Building Culture

Brady defines company culture as the implicit behaviors that guide employees when no rule has been spelled out. Those behaviors can support a business over time, so founders should start thinking about them even while they are busy building a product.

Brady describes a path from idea stage to product-market fit and then scaling. The employees in place when scaling begins help hire and train the next wave, so their behavior can spread through the company. Early hiring mistakes can be harder to correct later.

Founders should be proud of the problem they solve, Brady says, because that commitment helps sustain energy when building gets difficult. He recounts a YC company that shifted from excess retail inventory to makeup for teenage girls; its founders did not identify with the customers and eventually shut it down. A long-term vision should explain the purpose of the work and attract people beyond a narrow set of specialists, as in Tesla’s energy mission and Microsoft’s early goal of a computer in every home.

Brady recommends that co-founders agree on a short, informal list of fewer than five values or behaviors to use alongside job skills when hiring. Spotify’s traits and Atlassian’s behavioral principles show different ways to express such a list. Founders must model the behaviors themselves, and Brady favors externally focused guidance: he contrasts Facebook’s “move fast and break things” with Google’s early “don’t be evil” motto as a source of customer-facing guardrails.

Brady urges founders to discuss diversity of opinions as well as ethnic and gender diversity, since relying on friends and former colleagues can quickly produce a homogeneous team. He recommends building those priorities into a hiring process from the first employee. After the first few hires, co-founders should review whether the process selected the people they wanted and adjust it before scaling.