Startup Success: Key Initiatives for Building a Strong Company Culture

When I hired our first dermatologist consultant, I made her sign something unusual before any NDA or contract. It was a simple document stating she’d never recommend an ingredient she wouldn’t use on her own kids. Sounds dramatic, but that one piece of paper set the tone for everything that followed.

So we built our culture around what I call “kitchen table transparency”. Every product meeting starts with the same question. Would you put this on your daughter’s eczema? Your mom’s sensitive skin? If anyone hesitates, we go back to the formulation.

This created a self-selecting team. People who wanted to cut corners or chase trends didn’t stick around. The ones who stayed genuinely care about results over revenue.

That “family first” filter probably cost us some speed in the beginning. But 10 years later, our core team has been with us for 6+ years on average. They’re not just employees. They’re believers.

Building culture in the early days meant borrowing from my past life analyzing insurance claims data; finding patterns nobody else saw. I realized that startup culture isn’t something you declare in a mission statement; it’s built through repeated small actions that reveal what you actually value.

We started with “Follow the Check Fridays.” Every week, one team member would physically track a dental practice’s payment journey; from when an insurance company processes a claim to when that paper check finally lands in a mailbox. They’d document every delay, every frustration, every portal login. This wasn’t busywork. It created empathy at scale. Our developers started seeing their code as a way to eliminate someone’s 4 PM panic about missing payments. Our customer success team became obsessed with shaving hours off reconciliation time.

The breakthrough initiative? We implemented what I called “The 20 Portal Challenge.” New team members had to log into 20 different insurance company portals and try to reconcile just one day’s worth of payments for a fictional dental office. Most quit after portal number seven, frustrated and exhausted. That experience became our north star; if we couldn’t eliminate that pain entirely, we weren’t done building.

What I learned from 17 years of data analysis is that systems reveal truth. Culture isn’t about what you say in all-hands meetings; it’s about what your systems reward. When we built systems that celebrated time saved and stress eliminated for dental offices, our team naturally aligned around that mission.

In Esevel’s early days, building culture wasn’t something we delegated to HR, it was something we treated as a product we were actively designing.

As a remote IT management startup, we served various organizations to help consolidate their virtual IT management. We possessed a seemingly paradoxical quality for a startup: It was not a question of having enough people; it was about directional alignment. In a remote environment, a lack of communication can spiral into very numerous and complex problems.

One of the initiatives we set out on and designed was what we called “Open Metrics Mondays.”

We collected and presented a range of numbers to the entire team, including revenue, churn, runway and customer complaints. It was a mixed bag of numbers and not a curated summary. This was followed by a question and answer session.

The shift was immediate. Instead of waiting for instructions, the team started thinking in terms of impact. Engineers questioned how features tied to retention. Marketing began framing campaigns around revenue, not just traffic. Operations proactively flagged risks before they became fires.

The results came quickly: stronger cross-team collaboration, more proactive ownership, and faster decision-making, without adding layers of management. Most importantly, trust became the foundation of how we worked. And once trust was established, everything else scaled more naturally.

I ran our early operations meetings exactly like a hospital. In residency, when a case went wrong, we didn’t look for someone to blame. We dissected the process to ensure it never happened again. I applied this same rigor when a miscommunication with a supplier caused a multi-week stockout of our best-selling toe separator.

Instead of grilling the logistics manager, we traced the pathology of the error. We identified the exact email thread where the ambiguity started and built a new purchase order checklist to prevent recurrence. My team realized that reporting a mistake wouldn’t get them fired, but hiding one might. We treat operational failures as clinical symptoms to be treated, not character flaws to be punished.

In the very early days of Spendbase, we consciously sought to establish a culture reflective of the issue we were trying to solve – bringing clarity and order to a sphere that is generally messy and not properly managed. Ever since we started with SaaS discounts and vendor management, the basics for developing our culture were based around ownership, transparency and practical benefits your work has for people.

