What Is The Best Way to Manage An International Startup?

My startup has employees who are in different places at different times. What is the best way to manage and to centralise files, emails, communications, ...? Would the web be the best place to start?

There are multiple tools you can use

1. Skype for communication
2. Collaboration & Project Management tools like Basecamp or JIRA Studio, depending on the level of complexity of your processes
3. Google Apps for Email, Document collaboration

These should be good enough to start with

• Skype is good (do not forget its Share screen option), but sometimes
  for audio chat Google Talk works better. Also Google Talk let's
  you track your incoming GMails. And it handles sending files through
  its chat window much faster than Skype.
• However you can track all your GMails + Calendar etc on your smartphone. But you have one already, do you?
• Pick separate time frames during the day when it is most convenient to chat for each employee. Choose some week day and time to have a chat/meeting for all your employees at once. Put some nice world clock in people's taskbars to prevent calls in 3am...
• Don't forget DropBox and similar - it's much easier just to save your big document on your computer and let it do all the sync

You should check out the just released features of Google+ hangouts ("hangouts with extras"). You get free video conferencing with multiple people, real-time shared documents editing, and a real-time shared sketchpad. If you can't collaborate in real-time because of time zones, you can still use shared google documents.

I would suggest HighRise for centralizing your emails to customers.

Basecamp for project management

you can start with a free (or cheap) account and scale up money comes...

I agree with Anurag,

Use remote desktop sharing software while dealing with few unreliable team and find someone reliable very soon.

I use skype email. You can use FTP to showcase work that has been done.