SPENCER COON is the COO and CoFounder of Hibox, a tool that offers group chat, task management, and video calls all in one! In this interview we talk about hiring remote employees, dealing with time zones, being always on, tools, and IT security.
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Original transcript
Lisette: Great and we’re live. So welcome everybody to this remote interview. My name is Lisette and I’m interviewing people and companies who are doing great things remotely. Today on the line from Barcelona today I have Spencer Coon. Spencer, you’re the COO, excuse me, and co-founder of HiBox which is a group chat, task management system plus video calls integration plus you integrate with other tools. So we’re totally going to get into that. It looks like a great tool. I want to start with the first question which is what does your virtual look like? What do you need to get your work done?
Spencer: Sure. Well, thanks for having me on the set. Appreciate it. So we’re a fast growing internet start-up. We’ve got over 15 people collaborating with us and it is a big challengebecause we have people based in 4 different countries. We have people in Spain, people in Argentina, Brazil, in the States all collaborating towards the same goal, creating and selling this product. Now we’re actually very fortunate in that the product that we make ourselves is our greatest enabler of remote collaboration. So basically when Hibox is, it’s a platform that combines taskmanagement with team messaging and video conferencing all in the same place. So essentially what it lets you do is manage tasks and projects with your team, no matter where they’re based. It’s all basedin the cloud and the difference between some other, you know, chat based communication products that you might have heard of, you know, like Slack or HipChat or using something like Skype or GoogleHangouts, is that we seamlessly integrate task management into this team messaging platform. So you don’t just have this sort of noisy communication, you know, channel that’s happening, you know, between 15 people and 4 different countries. That can be kind of confusing to follow but you actually have a way to capture productivity.Youactually have a way to, you know, record specific steps and goals that you want to accomplish with your team and record that in a way to where you can, you know, you can work [unintelligible – 02:14]together. That’s essentially what we do.
Lisette: I have to say I really like that you have the task management component built into that because I’ve noticed that in these systems like Slack orHipChat you’re doing a lot of talking and then you have to remember, oh yeah, now I have to go Trello or whatever your task management tool is and then enter in some task and it’s somehow it’s a barrier. It’s a lot of work.
Spencer: Exactly.
Lisette: Because you’re in kind of the flow of conversation.
Spencer: Exactly. Exactly. And so to be able to not really have to interrupt that stream of brain storming of creativity and to be able to jot down thesetrackable tasks within the project groups that you’re having these interesting discussions, again, without having to go to a different, you know, app or differenttool with a different usability, different design, teaching people how to use those, notifications that may not sync up super well with your communication tool. That’s really what we’re trying to avoid and we actually have some really cool ways to link this task management to the messaging stream, one of those being using artificial intelligence to actually recognise when a message that a user sends was likely meant to be a task. So it’s a nice way to help users convert, again, you know, this discussion they’re having with their team into trackable things they can follow up on. So if I were to send you, this is a very simple example, I were to send you a message that said, can you send me the latest version of the proposal for Coca Cola, an algorithm will automatically recognise, hey, that’s probably meant to be a trackable task that you want to make sure gets done and it’ll suggest to you would you like to convert this to a task and with a simple click, that is converted to a task and stored in this project space, this collaborative space that you’re working in.
Lisette: Awesome. Sounds really great. Why did you guys start Hibox? How didit all begin?
Spencer: Sure. So actually, this is our second communication and collaboration platform for companies. So we started out with a product called Joincube which is an enterprise social network and with that product[so]similar to companies like [unintelligible – 04:30] those kinds of tools and with this product, we were targeting specifically multinational companies in LatinAmerica. We’re doing super well. I got a great partnership with Telefonica, had over a milliondollars in revenue, I had over 600 paying clients, and from that, you know, experience selling this kind of private social network to companies, we kind of saw the potential to break off one specific feature of that product which was the chat. We saw that, you know, 85% of the use that our clients were giving to Joincube, it had let’s say a set of 10 featuresbut mostly what people were using was this chat to communicate with each other in a secure, private environment created for business use.
Lisette: Right.