From day one, one principle consistently drove us to create a truly united team – every decision must create measurable value. This was true for us internally as well as for our product. Therefore, we wanted every person in our company to treat time, tools, and vendor relationships as if they were responsible for their own budget. This philosophy naturally shaped the way various teams within Spendbase collaborated – our decisions were grounded in data, discussions were held openly, and accountability sat with everyone involved in the decision.

One of the many initiatives we promoted since the very beginning was involving the entire team in real customer negotiations early on. Everyone on our team (engineers, product managers, and the operations team) experienced the way SaaS vendors price their products, negotiate, and structure contracts. This provided our entire team with a practical insight into the customer’s world, while simultaneously aligning our team towards a common goal – helping our clients save money and time without slowing down their businesses.

That early experience built empathy, sharpened commercial thinking, and fostered a place of mutual accountability. This early exposure to firsthand experience helped form a team that doesn’t just offer a service, but understands why and for whom we are doing this, and that foundation shapes how we operate up to this day.

From the very beginning of building my company, I was intentional about culture — not as a perk, but as a foundation. In our first few hours together as a team, I made boundaries a priority and said this explicitly: I respect your personal life, and your well-being matters to me.

I wanted to change the way traditional work feels. I’ve seen too many environments where long hours, blurred boundaries, and unnecessary drama are normalized. From day one, I set the expectation that we work within our scheduled hours, that no one is expected to go beyond their eight-hour day, and that working more is always a choice — never an unspoken requirement or pressure.

One initiative that had a significant positive impact was normalizing this mindset early and consistently. We remind our team that life is not all about work, and that their health, family, and personal lives come first. When people know they’re trusted to do their job without being monitored or guilted into overworking, they show up more focused, calm, and accountable during work hours.

We also made it clear that we want people to enjoy coming to work — no drama, no chaos, no overdrive hustle. That clarity created psychological safety and trust very early on. As a result, we’ve built a small, stable, high-performing team that takes ownership, communicates openly, and genuinely cares about the business because they don’t feel burned by it.

Culture isn’t built through slogans. It’s built through what you protect, what you model, and what you refuse to normalize — especially in the early days.

In our early days at Sienna Motors, I realized culture couldn’t just be about sales targets—it had to reflect how we wanted customers to feel. We built everything around “white-glove service,” meaning every team member had to think like they were selling to their own family member.

One initiative that made a huge difference was letting our sales team write the actual vehicle descriptions for our listings. Instead of generic copy, they could be honest, personality-driven, even funny—like when we described the AMG E63 S’s engine sound as something that “can quickly land you cheek-down on Officer Friendly’s hood getting fitted for shiny new bracelets.” Customers loved the authenticity, and our team felt ownership over the inventory.

The result? We saw repeat customers and referrals climb noticeably, and our team turnover dropped because they weren’t just order-takers anymore. When people can bring their genuine selves to work and see customers respond positively, that’s when culture stops being a poster on the wall and becomes real.

Pick one pet peeve that irritates everyone early on. Declare war on it publicly. It could be long email threads, excessive meetings, mandatory weekly status reports, etc. Find something that wastes people’s time and makes them feel like what they do doesn’t matter. Highlight it. Put a whiteboard somewhere and start tracking every hour you waste on that pet peeve. Eliminate one level of process or rule each week. This demonstrates that doing versus doing performance artist impressions is what’s rewarded around here.

Take email for example. You can easily declare war on lengthy CC chains. Maybe you ban CCs to more than three people. Within days you’ll hear different conversations in the breakroom, because after all, no one likes to be the person filling up inboxes. But more importantly you start to have conversations about solving vs. shuffling. Point is, give your employees something tangible to fight against and you’ll quickly learn what they stand for.

Our company culture was approached from the point of view of getting all employees familiar with all aspects of doing business, not just their own job function or area of expertise; therefore, we steered away from a strict hierarchy and focused on employees being fluent across departments. For example: A developer would be aware of what marketing is dealing with as far as challenges and a designer would understand the obstacles that a salesperson faces. The higher level of understanding of the “why” behind all the pivots that we made within the company resulted in less friction between departments because there was a broader understanding and knowledge of where they fit into the overall direction of our business.

