The Remote Show · Tyler Sellhorn, Matthew Hollingsworth

Patrick Burns, Cofounder at Commons

·27 min·2 clips

Patrick Burns explains why a 2-minute voice chat can replace a 30-minute email thread.

Patrick Burns is the guest. Tyler introduces him as co-founder of Commons, a company focused on helping remote teams feel more connected. The conversation moves at an easy, patient pace. Patrick first nods to the remote work resources around the show, then explains that Commons started with his co-founders about a year earlier, right after the pandemic began. Commons stays at the center. The product question is plain: when teams are no longer running into each other naturally, where do they talk? Tyler keeps that question practical. He does not hurry past the company pitch. He asks what Commons is trying to solve and lets Patrick build the remote team context around it. Access becomes one of the main threads. Patrick talks about founders around the world booking Zoom meetings with investors and fitting several conversations into a single day. That change feels meaningful to him, partly because it makes geography matter less. He also connects remote work to talent, describing a team spread across Europe, Turkey, the United States, India, and New York. The playing field, in his view, keeps opening up. Tyler then turns the conversation toward hiring. He asks what makes a candidate worth a closer look when the team is remote. Patrick does not make it sound simple. Hiring is already hard, he says, and remote hiring can be harder because there is more volume at the top of the funnel. From there, the episode becomes more personal to Commons. Patrick talks about his co-founders Aziz and Nazan, how he met Aziz at Snap, and Nazan's roughly 12 years at Microsoft. Their Turkey connection matters because Aziz and Nazan understand the Turkish startup ecosystem, which helped Commons spot strong talent there. Tyler keeps bringing the episode back to the practical question: what can remote teams notice when they are trying to decide who might fit? The close is direct and generous. Listeners are sent to Patrick on LinkedIn and Twitter, plus commons.so, before Tyler points back to the WeWorkRemotely community and its remote jobs.

As heard by us

A practical look at how remote work reshapes hiring and team connection.

The episode looks at how distributed and hybrid work have changed the parts of work that matter most: hiring, staying connected, and how founders build for a remote world.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

How remote hiring opens access to talent across Turkey, Europe, and the U.S.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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