Spencer: And so from that, we took the same team, reused a lot of the same code, and split off…spun off a second product which is Hibox but we always had the idea, again, that we didn’t want this just to be another kind of noisy communication stream that looked very cool [unintelligible – 05:37] fun to use and good for brainstorming but we wanted it to be a tool that, you know, it wouldbethe most essential tool people have to manage their projects and tasks with their team. So that’s why we added task management to it and it’s also why we added videoconferencing which we haven’t touched on much but I think everyone, especially if you have any experience managing a remote team, has played that, you know, Skype, Google Hangouts, Zoom, whatever, sort of phone tag game. Where are we connecting?Can we get onGoogle Hangouts, I don’t have the link. I’m not authorised to be on this call. Well, let’s get on Skype. You add three people to the call. Then you try to add one more. The call drops. You have to add everyone again. It’s really frustrating. It’s loss of a lot of time and so by adding video conferencing directly to this tool which you’re managing your tasks and managing all you communication, with just one click in this platform where everyone on your team is already connected, you open up a separate tab with a Google Hangout like user experience where you can have this live video chat with everyone in the specific group that you’re talking in. So it’s a really cool feature. You know, it’s kind of…that’s our…it’s what we’re striving for. We want all the most essential elements for team collaboration to be incorporated in this tool without, you know, needing to look for any external integration, look for other accounts. We want the essential elements to be incorporated and then we want to give you the possibility for more secondary tools that you’regoingto need to integrate those intoHibox. So for instance, most obvious one is file sharing, you know. You might be using Dropbox or GoogleDocs for editing documents simultaneously and we give you the possibility to share those in Hibox via an external integration but the essentials are all designed to work together and built into this one tool.
Lisette: Love it. Totally love it and letme ask you about the video. So I’m a big fan of using video. I tell people that it’s essential for remote working in terms of just keeping contact and seeing, I mean, you lose so much context without it but a lot of people don’t like turning the video on. What’s been your experience with video? How do you get people over the hurdle of using it?
Spencer: You know, we’ve never had any problems with that. It’s interesting you say that. I can definitely see how that could happen I think partiallyfor us it’s kind of at least internally due to you know kind of our recruiting process, like we [unintelligible – 08:10] a group of people who were super open and outgoing and creative. Ithink that’s actually very important when you’re sort of building a more remote style team. So, if someone was going to have a problem trying to video, I don’t think they would have made it past maybe the first round of interviews. So I think that’s the one thing and then the other thing is just making it super easy, right? So like that’s why, you know, with Hibox, it’s not okay I have to go and I have to download Skype and I have to open it and make sure I’m dog and then did I add you as a contact yet? Again, as seamless that you can make it the better and [unintelligible – 08:49] with Hibox. You’re chatting ina collaborativespace. You click a video conference button and automatically you’ve opened up a group video conference with everyone in that stream. So I think it’s a combo of those two things.
Lisette: Okay. Yeah, I love it. So you’re recruiting[for] people who are comfortable online, clearly, and using video is…
Spencer: Yeah.
Lisette: …part of being comfortable online.
Spencer: I think so, yeah. We definitely think so on our team.
Lisette: Yeah. So, I want to ask…there’s…I have a ton of questions but because you just started talking about hiring, I want to ask about your hiring process and the kind of…like, where do you look for people and then what does your hiring process look like?
Spencer: Sure.
Lisette: Make them use video obviously.
