Founder Stories

Your Culture Is Going to Suck If You Keep Procrastinating

Kickstart your company’s culture in a week with this easy framework for early stage companies

Joel Wish
Marker
Published in
7 min readNov 22, 2019

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Photo: JGalione/Getty Images

AAlmost all founders know that culture is vital to long-term success, yet investing in culture typically isn’t a priority at early-stage startups. It usually takes a backseat to more existential challenges like fundraising, sales, and product-building.

I get it: Investing in fireproofing while fighting a fire doesn’t feel like the right prioritization. But consider the conclusion of this Harvard Business Review study which found that founders who rate the importance of culture lower than a 10 on a 10-point scale have a 70% greater chance of experiencing high employee turnover rates — among a host of other negative outcomes — down the line.

In this piece, I’ll set you up with the basics: a quick-and-dirty framework for kickstarting culture that you can put in place in as little as a week. It’ll help you stay on track without sacrificing performance and set you up to scale far more effectively when it’s time to ramp up for growth. It’s worth the investment early on because starting from scratch after the company is already sizable will be much more challenging.

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Marker
Marker

Published in Marker

Marker was a publication from Medium about the intersection of business, economics, and culture. Currently inactive and not taking submissions.

Joel Wish
Joel Wish

Written by Joel Wish

3x founder, advisor, angel investor. Most recent @getSimpleHealth @frontlinefoods @parsley_health @everlywell @mindbloom. Long $BTC $DOT