Phil Freo

Paris Retreat

1 min readRemoteClosePersonal
The Close team posing for a group photo on the lawn in front of a French château

I’m just getting back to regular work this week after an incredible week outside of Paris with the Close team, followed by some vacation fun touring around Switzerland with my wife!

Remote is great, but there’s nothing like in-person time for re-energizing teams around a laser-focused vision.

During the retreat we:

  • Set a clarified product vision and shared our roadmaps
  • Did a bunch of AI demos – from engineers and non-engineers alike
  • Had valuable in-person time for building relationships and brainstorming together

I’ve written before about how much a small in-person mini-retreat can accomplish. A whole-company retreat is the same idea at a bigger scale – and it carries us a long way through the rest of the year.

Afterwards, my wife and I got to explore Switzerland:

My wife and me at the Jungfraujoch, with the Aletsch Glacier behind us View over Lake Lucerne with the Alps in the distance