Spencer: Absolutely. No, I mean, first interview is generally, you know, either Skype or Google Hangouts. We definitely want that face to face getting to know each other. Yeah, just kind of tips, you know, for our hiring process, what’s worked well for us. The two biggest sources of finding talent for us have been AngelList and Jobbatical. AngelList, I’m sure, everyone’s heard of. Jobbatical is something that’s a bit newer. We actually signed up on their beta program. Six months [unintelligible – 09:58] just starting out. Jobbatical essentially what it is is it helpsyou find people who are wanting to take a one to two year break from whatever city they’re in and travel somewhere else. So either [doing it…work] remotely or travel to one of your officelocations and work from there and very focused on techstart-ups. So it’s a cool place, Jobbatical. We received [just a ton], a ton of applications from them. They actually help you create your sort of announcement or your job listing as well and have a design team that’ll make it look good and put pictures from your city where you [unintelligible – 10:38] based. So that was a cool source and then AngelList is probably the biggest [unintelligible – 10:45]very top quality talent. So in terms of finding people, it’s just posting these, you know, job opportunities as they come up, filtering through people we think seem interesting. We’ll have an initial Skype call and then one thing that we’ve tried before that did not work well is, at least for us, you know, is a 100% sort of remote work situation. So like, we always try to at least have, you know, one face to face, kind of working together experience with everyone on our team. I think it’s vital. So for instance like at the very minimum what we’ll do is we’llsay, okay, start up with us, let’s try a couple of months working remotely just because, you know, no one probably at that point wants to commit to do much and you want to see if it’s actually a good fit. Once you decide okay we’re really considering adding this person as sort of a full time remote worker, we’ll fly them into one of our main offices and have them work for two to three weeks and try to do at least one sort of, you know, team building activity that’s not work related. So, go climb a mountain, go to a music festival, whatever we can do. That’s worked super well for us, like, those two to three weeks, like, it’s not a lot. It’s a short amount of time. It’s not super expensive for either party.
Lisette: Yeah.
Spencer: And to me, it makes a world of difference. Like, [from then], after that and especially with tools like Hibox and some other ones I can recommend, we have no problem with people staying a 100% remote and that being a really good working relationship.
Lisette: I’ve heard this before. So as much as I like to think that everything can be done virtually, it’s been brought up in so many interviews that having a face to face interaction, it just accelerates getting to know somebody in finding the right fit for the team.So yeah.
Spencer: It does and just having that confidence and just having some fun experiences you can remember when you’re talking to that person. It makes you feel way more connected but like I said, with some people that are still working with us, we’ve done one of these, you know, come to the headquarters, work for 2 to 3 weeks and completely remote from then on out. So I think the complete remote can work. I just think it’s a lot better if you can incorporate at least, you know, a couple kind of in person experiences.
Lisette: Makes sense. So now you have offices in Spain, Argentina, Brazil, and the US. That’s quite a time zone difference in some cases.
Spencer: Yes. It is.
Lisette: Brazil and Argentina to Spain and the US. How do you guysdeal with the time zone difference on your team?
Spencer: Sure. So, a couple ofdifferent ways. One is a pretty cool app called [unintelligible – 13:29] Apps which I don’t know if you’ve heard of but it’s kind of [unintelligible – 13:33] which allows you to very easily see okay for each of the locations that I’m interested in, you know, what time is it right now and then another way we deal with it too is, and this kind of goes back to the recruiting process and what person I think would be a good fit for remote work, we don’t recruit anyone that needs sort of a strict 9 to 5 sort of schedule or that feels like once they’ve checked out, you know, once they’veleft their office, whatever they use that they can completely checkout. I mean, we kind of expect people to, you know, sometimes, you’ll get, you know a message for us, have a task come in, you know, late at night, you know, eleven pm, super early in the morning, like, we expect people to kind of be connected always but also give people the flexibility to if you want togo take a couple ofhours during the day to do whatever, you [can be] totally fine to do that. Maybe you’re on a different time zone[unintelligible – 14:27] working or, you know, but we give people that flexibility but yeah really don’t want people who will expect to be able to check out once they leave their work environment.
Lisette: Right. So than that brings up the question, and I mean I can understand that because of course 9 to 5 is rather useless when you’re working with teams in a number of different time zones because all of a sudden from 5 pm until sometimes you know 12 hours later nothing happening that just [unintelligible – 14:53].
Spencer: Yeah.
Lisette: But what about being always on? This issue of not being able to disconnect? I mean, I hear this from a lot of remote workersthat it’s hard to turn off.
Spencer: Sure, sure, sure.
Lisette: Disconnect. How do you guys deal with it?
