Founders

what successful high-growth startup has/had the best culture during [hyper]scaling? is it possible to have "great culture" during this period?

what would you define as “great culture”?

i am not sure how to define it really. a place where the employees authentically believe it has great culture. well supported, cared for, pushed to grow, etc

dirty secret imo: all high growth successes were/are not the most supportive or caring. you were/are an A+ player can play or you leave/pruned. 


believe in mission: some people do but i also know many people in the bay whose entire gig is going from one successful series-a to exit/ipo company to another. all a+ players so everyone benefits

i spoke to some folks who’ve been through yahoo, google, adobe, stripe, zynga at peak b/c i was struggling with figuring how to behave and similar q’s. folks didn’t see the chaos as bad. they advised me that (good) chaos attracts certain type of talent and many times company+talent thrive. when we think “support” we think “familial bonds” but really most of these places give you all the prof support you need if you know how to be that all-star they need which includes ability to navigate env. they’re competitive envs and you signup for that. expectation is that you can manage yourself/emotions/chaos. tldr — there’s no bad and each had its own version of the journey. eg one early person at such co forgot their child in a car for 1hour meeting. but then they reflected as team and started something around work-timings/vacay that everyone now follows in the valley. 

everyone whose been through it doesn’t see it as bad. worst, they call it college days/learning. maybe we can do better? idk

so they're all pretty bad on average sure that's public knowledge i think at this point but which one was the least-bad?