Who is carwow?
Carwow is the free, easy way to change your car online. Currently based in Europe, carwow helps their large audience buy and sell cars in Spain, Germany, and the UK. They also run the world’s most popular YouTube channel about cars. Currently, carwow has close to 250 employees, and, in 2019, the company switched to working remotely full-time.
The challenge of chat-only
Remote work has its perks for sure, but, as carwow experienced, the typical ways companies collaborate remotely can have major pain points.
David Santoro, co-founder of carwow, said:
“In 2019, when we had to switch to remote work, I struggled with Slack and not being able to partake in conversations if I wasn’t online when they happen. Catching up with the teams’ work was hard as I couldn’t find these conversations when I came online. And so I either had to watch the Slack channel continuously, or be content with missing out on some conversations. To me, synchronous tools or instant messaging platforms made working online feel like we were going backwards looking for old discussions, instead of moving forward innovating and progressing on new discussions.”
Carwow’s experience is not uncommon for companies who primarily rely on chat for day-to-day collaboration. Engaging in the moment (or synchronously) is fast and simple, and coworkers get real-time feedback on conversations. The problem comes at scale.
When there are hundreds or even thousands of messages flying through chat every day, the wheels fall off. Collaboration gets harder, conversations get muddled, important information rolls off-screen, and the flurry of activity causes everyone at the company to feel like they need to have chat open all day, every day. Always-on collaboration like this often costs employees their ability to get quality, focused work done.
As carwow’s founders experienced, the fear of missing out is real – and a real problem. This led them to look for a solution.