Daniel Kosh
For the past few years, we’ve been trying to make remote work feel less remote.
We’ve added tools, meetings, and apps meant to “connect” us, yet somehow, the more connected we’ve become, the further apart we’ve felt.
At Katmai, we started with a simple question:
What if the problem isn’t where people work, but when they start?
Starting Apart
Most digital work still begins apart.
We wait for the right time, the right slot, the right invite.
Collaboration is delayed by coordination - it’s a rhythm dictated by calendars, not creativity.
This approach was inherited from the conference room era, where time and space were scarce. But in a distributed world, those limits no longer apply. We can work from anywhere, at any time and yet, the systems we rely on still force us to schedule every connection like a board meeting.
On Zoom or Teams, the average meeting is 45–54 minutes, with 7 participants, and nearly all of them scheduled.
Teams spend 30–40% of their week in video meetings - often to “align” on what could have been solved in a 5-minute chat.
Work happens in bursts between calls. Momentum builds, then stalls. That's what we call starting apart -- scheduled, delayed, bloated, opaque. It's efficient in theory but, in practice, it slows us down and wears us out.
Starting Together
Katmai flips that model completely.
Work in Katmai happens when ideas strike, not when calendars align.
Presence replaces planning.
When you open Katmai, you don’t log into a meeting, you enter a space.
You see your teammates moving, talking, collaborating in real time. You can walk up, wave, or start a quick chat, just like you would in a real office.
The result is a fundamentally different rhythm of work:
- 90% of meetings happen spontaneously.
- 70% of them last 15 minutes or less.
- The average meeting has just 2–3 participants.
Katmai users spend 23.4 hours per week inside the platform, but only 2.3 hours in meetings. The rest of the time is deep work, punctuated by quick, high-value interactions that keep momentum alive.
When presence is continuous, collaboration becomes constant.
You don’t “schedule” progress - it just happens.
A Culture Built on Visibility
The difference isn’t just speed, it’s transparency.
In Katmai, 95% of meetings are open-door.
That means nearly every conversation is visible, inclusive, and discoverable.
Only 5% are private or confidential.
This level of visibility transforms culture.
It creates mentorship through observation.
It drives accountability without micromanagement.
It replaces isolation with awareness.
In legacy tools, collaboration is private by default - invisible until you’re invited.
In Katmai, collaboration is ambient. You see what’s happening around you. You feel connected even when you’re heads-down. That’s what culture looks like in a digital environment that feels alive.
The Human OS
Underneath the data and the product, there’s a deeper principle:
We’ve spent a century building systems that treat people like process: linear, scheduled, rigid.
But human connection has never worked that way.
We thrive on presence, proximity, and flow, not permission.
So we built Katmai as a behavioral operating system for distributed work.
It restores the natural rhythm of being together - not in the same room, but in the same moment.
Instead of scheduling collaboration, we live inside it.
Instead of searching for connection, we start with it.
Instead of treating meetings as the unit of work, we make presence the unit of collaboration.
Why It Matters
The future of work isn’t about replacing the office.
It’s about reimagining what “together” means.
Teams that start together make faster decisions, build stronger cultures, and experience less fatigue.
They replace coordination with connection.
They replace scheduling with flow.
They replace friction with energy.
That's what it means to start together. Instant. Lean. Visible. Human.
Let’s Rethink “Together”
If any of this resonates - if you’re rethinking how your team connects, collaborates, or builds culture in a distributed world - I’d love to show you what this looks like in action.
You can reach me directly at dan@katmaitech.com to set up a time to meet with me in Katmai HQ, our own virtual office.
Come see how it feels when work starts together.