Ask HN: How do you communicate in a remote startup?

Make conversations public by default. If you use Slack, make team channels, project channels, announcement channels etc. all public. Discourage 1:1 and private communication unless really necessary, especially for engineering topics. This single change will have an immense impact on overall company culture.

How to find comfort for and include characters that don't like the spotlight? At least not during early phase/brainstorming.

I've worked with many great people that hate to handle things without their usual group first, and will stall until a reasonable approach can be presented. Which means creating shadow communication process - the more you push for "discouraging 1:1" the more they will hide.

What your organisation did with such "incompatible" people, relate them until the team left likes how they work, or were there better ideas?

In my experience, most of the time this can be solved by resetting expectations. Once people learn that asking basic questions won’t open them up to mockery, things move a lot smoother for everyone.

After all, a culture on 1:1 communication has a lot of downsides. The same question gets asked repeatedly, replies don’t become searchable, the same people (usually the most experienced) end up being constantly tapped for answers