What is Startup Culture?

Many first-time startup founders struggle to devote time to define their culture from the beginning, only to come to the painful realization that culture certainly has an impact on the operational side of business. Seasoned founders & CEOs who believe there is room for culture from the beginning experience less culture-related stress as they grow. I often talk to folks at various stages of growth and find that although culture is seen as essential, many are unsure of how to define it for their own purposes. This can be particularly challenging when there are less than a handful of people on the team.

startup culture by examining the company:

• Identity,
• Growth Strategy, and
• Relationships

What motivates the team? Did the team members she met decide to work at the company because they specifically believed in the team and mission, or did they just need a job? Do they arrive in the morning energized to tackle anything that comes up, or do they stare at the clock waiting to go home? Is the team motivated by fear of failure or by the chance to do something great? Are people being challenged to do new things, or were they hired to do the same jobs they did at their last companies?

What are people’s work habits? Do people arrive early in the office and leave by dinner, or do they work late into the night and then not roll back in until lunch the next day? Do people work from home regularly? Does the team respond to emails and Slack messages late at night and on the weekends, or do they sign off and go dark when the workday ends?

Is the team diverse? Is the team a mix of immigrants and natives? Do they have a mix of experience levels, or is everyone straight out of school? Does it have racial and gender diversity, or were they all college buddies? Did most of the team know each other before joining the company, or were they recruited from a variety of backgrounds and networks?

Does the team socialize? At the end of the day, do they hang out together, or do they go home to other friends and family? Are their social lives wrapped up in the company, or is the company just one of several social circles for them? Do they like each other, or are they merely cordial?

Where do the ideas come from? Do the founders generate the ideas and then expect the team to go and execute them? Or is every team member expected to contribute their own ideas? Are people hired based on their ability to generate ideas and advocate for them, or just on their ability to crank out tasks defined by someone more senior?

How does the team collaborate? Do people schedule meetings to hash things out in person, or do they toss ideas around virtually over email and Slack? Do people openly share what they are working on with other groups and solicit feedback, or do they hold their work close to the vest, avoiding feedback since it might create debate or conflict? Are decisions made by consensus? If so, do decisions get stalled when consensus is not reached?

Do people seek or avoid conflict? When there is a tough decision to be made, do people get together and hammer it out? When a difficult conversation is needed, does the team wallow into it or avoid it? Do people complain about other teams behind their backs, or do they seek them out and resolve their differences proactively?

Does the team promote from within? Are team members being trained on all aspects of the business so that they can take on more responsibility as it grows, or does the company expect to hire new managers from the outside once more “adult supervision” is required?

How does the team plan? Does the company have a clear set of goals and objectives the team is working towards? Is it clear who is responsible for which work? How often are the plans refreshed? Do the execs pick a plan and stick to it all all costs, or do they replan as new data becomes available?

Who is rewarded? Are promotions and kudos handed out to the people who jump in and perform heroics when there is a crisis or to the steady and reliable performers? Do the folks working in customer-facing roles get most of the kudos, or the ones behind the scenes making the trains run on time? Is challenging the status quo a fast track to get more responsibility, or is making noise a good way to get smacked down and silenced?

When your recruit thinks about all of these factors, she is considering your company’s values, norms, and expectations. She is thinking about how the company gets work done, who makes the decisions, and how people are rewarded.

where does that culture come from?

A company’s culture is largely an output of the people who work there. A company with mostly introverted people probably will have a quiet and considered culture.

Culture is set by the leaders, starting with the founders. The leaders design the org chart and put together the team. They decide who to reward and promote. They either welcome feedback and challenges or are threatened by them. Their behavior sets an example to the rest of the team, and the rest of the team models it.

Culture is set early and is hard to change. When your team arrives to work on a Monday, they are generally going to behave the same way they did last Friday — it takes a deliberate act to change people’s habits. When your team hires new people, they will usually hire people who fit into the culture. And if your team is homogenous, it will have more trouble adding diversity later.

A great office environment can help attract and reward the people you want to join, but the culture is set by how the company does its work, how it communicates, and who it recognizes and rewards.

So what can a founding team do to make sure their startup has a great culture?

The culture will reflect the founders’ and early employees’ personalities

They need to discuss with each other the culture they want to build and make sure they are in agreement before starting the company.

They need to talk about adding more co-founders or early employees to counter-balance their own personalities to get more diversity and shore up weaknesses.

Startups should interview for cultural fit just as much as they interview for skill. They should check references carefully and ask those references questions about the candidate’s character and work style. 

Human nature is to hire people like ourselves, so the founders should reach out to a variety of networks to get more diversity of thought and background vs. simply hiring people they happen to already know.

Lead by example.

Leaders are under a microscope. Very small behaviors, like what they choose to talk about, who they reward, and how they respond to feedback and criticism spread quickly and set the culture. The daily mood swings of company leaders can influence the culture, and even something as small as their body language can cause the team to react.

Decisions Management

If you’re trying to figure out what a company’s values really are, look at the decisions management makes when lots of money, risk, or loss of face for executives is at odds with the stated values. Want to know the company’s mission & vision? Look at what they’ve intentionally chosen not to do, even though it could be lucrative. And if you’re seeking answers to why a company hires & fires, talk to the managers about their most unorthodox hires that have worked out, and the most regret they’ve felt when letting someone go (and why).

I wish that values, mission and vision, and people decisions were always spelled out on a document, but very often, even at Big Companies, sometimes, the actions speak louder than what’s on the mission statement or the core values list.

Many companies have core values, but they don’t really commit to them. They usually sound more like something you’d read in a press release. Maybe you learn about them on day one of orientation, but after that it’s just a meaningless plaque on the wall of the lobby.

It’s hard to imagine how we would suffer if companies and individuals forgot the definition of workplace culture and defined it solely based on Nerf guns, LAN parties and beer o’clock Fridays. There’s room for creating an awesome atmosphere but it won’t fill the cultural void, it will only damage the business and prompt bad hiring decisions, and it will also create false ideas of workplace culture, cultural fit, and work itself.

Think about everything that went into the creation of your startup, latch onto something that’s unique in that story and build your culture from the ground up. It needs to match your vision for work culture. Nobody else’s matters.