Killersite Blog

In large corporations Culture is something you have to deal with. It is set and established. By the time you join the community and values are well defined and you are expected to go along for the ride.

Conversely in a startup every employee is actively involved creating and molding the culture and attitude of the business. And once established the “Culture”, which we can define as habits, attitudes, philosophy, etc., becomes ingrained and quite hard to change.

Because the company culture really defines how we do things, it has a huge impact on the success of the enterprise. When employees adopt the philosophy that the way to get ahead is to kiss-ass and politic your way to the top you can be sure they will not be as focused on the costumer as they should be.

On Marc Andreson’s Blog he talks about what you can expect as you build your startup…

In the best case, you get an amazing dynamic of people really
pulling together, supporting one another, and working their collective
tails off in pursuit of a dream.

In the worst case, you end up with widespread, self-reinforcing
bitterness, disillusionment, cynicism, bad morale, contempt for
management, and depression.

And you as the founder have much less influence over this than you’ll think you do.

Guess which way it usually goes.

He makes another good point about why a first mover advantage is important even if your product is not totally finished. Because while you are polishing the chrome on your masterpiece…

A better funded startup with a more experienced team that’s been hard
at work longer than you have, in stealth mode, that unexpectedly
releases a product that swiftly comes to dominate your market,
completely closing off your opportunity, and you had no idea they were
even working on it.