Work Trip to Portugal? It’s a New World of Offsites: Parmy Olson

Grant Wernick is facing a challenge many other Silicon Valley startup founders will find familiar. Before the pandemic, he had 20 employees working for his cybersecurity startup Fletch.ai in San Francisco. Since then, all but one moved to cities such as Portland, Seattle, Denver and Sacramento. His company is now fully remote, and it hasn’t been easy. Productivity slid in the second year of Covid. “Keeping the spirit alive is hard,” he says. Slack and Zoom just don’t beat face-to-face interactions.

His answer to the problem has been quarterly “offsite” meetings. Everyone is required to attend unless they have a ...