Spencer: No, it’s an issue but one thing I say to, you know, everyone on our team that we all try to do is take breaks. I mean, use whatever method you need but definitely force yourself to take breaks, force yourself, you know, you can use sayings like pomodoro method which a lot of people have heard of. There’s things. There’s an app called Timerdoro which you can put on that will force you to go get 25 minutes work, 5 minutes off. That’s a bit more breaks while you’re working but I also tell people, schedule blocks of time where, you know, you’re not going to be [unintelligible – 15:38] and just communicate that. It’s about communication, right? Like, I don’t expect every time I send a message to someone if it’s 11, you know midnight, their time to respond instantly but I do like for people to let everyone know and just be very clear [and transparent], like, hey, I’m taking off, I’m going to the climbing gym or I’m, you know, going on a trip and I’ll be on a flight for the next 5 hours. Just let people know, you know, and if you do have that communication, then I don’t think you have to be, you know, on the grid, connected 24/7.Like, I definitely don’t think [unintelligible – 16:14] to not be doing work things.
Lisette: Yeah. So it’s just then a matter of communicating with your team members, like, hey I’m going to be onthe train for the next 2 hours or I’m goingout with my family.
Spencer: Yeah. Just don’t duck out you know and go off the grid without letting everyone…and not even everyone know. Just the people that, you know, that you’re working on projects with, especially [unintelligible – 16:39], let them know and then I don’t think there’s any problem with that but, you know, be flexible to, yeah, some days, probably, you know, really late, you’re going to have some strange hours and be working at strange times that your friends with normal, you know, kind of desk jobs will not and be willing to do that and you’re accepting kind of that part which can be used as a negative but you gain a lot of pros and there’s so much more flexibility.
Lisette: Right.
Spencer: Which I think a lot of people are looking for.
Lisette: Right. I think so too, just thework life balance or the fusion between work and life is really…it’s not even really balance anymore. It’s more like we’re fusingeverythingtogether which sounds like you have that culture in your company as well.
Spencer: Yeah, definitely.
Lisette: So, in terms of…I’m thinking Spain, Argentina, Brazil, and US, what kind of cultural differences do you see amongst team members or does that come out on the team at all?
Spencer: You know, what’s funny is we were having a discussion about just theotherday. I just think the world is globalising so much to where I don’t notice, like, besides the obvious things like language or, I don’t know, what cartoons you grewup watching. Like, in terms of what we’re passionate about, the music we listen to, the shows we listen, what we like to do in our free time, like, I don’t notice like too much of a difference between places and that’s been something that’sreally interesting for me to kind of live and be a part of and see both with our team andwith living abroad, it’s just, you know, how connected and globalised, you know, we’re really becoming.
Lisette: Yeah, indeed, and there’s…it also seems like there’s professional culture on teams that supersedes any particular country culture that comes up and actually one thing that somebody brought up to me in an interview is she saidpeople always tend to think of culturesbased on country but it’s actually based on so many other things too like are you a dog versus a cat person, for example. That’s the type of culture also so…
Spencer: [Sure, sure].
Lisette: …bouldering versus climbing, also a different kind of culture its own way that people that don’t know the climbing world…it’s all the same to me and you’re like no way that’s totally different.
Spencer: Very different.
Lisette: So what are some of the things that your team struggles with the most? Like, what are the challenges that you face because it can’t all be rosy.
Spencer: Sure, sure. I mean, yeah, if I were going to say challenges, I mean, you know, there’s times when if you’re working on something especially with a tight deadline, you know, there’s times where you might think, okay, it’ll be a little easier to have this person right next to me so instead of, you know, sending a
message [to having to] type out every single little comment I have on what we’re working on, we kind of just kind of do it together face to face but I don’t know. I mean, I think at the end of the day, the benefits you get from having the remote team and having the access to talent and hiring people kind of working around the clock and the diversity, you know, you can add just right off the bat, I think it way outweighs, you know, kind of any of those cons that you can, you know, feel at times like you’d almost rather people be in the same place.Lisette: What about people that don’t work out on the team? Like, people that you’ve hired and then they just don’t cut it? What is it that they…why didn’t they…why don’t they cut it?
Spencer: Sure. You know, I think there can be obviously a variety of reasons but I think the most important thing when you’re a remote worker is just to be dependable and so I view that as clearly communicating as we discussed before, like I want you to constantly be letting me know what you’re working on, when you’re going to be off, how we’re doing [on] our different projects. So clear communication and just someone that’s dependable. I mean, you don’t necessarily have to produce the most mind-blowing results ever but, you know some of the…if I tell you to do something, you prove to me over and over again that it will get done. You know, it doesn’t have to be the best thing ever but like I need it to be done and know that if Itell you something, it’s going to get done because again, it’s even more important when you’re not seeing each other. So I think people that haven’tcommunicated clearly and people that just haven’t shown themselves to be dependable, those are the two main things for me.