The Cross-Pollination Weekly initiative had the greatest impact on our organization. A different person from a different department would present informal status updates on all wins, obstacles, and tools used on Monday meetings. The intent was to give everyone an insight into what the person presents and how they influence the other areas of the company. At the end of one year, all employees had a complete “map” of how all employees and departments connected. This paved the way for all employees to work together when problems occur within the company as one complete unit versus independent departments operating as entirely separate units.

Early on, I made one rule: don’t fall in love with your own ideas. Check reality fast.

To enforce this, I taught everyone the ICE method, a scoring system we use before doing anything now. ICE stands for Impact, Confidence, and Effort. Every feature or experiment gets scored 0-10 on each, then we calculate: (Impact + Confidence) / Effort. High-effort ideas need exceptional impact to justify moving forward.

This killed the “wouldn’t it be cool if…” culture instantly. My team stopped defending ideas and started defending evidence. Over-motivated people (including me) had to prove why building something complicated made more sense than testing a simpler version first. We focused on high-confidence, low-effort wins that let us learn fast.

In health tech, this matters a lot. Assumptions about user behavior can cause real harm.

Reality doesn’t negotiate. My suggestion is to build a culture that respects that.

In the early days, we didn’t think about culture as something abstract we needed to define upfront. It formed through how we worked when things were still messy.

One initiative that had a real impact was anchoring the team around direct customer feedback during the Vinyl beta. We were working closely with accounting firms testing the product, and we made it a habit to regularly share what we were hearing across the team. Not polished summaries, just honest takeaways about what was working, what was confusing, and what we were intentionally not building yet.

That simple practice created alignment and trust. Everyone understood the “why” behind decisions, and it kept the focus on solving real problems instead of debating opinions.

Your culture will be defined not by what you say it would be, but by what you’re willing to tolerate, especially if you’re a startup without layers of management or formal policies yet.

One of my main priorities when trying to form our culture was building one where people have a sense of ownership instead of blame. When something went wrong, the rule was we keep the focus on fixing the problem. That started with me.

We’re not in this business to protect anybody’s egos, so if a decision, even from leadership, created problems, they have to own it publicly so others on the team feel safe doing the same. This helped us establish and have shared standards early. It removed a lot of unnecessary stress and second-guessing.

In the beginning I was all about ensuring everyone felt a sense of ownership over our mission and not just their job. I rolled up my sleeves and led by example. Our values of honesty, being dependable and pride in your work were evident in everything we did from packing a box to talking to a customer. One of the best things I started was our “Friday Walks”. It was an informal stroll around the nursery talking about our week. What went well. What didn’t. It built trust, generated new ideas and let everyone know their opinion was important. That transparency carried through everything.

I built Flux Marine from a garage project into a vertically integrated company, and the culture shift that mattered most was moving from “founder does everything” to “team owns outcomes.” When we were still prototyping, I’d stay up coding motor controllers while also answering customer emails—that doesn’t scale, and it definitely doesn’t build a company.

The initiative that changed everything was giving engineers direct access to customers on the water. Instead of filtering feedback through me, we started sending the people designing our batteries and power electronics out on demo days and sea trials. When the engineer who built the thermal management system had to explain to a charter captain why their boat was down, they came back and redesigned it in 48 hours.

We also made “test it yourself” mandatory before any system shipped. If you designed the motor, you’re the first one running it at full throttle on the test stand. That killed the blame game instantly—nobody wanted to ship something they wouldn’t trust themselves. Our warranty claims dropped significantly once people started treating prototypes like production units because their name was literally on it.

In the early days of my start-up, I approached culture much as I had approached S.E.O. — as something I could build using the same analytical playbook. I started with fundamentals. We established clear values to reflect how we wanted to operate under pressure. These values were practical, not aspirational. The standards by which we weighed candidates and how we handled feedback and prioritization reflected that everything felt urgent and that cultural fit was as important as technical skill. When cultural fit falls out of alignment, it can slow teams to a crawl, and there’s no process fix that can remedy that.

