A day in the life of a TextNow Employee!

Article originally published on the Cora Group website. Click HERE for original publication.

TextNow is changing the way people communicate by developing the most exceptional, affordable phone service. As the world’s first cloud-based phone carrier, their focus on customer service, innovation and transparency is resonating with their users. The TextNow app has been downloaded over 100 million times and counting.

We’re proud to have been part of their rapid growth, witnessing the transition from the Accelerator Centre to 6,000 sq. Ft of space, and expanding to 17,000 sq. ft of space in The Cora Building at 375 Hagey Blvd.

This Fall, TextNow will transition to an entire floor of space in evolv1, our latest property in the David Johnston Research and Technology Park.

We sat down with TextNow CFO, Darren Denomme who told us more about a typical day at 375 Hagey Blvd.

1.    Tell us about your role at TextNow and how long you’ve been working at The Cora Building, 375 Hagey Blvd.?

My title is CFO, but I consider my role to be the Senior Problem Solver. “Senior” not because I am smarter than our other employees, but because I am 20 years older than everyone else. I am one of the original TextNow employees who moved into our current building back in November of 2011, about 6 ½ years ago.

2.    Your colleagues describe the employee culture at TextNow as a large family. What does this mean to you and how does it impact your workday?

We are a family here at TextNow because of our collaborative approach to everything we do. We succeed or fail, together. I often refer to us as a hockey team, where everyone has a distinct role, working together to ensure team success, and that our team wins. I feel we’re well on our way to winning the Stanley Cup!

3.    Can you tell us about your typical day in the office? Do you work independently at your desk, or in an open-concept, collaborative space? Do you schedule meetings, or tend to brainstorm as needed?

We all work in a very open-concept area, with the teams situated strategically to leverage working opportunities. About half my day is spent working independently on issues, and the other half is in meetings or working collaboratively with my team or other teams. I would guess that other parts of the business have a higher percentage of their days working collaboratively. Probably 2/3 of my meetings are planned, and 1/3 are ad-hoc.

4.    What have you enjoyed most about working at 375 Hagey Blvd? What are you looking forward to as TextNow moves to our latest Cora property, evolv1 – named Canada’s greenest building?

One of the cool things about having our business at 375 Hagey Blvd. has been our ability to expand into additional space as our growth demanded. We started in 6,000 square feet and have expanded four times over the past six years. Moving over to evolv1 is exciting, because not only are we tripling our floor space, but we have a clean sheet of paper to design the layout and features to drive our culture and values further. One of our goals for 2018 is to make TextNow the best place to work, and I confidently believe that this building will significantly contribute to us hitting that goal.

5.    You’ve just wrapped up a big project and the work day is coming to an end – what do you and your colleagues do to celebrate?

We have an “Unlimited Vacation” plan which lives on the premise that if you deliver the results that are expected of you, then you’re free to take some time off. So, in this hypothetical situation, if the team I were working with just finished a big project and we delivered what we were supposed to do, then I’d probably take the next day off to re-energize, and encourage the team to follow suit.