Startups: Build A Culture

One very important feature needed for a startup is building a culture. Building a culture doesn’t mean arranging goodies, games and free snacks. These luxuries should come in later, once your company starts doing better and the product or service is taking shape as planned and aimed.

So, what is this “building a culture” all about?

Well, what you need to inculcate is hard work. Share your ideas and goals with your employees, keep an open door policy, let their feedback, comments and ideas come in as well. This will give both, you and your employees, a clarity on what needs to be accomplished. It will make people realize that everybody needs to give in their best efforts. And as the work gets started and things move on, soon, you’ll get a better understanding of your employees, their strengths and weakness. Here, you have an important role to play. As you analyze their skills and capabilities, you need to start putting it in the right place.

There may also be someone in the team who’s just a money grabber, gold digger, attitude guy or a cry baby. If you find someone like this, take an immediate action. Sorry for using such words, but I have gone through this and seen the bad air that intoxicates the others who toil to meet the deadlines and targets.

Your team should be almost equally enthusiastic about the product and the goals as you are. If that is achieved, the bonding will start taking place. The culture will build up. Understand this – skills, you can teach, but hard work, enthusiasm, belief, you can’t.

Why am I pressing on this? Because your team is your asset. A disorganized or demotivated team can cause your ship to sink. In my previous post Before Starting Up, I did mention, Hiring is the most important part. Ideas may fail, new ideas will spring up, product may fail, you can throw it away and plan on building a new one. But building a new team will be a big pain.

photo source: rotten apple