Lisette: Right. It’ssurprisingI think how much it…well, it’s not surprising how much it matters but I’m always surprised by how few people can do it.
Spencer: That’s right.
Lisette: So because I think when we move from co-located to remote, right, we go from time-based to being results-based and that results based reallystresses some people out because they’re used to sitting in their chair, like, they’re used to time-based which is totally a different mindset.
Spencer: Yeah.
Lisette: So I can imagine the dependability really comes up.
Spencer: Yeah, yeah. No. Absolutely.
Lisette: In that area. So, let’s talk about tools…
Spencer: Sure.
Lisette: …that you guys use to communicate. Obviously Hibox and it sounds…
Spencer: It’s the main one.
Lisette: I love the push of the button…first, I love the task integration. That’s something that a lot of people don’t have and I love the push of a button to just have a video call because I can imagine you find yourself typing something out and it’s starting to get long and you think, I could just…I just want to talk to them, so punch, you talk to them.
Spencer: Yeah, exactly.
Lisette: Are there other tools that you guys are depending on?
Spencer: Yeah. I can recommend several. So, a big one is Intercom, I don’t know if you’ve heard of that but it’s, in my opinion, we [unintelligible – 22:32] a lot. It’s by far the best way to communicate with your customers. It’s probably a bit [biased] for people, you know, that have internet businesses. I mean, it certainly is. It’s something you can integrate eitheronyour commercial website or actually inside of your apps. So like we have this Intercom chat system to communicate with customers, not only on our website, so if you’re browsing our plans and prices on Hibox.co, you can ask a question about, hey, are there discounts if I have over a hundred users or what does advance taskmanagement include but we also have it actually in the app so as you’re inside of the tool, if you have a question come up at any time, you can click on this app and on this chat up and sort of talk directly to someone on our team and why it’s particularly cool for remote teams is that it allows…it’s got a really smart ticketing system so it allows…you can have a team of 10 support people based wherever and this, you know, whenever someone, a customer engages you, it’s real easy for whoever is available to, you know,take that person and say, okay, I’m going to respond to this client. Everyone can see what they’re saying. People can actually go in there and give them suggestions if they ask a question that maybe they’ve already responded to or something like that and it also has a really cool way of two things: one, recording like automatic responses. So for the most commonly asked questions like do you have a free plan or how much storage does this include or why is Hibox better than Slack, for example, you can have a really nicely crafted answer that makes it super easy to respond to. So if it’s late at night, you know, and you’re remote but you can easily just get on with your phone, go on the app, and click a saved response and send it. It takes you two seconds, you now, and so it’s really really great for that and then it also lets you send automatedmessages which is good too. So if you’re trying to have like a…you have remoteteam and maybe you’re selling your product in marketswhere you don’t have 10 people able to respond, you can actually send auto-messages and program them…[give them string conditions] to respond to client’s needs. So that’s a big tool for us for sure.
Lisette: Yeah, it’s a great one. Agreed.
Spencer: And then another. I mean, this one, I think most people know about it but I mean GoogleDocs I think is the best by far, the best way to manage documents with your team if you’re remote just because it gives you that same sort of feel like if we were in person and we have piece of paper here or a chalkboard and we’re both drawing on it at the same time, you know, trying to come up with a new idea or something like that, GooleDocs gives that same feeling, you know. It allows two people [unintelligible – 25:26] as many as you want to be editing the same document at the same time which is really cool because that same kind of real time collaborative feel and you don’t have to worry about, you know, is this the latest version? It’s super easy to also go in and audit…I love this part too like see okay this is change. What changes were made, who made them, like it gives you that possibility as well which is important if you can’t see the person that’s actually doing these things so we use that a lot.
Lisette: It does seem so archaic to think back to the times when we were all using Word documents or even WordPress way back but yeah, the document, you had to…
Spencer: [unintelligible – 26:04].