It was a simple yet powerful habit. We made time in team meetings and channels for people to give one another shout-outs for strong execution, collaboration or problem solving. They didn’t criticize directly because they didn’t need to. The marketing team used it to bolster the internal brand. Repeated signals can powerfully shape perception, behavior and expectations.

At first, team-scale friction was reduced and collaboration was improved. And new hires always knew exactly what was expected of them. Rather than retreat into their cocoon, everyone pitched in and was invested in a communal outcome.

In the early days, my approach to culture was simple: lead by example. I don’t ask anyone to do work I wouldn’t do myself, especially when the company is small and resources are tight. Early on, that meant I was involved in everything — customer conversations, logistics, problem-solving — because credibility matters when you’re asking people to commit to something new.

One initiative that made a real difference was being very deliberate about delegation. I only handed off responsibilities once they started to limit my ability to focus on the most critical priorities. When I did delegate, I made ownership explicit and encouraged team members to take on work that matched their strengths, or even suggest areas they wanted to own and grow into.

That created a culture where people felt trusted, not managed. As a result, accountability came naturally, and the team scaled without needing layers of oversight.

In our earliest days, building the team at Togo Supply Chain Resource Group, I knew culture had to start with how we worked together, not just what we delivered. Getting clear on our values and expectations helped everyone move in the same direction. We wanted people who took ownership seriously, who felt driven to enhance client operations week after week, and who were comfortable stepping into problems and owning the outcome.

One early initiative was setting up cross-functional problem-solving huddles. Rather than teams working in isolation, we brought operations, process design, client success, and support functions together for short, focused discussions. That broke down silos quickly and promoted mutual respect for how each group contributed to client results.

Another effort I pushed for was intentional onboarding. From the first day, new team members were paired with mentors whose role was not just to teach systems and tools, but to bring them into the culture, how we think about work, how we respond to setbacks, and how progress is measured. That helped everyone feel seen and supported from the start.

It wasn’t flashy, but prioritizing structured coaching, open communication, and shared ownership made a visible difference. People felt they weren’t just performing tasks, they were building something together. That sense of unity translated into better service and stronger trust with the teams we support.

In our case, we follow a self-organizing model in which most employees are expected to act as the CEO of their function, even if they might be interns. We aim to minimize middle-management overhead to reduce costs for our customers. The processes and tools are organized so that everyone can operate with minimal supervision.

The model starts with hiring, during which we assess their ability to be independent. Once hired, they go through a mentorship phase during which we help them develop their judgment.

Our communication processes are also absolutely transparent, and most employees understand the nuances of the business model. So whenever we have any conflict in the team, they know they will be asked the question, “What would you do if you were the CEO of this business?” including questions related to their own compensation and promotions.

This exercise helps them understand things from the business perspective, so we are all acting in the best interest of the business. This also helps them better understand their role, priorities, and the implications of their actions.

In the early stretch of building Jumper Bee Entertainment LLC, my priority was people who understood our mission: to make events memorable and serve every client with respect. That mission naturally influenced our culture because we weren’t just selling equipment. We were part of people’s celebrations, birthdays, community festivals, and company picnics, and our team had to share that respect for moments that matter.

Something that set the tone early was prioritizing hands-on training. Instead of handing someone a schedule and sending them out, we walked through setups together, talked through client questions, and practiced how to handle curveballs on site. Hearing each other talk through situations trained us technically and aligned us socially. It bonded the crew and reinforced a way of working that customers commented on again and again.

Another early choice that had a meaningful impact was having lunch together after big holiday weekends. We’d pick a spot, share food, talk about the weekend’s highlights, and decompress. Those moments weren’t mandatory, but most stuck around anyway because it felt like family. Over time, having that kind of shared experience became part of who we are.

These habits, working together, sharing knowledge, and taking the time to connect, became the foundation of our culture. They shaped how we approach every event today, making sure the people on our team feel valued and capable while creating experiences clients can’t forget.

When I was younger I had developed our culture by establishing clear expectations and being able to walk the talk on any job, even though sometimes it required some extra effort.

