Oct 2, 2026 · 50 min · 12 segments
Most of us learn culture by adapting to one that already exists. We join a company, figure out what gets rewarded, who has power, what people say in meetings, and what they say after the meeting ends…
leads right into the next thing I wanted to talk about, really, which was company culture, fostering company culture.
And I think it's one of those things where culture is one of those words that people, you say so much that it starts to lose.
I think it's the term is semantic satiation, where like you say a word over and over again, it starts to lose all meaning.
What actually is culture in terms of like a framework for understanding a company in your mind?
So I'm a huge believer that culture is not some snappy phrase that's on the wall when you walk into a building.
How do you sell? How do you interact with clients when things get sticky? How do you choose what products to build and what to shelf? Like all of that really has to be in the spirit of living out our cultural values.
And I think, you know, for a lot of startups, there's usually some kind of great word that they use, but it really would likely draw toward innovation, right? Being an innovator, if you're a startup leader, has got to be one of, or something like that, one of the values that you're living out.
And you gotta hire people who wanna take risks And that innovation kind of characteristic, I think, is one of those cultural elements that I see.
And it's fun, right? That's the fun part of working at startups and scale-ups is you really have to be on the cutting edge of innovating for your sector or your segment.
I think the other piece that I always think about when I think about culture is the way in which we treat people, right? It is how we...
Sometimes it's how we treat people when it's time for them to leave the business.
It's also how we make sure that we're living out who we want to be, not just from a product perspective, but, but again, culturally when we're selling, like, are we selling with like high character and, and, you know, selling what we have, or you see a lot of times in startups, they're kind of futuristically selling some things that they're building.
You know, depending on your cultural values, that's either okay or it's not okay.
And so I think all of that kind of, for me, like really, I also hate like when we say we're, you know, hiring, like making a culture ad, right? When we're hiring or culture fit, I should say, the culture fit.
leads right into the next thing I wanted to talk about, really, which was company culture, fostering company culture.
And I think it's one of those things where culture is one of those words that people, you say so much that it starts to lose.
I think it's the term is semantic satiation, where like you say a word over and over again, it starts to lose all meaning.
What actually is culture in terms of like a framework for understanding a company in your mind?
So I'm a huge believer that culture is not some snappy phrase that's on the wall when you walk into a building.
How do you sell? How do you interact with clients when things get sticky? How do you choose what products to build and what to shelf? Like all of that really has to be in the spirit of living out our cultural values.
And I think, you know, for a lot of startups, there's usually some kind of great word that they use, but it really would likely draw toward innovation, right? Being an innovator, if you're a startup leader, has got to be one of, or something like that, one of the values that you're living out.
And you gotta hire people who wanna take risks And that innovation kind of characteristic, I think, is one of those cultural elements that I see.
And it's fun, right? That's the fun part of working at startups and scale-ups is you really have to be on the cutting edge of innovating for your sector or your segment.
I think the other piece that I always think about when I think about culture is the way in which we treat people, right? It is how we...
Sometimes it's how we treat people when it's time for them to leave the business.
It's also how we make sure that we're living out who we want to be, not just from a product perspective, but, but again, culturally when we're selling, like, are we selling with like high character and, and, you know, selling what we have, or you see a lot of times in startups, they're kind of futuristically selling some things that they're building.
You know, depending on your cultural values, that's either okay or it's not okay.
And so I think all of that kind of, for me, like really, I also hate like when we say we're, you know, hiring, like making a culture ad, right? When we're hiring or culture fit, I should say, the culture fit.
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