Matt Thurmond

May 31, 2019

18 thriving remote companies you’ve never heard of



This was written pre-pandemic, so there are *way* more remote companies now. That said, this is still a great list of mostly small, thriving, fully remove businesses. 

I love bookmarking fun, successful companies that have fully remote teams. They’re great examples of how fully remote teams can succeed in building something valuable.

Interestingly, being fully remote correlates with being profitable, smaller, and bootstrapped. My thesis is that the bubble-like surge in VC funded companies has overshadowed a lot of successful remote companies with really useful products. They’ve been able to thrive, despite competing with VC-subsidized competitors, because they can hire top talent anywhere, keep costs reasonable, and create a culture that focuses on the work product, not the time in seat.

Without further ado, here’s the list. As of this writing all the companies below have healthy businesses and fully remote teams:

  1. TaxJar — Connect with their e-commerce taxes API
  2. Breakthrough PT — Marketing platform for physical therapy SMBs
  3. Form Assembly — Create your own signup forms
  4. Zapier — Connect your B2B apps
  5. Ghost — “Just a blogging platform”
  6. Buffer — Social media marketing platform
  7. Tortuga — Nomad travel backpacks! (Ok, not a tech biz, but had to add)
  8. Aha — Product roadmapping software
  9. Signal — Private messaging platform
  10. Brightcore — Software for insurers
  11. Hotjar — Web analytics
  12. Olark — Web chat your customers
  13. Articulate — Education software
  14. Sitemate — Project management software
  15. Groove HQ — Customer support software
  16. Glitch — Developer tools
  17. DuckDuckGo — Search engine
  18. Gitlab — Dev tools (>800 people)

I didn’t include obvious ones like Basecamp and Automatic, but there’s plenty of lists with those two (both of which I respect a ton).

Later I hope to put these in a google sheet and add info like product overview, blog link, glassdoor rating, and size. But for now, just wanted to compile the list. Hope you find it helpful and keep on working calmly and working remotely — no matter where you are.