most common errors is that founders make products that people don’t buy. I don’t have the statistics right now, but I’m sure the guy behind the Lean Startup movement, Eric Ries , and the guy who coined the Customer Development idea, Steve Blank, know it like the back of their hands.

Like any skill, perfect to be, practice we must. And so practice is what we are going to do.

This coming Saturday and Sunday, Oct 20 and 21, we will be hosting our first Lean Startup Cebu Workshop. The idea is we will spend 2 days, from 10am to 4pm on both days, practicing the process. We plan to host it at our office at Caresharing, since we can’t find another readily available venue that will have a fast Internet and a pantry (I admit, we did not look very hard) — and an abundant traffic of people to interview (IT park).

We will be charging 500 pesos per participant to attend this event, to cover two lunches, afternoon snacks and overhead. At this price, you will get to participate and make new friends, but there will be no certificates, no loot, no finishers medal nor shirts — just plain hard-earned lessons learned and experience from the workshop.

Since venue space is very limited, and this is the first session, we are limiting the number of participants to 20. I’m not sure how popular this will get, but I believe this will be a very valuable event, and most LSM workshops in other countries sold out very fast.

If you are or part of a team developing products, I would recommend you bring yourself, your co-founders, your colleagues, or your early and key employees in the company. Although you can join as a group, the workshop is still an individual participation. And you will be encouraged to spread out across different teams.

Some disclaimer, Lean Startup will not guarantee you startup success, nor guarantee your 1 billion valuation in 5 years. However, by following Lean Startup, it   will guarantee to improve your chances of beating the odds. Just the act of going out and asking customers, right away eliminates useless ideas.