Johns Digital Nomad Year

John spent all of 2014 traveling while working. It’s something that traditional-minded investors might see as a red flag so we’ve typically downplayed that as well as our distributed team. I’m not sure that’s the right strategy. John did a talk at Made By Few about his year of travel and what he learned:

Born and raised in Little Rock, John is currently traveling the world with his trusty macbook. He loves nerding out about distributed systems, remote working, and all forms of technology. Prior to starting Customer.io, he honed his skills at various NYC-based startups as well as a few local favorites, Acxiom and Walmart.

I admit, I was nervous about unknowns like internet connectivity in each country, and my ability to get in touch with him in an emergency. In the end the year apart worked out fine. One big lesson we learned along the way was that we needed to get together at least once a quarter to realign and readjus. Now John and I are working out of the same office again, but that year of travel helped us build a stronger cofounder relationship and company.