I am curious what kind of motivation did you try?
Also it is hard to work remotely and many people just can't do that.
Many things, not done in exact science although it was obvious what slightly works and what definitely doesn't.
> Also it is hard to work remotely and many people just can't do that.
That's exactly my point, maybe these 5 guys can't handle remoting but I might find new 5 guys who can (just like I already got 3)
Did you try to share the vision? Set clear goals? Make sure that they really understand and share same values?
To me it looks like you tried to make environment more strict, while it is not the way to go in software development.
But well it's a software and not like we are saving the world or ending war in Middle East, or poverty in Africa. All we do is making a cool software and making something new in the field.
What sort of shared values and clear goals we talking about? To be honest other than obvious clear goals for many startups -make great software, be fresh, be better- (I think) we don't have anything stand out.