My actual game changer was the expedited morning huddle that used to take not more than 10 minutes, where we used to set our finish standard, complete safety checklist, and seal one customer promise of the day. After that, I would have a short evening assessment of what was good and what was to be tightened.

This not only turned routine into criticism, but also reduced the number of cutbacks and increased our pride in our work at Peach Painting.

When TheHolyCoins was conceived, I believed that to penetrate the crypto news market, we had to clearly distinguish ourselves from competitors. I decided we would focus on early-stage crypto project news, reviews, and investigations, providing readers with unbiased and objective information to help them make informed decisions.

This quickly became our compass and the foundation of our company culture. In everything we do and write, we look for unique content or angles built around transparency and factual reporting that truly benefits our readers rather than projects or sponsors. Over time, this approach built a reputation for investigations and critical reviews, not PR content.

One principle I’ve always followed is that I would rather lose revenue than publish something that could mislead readers. That mindset shaped how we handle partnerships, sponsored content, and editorial decisions. Culture, for us, is expressed through the standards we refuse to compromise on, even when there is a financial incentive to do so.

In the early days, building culture in a fully remote team meant being very intentional about how we spent time together. Since we don’t do in-person meetups, we focused on creating shared moments online that weren’t just about work. One initiative that had a big impact was combining structured work sessions with something lighter, like a virtual conference or learning block followed by a casual team activity.

That balance helped a lot. People got the benefit of learning and alignment, but also the chance to connect as humans. It made collaboration easier and helped the team feel more connected, even without ever being in the same room.

When building a culture from scratch, I approach it methodically and look for supporting facts. Documented culture and how it is lived can be very different. For example, one startup I worked with had a culture that put teamwork and supporting each other above all else; however, when looking at how schedules were designed and time was valued, only client-facing billable time was deemed worthy and everything else was reprimanded. The idea for the culture was solid, but the work design misaligned and undermined culture-building. Now, I approach culture deliberately, looking past the artifacts and into governance and policy choices, because that’s where culture usually breaks. The scaffolding is what decides whether culture lives on paper or in daily reality.

I was recently speaking with a promoter who reflected on working with Gen Z. “People seem less willing to take ownership,” he said. It’s a common view, but it made me wonder. Are we seeing a generational shift, or the result of the behavioural contracts organisations create? In our start-up’s early days, I realised that when teams feel like passengers, it’s often because the culture has been designed that way. Culture isn’t a feeling, it’s the unwritten rules that shape how people act when no one is watching.

To move beyond a traditional boss-employee dynamic, I focused on three core shifts:

– Mirroring over mandates: Teams respond more to behaviour than to values on posters. If I expected ownership, I had to model it first, especially under pressure.

– ‘Hiring for responsibility’ mindset: Along with skills, I looked for people who took ownership of outcomes rather than blaming circumstances, people committed to solving meaningful problems.

– Clear expectations: I became transparent about the effort and resilience required, so people joined with clarity rather than assumptions.

Another initiative that made a real difference was changing our daily stand-ups. We moved from status updates to “12-hour commitments,” where each person clearly stated what they would deliver in the next 12 hours. This simple practice reduced ambiguity and reinforced accountability.

Over time, this helped us build a team that took responsibility without constant supervision.

I had the benefit of working in non-profit, corporate, and agency environments before starting my own company. I learned from all of these different cultures and tried to wrap the best elements of each into my own company culture.

Three things really stood out initially:

Giving employees flexibility to go to doctor’s and dentist appointments at any point in time (with letting me know). They could make up the time. It’s so hard to get these appointments that this was something they really appreciated.

Celebrating birthdays. We made a point to shape the entire day around the employee and their birthday. We would buy them a birthday treat of their choice (which ranged from cookies and cake to even soft pretzels) and decorate the office with fun, lighthearted photoshops of them in scenarios involving things they loved—and sometimes hated. One employee hated Superman, so we decorated her cube with Superman figures and put her into fun photoshops as Superman.

Finally, in the summer, we allowed the team to work nine-hour days Monday through Thursday and take half days on Friday. It became an incredibly popular practice.

I started a weekly “wins and lessons” meeting where everyone shared one success and one mistake from the week.

