The Async-First Handbook: How Our 40-Person Remote Team Stays Aligned

We're a 40-person company spread across 14 time zones. Our only Singapore and New York employees have a 13-hour time difference. Making synchronous work the default would mean someone is always sacrificing sleep.

The async-first principles

Async-first doesn't mean never meeting. It means the default assumption is that communication doesn't require real-time presence — and that you only escalate to synchronous when genuinely necessary.

• Write > speak: decisions live in documents, not meeting memories
• Context is your responsibility: never send a message that requires 3 rounds of clarification
• Timezones are a feature: someone is always fresh and reviewing your work
• Respond within 24 hours, but not within 24 minutes
• A Loom beats a meeting 80% of the time

How we run projects

Every project at DayPilot starts with a one-page brief — context, goals, constraints, and open questions. The brief lives in DayPilot itself, linked from the project board. Anyone can read it at 3am in Tokyo and understand exactly where things stand.

The best async cultures aren't just about fewer meetings. They're about writing with enough clarity that meetings become unnecessary.

The tools we use

• DayPilot: all project tracking, task assignment, and status updates
• Loom: async video for design reviews, demos, and sensitive conversations
• Notion: long-form documentation, meeting notes, and the company handbook
• Slack: ephemeral chat — nothing important lives only in Slack
• Linear: engineering sprints and bug tracking