About Hoop
What is Hoop?
Hoop is a venture-backed software company founded by the three executives who took Trello from startup to its $425 million acquisition by Atlassian in 2017. Justin Gallagher (Product, Engineering & Design), Stella Garber (Go to Market), and Brian Schmidt (Operations, Finance & Legal) reunited in 2022 to build Hoop after each had stayed on at Atlassian through 2022. The current product is an AI retention agent for Shopify subscription brands — it runs the save conversation on every cancel ticket in Gorgias or Zendesk, reading subscriber history from Recharge or Skio and offering personalised pause, swap, or discount offers. Hoop announced a $5 million seed round and is backed by Index Ventures along with angel investors including Wade Foster (CEO of Zapier), Job van der Voort (CEO of Remote), Jay Simons (former President of Atlassian), Michael Pryor (Trello co-founder), and Darren Murph (former Head of Remote at GitLab).
Where will I work?
Hoop describes itself on its About page as "a remote-first, mostly asynchronous team located across the US." Its founding-engineer job post is explicit that "You are based in the United States" — there is no physical office to commute to. The team values asynchronous work practices over always-on, synchronous cultures. Periodic offsites bring the team together "to build community and gather momentum on our priorities," but day-to-day work happens from each team member's home base across US time zones. Stella Garber, one of the three founders, championed remote work advocacy during her decade leading marketing at Trello, so distributed, async-first operations are core to how Hoop runs.
What is the Hoop team like?
The founding team has worked together for over a decade. Justin Gallagher led Product, Engineering & Design at Trello and is now CPO at Hoop. Stella Garber led Marketing at Trello and is a recognised remote-work advocate. Brian Schmidt led Operations, Finance & Legal at Trello. Hoop's four stated values are Remote First (a distributed US team working asynchronously), Customer Obsessed (every product decision starts with the customer), High Trust High Accountability ("we're intentional about how we work together"), and Exceptional Craft (building delightful, world-class software is the team's passion). The founders describe themselves and the team they're building as "ambitious, high achievers who are masters in our crafts and take immense pride in our work." Investor names — Wade Foster, Job van der Voort, Annie Duke (the decision-science author), Andy Dunn (Bonobos co-founder), Linda Lian (Common Room CEO) — give a sense of the operator network surrounding the company.
Work-Life Balance
Hoop publishes its work-life philosophy directly on its blog: "We're on a personal mission to prove to the world that you can build a world class software business where employees have rich, meaningful lives outside of work that make them happier, more fulfilled, and more productive at work." That mission translates into a "Reduced workweek. 4 days or 5 shorter days" — employees can pick the four-day version or stretch the same reduced hours across five shorter days. The compensation & benefits section of the founding-engineer job post lists the policy verbatim as "Remote work, with an emphasis on asynchronous work and a 4-day work week." The async-first operating model is itself part of the work-life equation: the company's mission is to "help teams work better asynchronously" — and they apply that to themselves first.
Perks and Benefits
Disclosed verbatim in the founding-engineer job post on the Hoop blog:
- Reduced workweek of 4 days or 5 shorter days
- Remote work across the US with asynchronous work as the default
- Health, dental & vision insurance
- 401(k) retirement plan
- Competitive total compensation including salary and equity
- The tools you need to get your work done (equipment provision)
- Offsites to build community and gather momentum on team priorities
The company's design choices around meetings are themselves a perk: Hoop's product exists to help teams "make better decisions faster without meetings," and the team applies that philosophy internally — "mostly asynchronous, with meaningful sync time for collaboration."