What's the secret to keeping your culture intact as your startup matures? Really, it all boils down to your ability to talk about the culture while accurately representing it. I've been having a lot of parallel discussions with entrepreneurs about startup culture and decided a Meetup group would be a great opportunity to bring the culture conversation to a much wider audience. Earlier this week a group of about 30 culture enthusiasts convened at swissnex Boston, the Consulate of Switzerland, for the world's very first Startup Culture Meetup: Sustaining An Amazing Startup Culture!
The speakers on the panel were Paolo Gaudiano, President & CTO of Icosystem, Melissa Ablett, General Manager of BostInno, and Jen Reddy, Senior Vice President of Global Marketing at Communispace. We discussed the challenges with getting everyone on the same page when it comes to explaining and demonstrating the culture. Jen Reddy mentioned that Communispace was quite small when she started, she was the 86th hire, and there are now over 400 employees. Despite adding procedures as the company grew, the sense of culture at Communispace has remained in the forefront because leadership has continued to drive it. Melissa Ablett described being motivated by BostInno's 'work hard, play hard' motto from her first interview. Paolo Gaudiano noted how the culture at Icosystem developed over the years not because of physical growth but because the nature of the work became more serious.
Employee expectations and the dear cost of culture were also covered, but this was just the tip of the iceberg for an ongoing discussion about culture in our startup ecosystem.