$\color{#44ccff}\sf\small{Amy~Robinson,~Founder~Pivotal~Moments}$
I was an early employee and Chief People Officer of Carbon Black, a cybersecurity startup that grew from 100 to 1,200+ employees and went public in 2019. In that role, I was part of the rocketship startup growth experience and helped build a culture that was a critical part of our success through multiple stages of growth. Now, as the founder of Pivotal Moments and a Venture Partner at Companyon Ventures, I’m helping startup leaders build inspiring cultures that help companies increase productivity and morale, reduce employee churn, and win in the market.
Amy Robinson, Leadership Coach
As a founder CEO, there are many moving parts to consider when setting up your company for success, and it’s certainly not for the faint of heart. You need a purposeful vision with the right product/market fit, timing, and resources to help you scale. And although those operational aspects are incredibly important, there’s another major thing many people forget during their early stages: the need to establish an inspiring and lasting company culture.
Your company culture is the heart and soul of your business and impacts everything from how well you function and perform as a team to how your company is perceived in the market. It’s the collective attitudes and behaviors of your people and how the company operates internally and with the outside world.
Getting it right is so important. Why? Because culture eats strategy for breakfast. Without this core element of your business strategy established and well-led, you will run into major friction down the road. For example, you could wind up with competing cultures within your company, culture drift, or worse – having no culture at all. All three scenarios cause major employee morale and productivity drag, requiring management bandwidth to deal with these internal challenges rather than spending time focused on driving innovation and growth.
Also, another important element to consider is that in today’s hyper-competitive talent market, managing your culture and brand identity is crucial. Either manage it, or it manages you. Social media has enabled people to get a bird’s eye view into what it’s like to work at your company before they ever set foot (or a virtual foot) in it. Candidates can easily research companies and their cultures with employee review sites like Glassdoor before applying. What your employees say about your company matters and can determine whether you can hire and retain great people. Don’t leave it to chance.
It all starts with the Founding CEO and Founding Team. In the seed stage, I recommend this core group spend the time to develop a bold, clear, and inspiring vision of the culture they are trying to create and the legacy they want to leave behind. It doesn’t have to be fancy. I believe the less fancy and the more memorable, the better. Challenge yourself to capture the essence of your culture in five words or less and then define what those traits mean to you.
Here’s an example from Facebook:
Next, talk to your early joiners and get input on your proposed guiding principles and values. See what resonates and what doesn’t. You never want to set a purely “top-down” approach. Instead, it’s crucial to involve your employees early in the process. Engagement is key.
Talk to everyone if your team is really small, as it usually is before an A round. They will feel valued and recognized for all of what they can bring towards helping you build an awesome company. Plus, you need these varying perspectives to assess how well your envisioned culture aligns with your greater employee population's values, needs, and expectations. This will reduce blinders.
<aside> 💡 Hint: if diversity & inclusion is one of your guiding principles, walking the talk on this step is especially important. More on this later.
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