Lisette: …send it around to everybody. They would have to make their edits either by hand or in[unintelligible – 26:07] then send it back to oneperson who would consolidate. I mean, I can’t imagine going back to working like that and I have to ask, did you ever go back to working in a traditional office setting now that you’ve worked like this? You think you can ever go back?
Spencer: I mean, for the right opportunity, I don’t think I’ll ever, you know, never say never but it’s unlikely just because, yeah, I’m a person…I really appreciate the freedom [unintelligible – 26:32] I love living in Barcelona and I think if we weren’t able to manage a remote team, you know, Spain’s a good market for us but, like, we’ve got bigger ambitions. We want to sell in the States, we want to sell across all of Europe, we want to sell in Latin America. So if we’re unable to kind of manage this remote team, you know, from here, [unintelligible – 26:56] in this cool place as Barcelona is and then for me personally, like, yeah, I really enjoy the flexibility of, kind of, yeah, during the day, if I want to take an hour or two and go to the climbing gym, you know, I have the freedom to do that and if I want to work later one day and less the next, do that, yeah. Definitelywould be hard to, you know, once you have this lifestyle to go back to something a bit more traditional.
Lisette: Yeah. That’s true. I have the same response. I’ll never say never because you just don’t know what the opportunity could be but it would be hard to imagine not having this sort of luxurious freedom…the freedom is very luxurious, I think.
Spencer: Sure but I think what’s good is people all over the place, even in larger corporations, are trending towards this so it’s never going to be the exact…[it’s not going to be] the same level but I think I’ve really seen with my friends. For sure, they work at smaller, you know, midsized companies trending towards this kind of style as well.
Lisette: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there’s a lot of jealousy out there in terms of people who are stuck in an office so…
Spencer: [unintelligible – 28:00].
Lisette: So, in terms of integrating Hibox, if somebody’s just starting out and they’re just starting to use your tool, what advice do you give them for just starting out if they haven’t used, I mean, you now it’s hard to imagine someone who hasn’t used an instant messaging system before but there are lots and lots of people and then the very large corporations, I’m finding that…
Spencer: Yeah.
Lisette: …haven’t heard of a lot of these tools. Sowhat advice would you give them for starting out?
Spencer: Sure. Yeah. For starting out, a couple of things I’d say. First, reallygive it a good try. Like, don’t try to test it out by yourself,you know, which a lot of people like to do and it’s logical, like, you as a manager, you want to make sure something works before you deploy it in your team but, you know, I would just be more of the mindset of make sure you have a work culture where you can tell your worker, hey, we’re going to try this. Let’stry this together, see if it’s a good fit, because trying a messaging app with one person or task management [unintelligible – 29:03] with one peron is like not that valuable, kind of the insight you’re going to get. You’re not really going to know if it’s a good fit. So, [unintelligible – 29:14] invite, you know, a decent sized group to test it out and then really give it a good try, like, say, okay, look, we’re going to take the next few hours and we’re justgoing to communicate on this new tool. It can be Hibox. It can something else, whatever you’re trying. Like, really give it a try. Like, don’t half-heartedly say I’m going to send a couple messages just to see how that works in one [unintelligible – 29:37] assign one task. I’ve tried it. No. Like, actually take, you know, a couple hours and try to do this which, yeah, it might becomplicated. You might need to come into the office a bit earlier so you’re not during your peak work times but do whatever you need to do to give it a real try is what I would say and then in the specific case of Hibox, the tasks are really important. That’s when once youstart using that, that’s when people like the kind of light bulb goes off and they’ve been like oh where’s this been, you know, for my whole career?
Lisette: Right.
Spencer: Like I can be communicating with my teamin just such an easy way. It’s instant chat messages you know, I can attach these documents that are super easy to sort and find, you know. It’s more interactive with the gifs and emojisandwhatever and at the same time, I can finally have a way to like follow up with my team, you know, and make sure that the things we’re saying we’re going to do are actually getting done. So, I think once you start, you know, using[tasks], crating your different streams which are your collaborative spaces for your different projects, your different company departments, you know, and doing that with a good, you know, a sizeable group, like, that’s the best way to test and we’ve had, I think, few people have gone through that, really tested it out and they’ve actually been looking for, you know this kind of solution [unintelligible – 30:58].
