Even though we are a startup with an informal garage culture, we do have some meetings :) As we grow as a company, meetings tend to drag in ever more people and thus consume ever more time, while making it harder to effectively exchange ideas or reach decisions. It's extremely important to keep the meetings efficient.

Regular meetings

Calendar invite

Each meeting needs to be in Google Calendar. Here are the rules for creating calendar invites:

• What is the meeting purpose (sync, discussion, decision, ...) → set the concrete agenda
• What is the meeting goal → define concrete outcome to be reached
• Materials or information to be studied by everyone before the meeting
• What should everyone have prepared for the meeting
• Who is responsible for the discussed project/call (if anyone else than the meeting owner)
• Always include a link to Google Meet (or Zoom) in the meeting and enable guests to edit meetings - see ‣

At the end of the call, the holder should ask if we reached the goal. If not, why, and what are the next steps?

Before the meeting

Default to async

Not everything needs a meeting. Status updates, announcements, and decisions that don't need real-time discussion belong in Slack or Notion. Book a meeting when you need genuine dialogue, alignment, or creative work together.

Respect individual working hours

Not all of us are working in the same time zone or in the same times. You can set yours in Google Calendar settings. When you are scheduling a meeting, please respect the working hours people have set and check for time zone differences for remote Apifiers.

Agenda

For a meeting to be efficient, it needs to have an agenda, so that people know if they need to join or not. Specify if the meeting is just a status update, brainstorming, or a decision needs to be made. A good way to write an agenda is by using a list of questions that need to be answered at the meeting.

If there is no clear agenda for the meeting, people are free to reject the invite or leave early.