Building Culture
Create a culture that attracts great people and scales as you grow.
Culture Is a Competitive Advantage
Culture isn't ping pong tables and free snacks. It's how your team makes decisions, resolves conflict, and treats each other. Strong culture attracts and retains top talent. Weak culture drives them away. Culture is set by the founders and reinforced by every hire.
"Culture eats strategy for breakfast." — Peter Drucker
Defining Your Values
Creating values that actually mean something
What Makes Good Values
Good Values
- • Specific and actionable
- • Differentiate you from others
- • Help make hard decisions
- • Have a "dark side" trade-off
- • Can be used in interviews
Bad Values
- • Generic ("Integrity"—who's against it?)
- • Aspirational but not true
- • Can't be used in hiring
- • Leadership doesn't model them
- • No one remembers them
Example Values with Teeth
Netflix: "Freedom & Responsibility"
Trade-off: Less hand-holding. Some people need more structure and won't thrive.
Amazon: "Have Backbone; Disagree and Commit"
Trade-off: Can feel confrontational. People who avoid conflict won't fit.
Stripe: "Move with urgency and focus"
Trade-off: Can feel intense. People who want work-life balance may struggle.
The Values Test
For each value, ask: "Would we fire a high performer who violated this?" If not, it's not a real value. Values without consequences are just words on a wall.
Living Your Values
Making values real in day-to-day work
Where Values Show Up
Hiring
Interview questions, scorecards, and rejection reasons should tie to values.
Performance Reviews
Evaluate both results AND how they were achieved (values alignment).
Promotions
Only promote people who model values. What gets rewarded gets repeated.
Terminations
Fire people who consistently violate values—even high performers.
Leadership Models Values
Culture flows from the top. If founders don't live the values, no one else will. People watch what leaders do, not what they say. Your behavior sets the ceiling for culture.
Culture Rituals
Building traditions that reinforce culture
Common Rituals
All-Hands/Town Halls
Weekly or bi-weekly company-wide meetings. Share wins, metrics, and direction.
Team Retrospectives
Regular reflection on what's working and what needs to change.
Shout-Outs/Recognition
Public recognition for people who exemplify values. Tie to specific behaviors.
Team Offsites
Quarterly or annual gatherings. Mix work (planning) with bonding (activities).
New Hire Announcements
Welcome new people with enthusiasm. Share why they're great and what they'll do.
Building Remote Culture
Culture without an office
Remote Culture Principles
Over-Communicate
Default to writing things down. What's obvious in-person isn't obvious remotely.
Intentional Face Time
Schedule non-work conversations. Virtual coffees, game sessions, pair programming.
Document Everything
Decisions, processes, context. Make info accessible async.
Regular IRL Meetups
Invest in bringing people together quarterly or annually.
Remote-Specific Rituals
- • Virtual coffee lottery (random pairings for casual chats)
- • "Show and tell" sessions for sharing work or hobbies
- • Async kudos channel in Slack for recognition
- • Birthday/anniversary celebrations with gifts shipped
Diversity & Inclusion
Building a team that represents everyone
Why D&I Matters
Diverse teams make better decisions, build better products, and outperform homogeneous teams. But diversity without inclusion is turnover. You need both.
Diversity
Having representation across gender, race, background, thought, experience.
Inclusion
Creating environment where everyone feels they belong and can contribute.
Building D&I Into Hiring
• Source from diverse candidate pools
• Use structured interviews with scorecards (reduces bias)
• Have diverse interview panels
• Remove identifying info from resume review
• Track metrics at each pipeline stage
Scaling Culture
Maintaining culture as you grow
Culture Challenges at Scale
10 → 30 people
First TestCan no longer know everyone. Need to document what was previously "just known."
30 → 100 people
HarderSubcultures form. Need managers who embody and reinforce values.
100+ people
Most DifficultCulture can dilute quickly. Need formal programs and dedicated culture efforts.
Culture Keepers
Identify and empower "culture keepers"—people who deeply embody your values and can help reinforce them as you scale. These become your cultural leaders even if they're not managers.
Practice Exercise
Define and strengthen your culture:
- 1Write down 3-5 values that truly differentiate your company
- 2For each value, define what it looks like in action
- 3Create interview questions that assess for each value
- 4Design 2-3 rituals that reinforce your culture
- 5Audit: Do your current practices align with stated values?