Lisette: Yeah. I love it. I love it. So now, one of the biggest things when I give workshops in large corporations is they talk about security….
Spencer: Yeah.
Lisette: …and especially for instance banks. I don’t know what it is but banks are taking my workshop like nobody else. So there’s something in the banking industry that’s happening. That’s great. I’m glad to see it but there when I introduce tools to them, they are always talking about security. Oh security this. We can’t use this tool. How do you respond to that? You must get this.
Spencer: Sure. Absolutely. So, we actually ask [unintelligible – 31:33] work building like online banking sites, a personal banking site for larger financial institutions in Latin America. So our team is very comfortable with creating databases and tools that comply with very strict, you know, security stands. So everything we do, for instance, complies with [unintelligible – 31:57]. That’s something that’s important, something…[unintelligible – 32:01] people and we also actually have a lot of ways we can limit access. So, like, you know, one thing, [that’s big] that we do for a bunch of our clients. We say, okay, what you can do is limit this to where employees, for instance, can only connect to this platform if they’re connected to your IP addresses. So you can have a list of IP addresses and say, okay, look, I only wantpeople to be able to connect if they’re on my company Wi-Fi at the office. You know, it’s not something that we’d recommend but if, for whatever reason, regulations, you need to do that, we allow companies to do that. So we work with people using solutions like that, you know, limiting what users can see or do, having a really clear audit log, never erasing any message you send, you know, on Hibox, you know, things like that to make people feel a bit more comfortable using this kind of platform.
Lisette: Yeah. I can imagine that they’re…I keep thinking, there must be solutions out there that people building all of these tools also recognise that security is an issue. I mean, everybody want’s their data to be secure.
Spencer: Yeah.
Lisette: So my advice always to teams in these companies is push back on your IT departments. Make them look into these tools. They’re being…if I maybe so bold as to say I think they’re being a little lazy sometimes in terms of what they want to integrate into a bigger corporation. So, I’m telling people to push back. So now that I know these things about your tool, I feel extra comfortable in saying, no, push back, take a look.
Spencer: Sure, sure.
Lisette: So, we’re running out of time which is crazy. I’m already over, like I said I would be, but I want to ask, I guess, one final question.
Spencer: Okay.
Lisette: Very easy one which is if people want to learn more, what’s the best way to get in contact with you? Obviously the website, hibox.com.
Spencer: hibox.co actually. [unintelligible – 33:54].
Lisette: .co. Oh, good thing that I checked. Okay.
Spencer: Just search forHibox and it will come up. Hibox task messaging, you know, [unintelligible – 34:02]Hibox messaging but yeah. It’s hibox.co without the m and then, yeah. Other good ways, there’s a lot. I mean, you can reach out to us on social media. We have super active accounts on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. People can actually reached out to me directly. I don’t have a problem with that. It’s spencer at hibox.co so [unintelligible – 34:23]by mail or you can look for my Twitter handle which is spencerwcoon and, yeah, there’s phone numbers on the website. I mean, it’s very easy to get in touch with us. Like, we’re very…you can even go on our website, use Intercom, like I said, open that chat up, you know, have a conversation with one of our team members [that] are live.
Lisette: Yeah, it does pop up immediately on the website saying, hi, I’m Laura, can I help you? And I think hey I’ve seen her on…
Spencer: [unintelligible – 34:50].
Lisette: I’ve seen Laura on Twitter so…
Spencer: Exactly. We like to talk to people, make sure you know we’re providing something that people are enjoying using. So we’re big into feedback and, yeah, happy to talk to anyone. So definitely, definitely feel free to reach out.
Lisette: So no excuses, people. Got to…it’s too easy to do it. Well, thanks so much for taking the time today. I hope that you get a lot of people coming through this interview to you.
Spencer: Yeah. No. thanks for having us.
Lisette: [unintelligible – 35:18].
Spencer: Yeah and taking the time and yeah, certainly, we’d love to chat with people, looking forward to it.
Lisette: Great. Alright, everybody. Thanks so much for listening. Until next time, be powerful.