At first, all startups experience the same problem. Employees often deal with stress and wonder if they’re on the right track. In addition, many startups begin their journey by holding an all-hands meeting.

Let’s break this down step by step:

1. Meetings take place every Friday, where everyone attends. Yes, even if there are only 5 people.

2. In every all-hands meeting, every person has the chance to share a particular win from the week. This can be a small win, or even a large win; it doesn’t matter.

3. In every all-hands meeting, every person has the chance to share a mistake from the week.

4. No one is blamed for their mistakes. This is more about celebrating the learning.

People feel safe admitting errors instead of hiding them. Everyone celebrates each other’s wins; this creates team spirit. New employees quickly learn it is okay to fail and try new things.

This creates a culture where people help each other and feel proud of progress together. This is exactly what early startups need.

Embed your core values into every decision and process from day one. I applied our values to hiring and decision-making, which increased productivity, strengthened engagement, and improved innovation by giving the team a shared sense of purpose.

Especially during the early days, your team will mimic whatever you do as a founder, so if you want transparency, you better practice it first. In my experience joining multiple early-stage startups, culture starts with founder behavior, not company values on a wall or the about page of a website. Early employees watch everything the founders do and copy it.

I’ve seen this firsthand multiple times. When founders dress casually, teams follow suit. When they communicate openly, information flows freely across the company. The most impactful initiative I’ve consistently seen work is scheduling regular one-on-ones with every team member, even when the team is tiny. It creates open communication channels that scale and prevents problems from festering.

When we were starting to create a startup, we were fully aware that culture would either come naturally or unintentionally, so we ensured that it was made a habit. We aimed to be clear and consistent. We had clear expectations, communicated regularly, and we initially bought into our values. Our weekly Wins and Lessons session was one such initiative, which was very successful. Each Friday, the team shared one win of the week and one thing they learned, even if it happened due to failure.

It generated an air of openness, festivity, and low-ego problem-solving. It also leveled the org early in its life: junior members of the team felt listened to, and the leadership remained in touch with the day-to-day. Such a custom creates culture better than any mission statement ever will. My suggestions: go small, go frequent, and allow the team to formulate the traditions that would remain.

We created a culture of trust by having all of our staff sitting in the same large room for our first six months. In my practice I noticed that private offices and physical walls prevent the natural flow of ideas between new hires. Because of this we peeled down those barriers in order for anyone to chime in on a strategy or fix a bug without a formal meeting. This raw system enabled us to solve problems in minutes instead of days. As a result, we noticed in our internal data that groups in the same physical space completed tasks 22% faster because they felt that they were safe asking for help before a small error grew to become a disaster.

Besides physical layout, I also began a peer praise board to emphasize often quiet victories that get buried underneath loud problems. In my work, I had observed that staff felt neglected when morning meetings spent all their time talking about missed deadlines or complaints from clients. We brought the focus of spotlight off of managers by having teammates pin notes of thanks to each other for specific tasks. As I have witnessed, employees then start seeking an excuse to help each other just to see their names on the board. This simple habit resulted in an improved retention because people finally got a sense that they were part of something larger.

I’ll be honest—I didn’t start thinking about “company culture” when I founded my firm in 1984. I was driven by something much more personal: my wife Joni was killed by a drunk driver, and I wanted to build a practice where every client felt like their case mattered as much as my own grief did.

The one initiative that changed everything was giving clients my personal cell phone and email from day one. My partners and I still do this—we’re available 24/7, and we meet clients wherever they are, not in some intimidating conference room. When someone’s been hurt, the last thing they need is to feel like case number 37,492.

What happened? We’ve handled roughly 40,000 injury matters since then, and our referral rate is extraordinary because people remember that their attorney actually picked up the phone at 9 PM. Our team stays because they see the difference it makes—when a client tears up because you showed up at their hospital bed, that’s not something you forget.

The financial impact followed naturally. When you treat people like humans instead of file numbers, they tell everyone they know, and suddenly you’re securing eight-figure verdicts because juries can feel that your firm actually gives a damn.