Building Culture Through Experience

This was the summary of an interview with a start up founder I had a few weeks ago, we discussed about company culture and this is what he said:

I found companies. I launch a new one roughly every seven years. The truth is, while I haven't yet achieved Facebook-scale success, I haven't experienced a failure either. Two companies have gone public, and the initial investors always made money, the size of the profit depending on when they exited.

Over the past 25 years, I've learned some painful and expensive lessons. Now that I have gray hair and some experience, I better understand why many VC firms like to have an experienced venture leader on board.

It's not that I have all the answers now—far from it. Rather, I now have a realistic view of what's happening and what the market and individual stakeholders are telling you. In other words, I can recognize when the new company is in a minefield. That's the first step to solving any business problem: knowing that one exists.

There's one thing I can completely control, and that's why I'm so passionate about IceHrm. It's about the people on your team and the culture you create. What I mean by that is this: while I believe I significantly influenced the culture in my previous companies, ultimately it's more about the people within them than about making a blanket statement about what the culture should be.

That's what makes thinking about culture so interesting. What are the things the CEO and their team do that make the culture either good or bad? And who defines that? Is it because everyone sings Kumbaya at lunch, or because people enjoy working at that company?

What I want to achieve with IceHrm is simply to explore these and other cultural questions. Perhaps my experiences here will spark further conversations on this topic.