Leaders Unscripted

Conversations with leaders about the challenges they’ve faced and what they’ve learned.

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15: Leading Engineers at a Remote-First Scaling Startup with Co-Founder & CTO of Kyo Health, Kainar Kamalov

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The world has been working remotely for three years - Kainar Kamalov has been doing so for more than eight.

All the challenges that we’ve faced, he’s already grappled with, and having held leadership roles in a remote-first, scaling startup, Pipe, he brings his expertise to such a challenging business environment.

Since recording this episode of Leaders Unscripted, Kainar has taken yet another step in his leadership journey, putting his skills into practice as a new Co-Founder, but you can join us now for his masterclass on leading a team in ten time zones.

This Episode Covers:

  • How scaling is a challenge, balancing new team members with drop in productivity while onboarding
  • An essential focus on team structure
  • Pipe’s flat structure and clear communications
  • The hardest aspect of remote-first teams and how to overcome it
  • Differing experiences in companies who have and haven’t found their product-market fit

Episode Highlights:

“We try to keep our product teams on the smaller side of things, because the faster you grow, with every new hire you bring to the team, someone has to onboard the new hire, which slows down both people.” - 7:55 - Kainar Kamalov
“I've been part of the teams that never found product market fit, where we built technology, and then you launch it and no one uses it. No one needs it. That's when doubts creep in.” - 14:20 - Kainar Kamalov
“We can have this flat structure because we’re still small, and focus on clear communications. Everyone is on the same page.” - 20:00 - Kainar Kamalov
“The hardest thing to understand when working remotely is people’s emotions. Unless it’s all in caps lock, it’s hard to know the feelings behind.” - 26:55 - Kainar Kamalov
“Being a good listener is so important, and following up with questions. A lot of the time for me, it's just about listening and repeating back what I've heard. A lot of times, I don't have to do anything - people just go and solve the problems, they just needed someone to vent to.” - 30:55 - Kainar Kamalov

Links & References:

Constellary: https://www.constellaryhq.com/

Suzan Bond: https://www.linkedin.com/in/suzanbond/

Kainar Kamalov: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kainar-kamalov-598a7616/

Pipe: https://pipe.com/