Founder’s mental is culture
Just saw this video from Simon Sinek and it reminds me a lot about startup culture as well. From the experience of quite a few startups that I've been involved with, if the startup is doing well (most of the time in the early days it's often raising quite a few rounds, making noise and closing deals), then a lot of culture and leadership problems basically get shoved under the rug and everyone is reminded to focus on the new share price and the IPO price and all this toxicity are to be expected in a startup. However, when the rounds stop to happen, momentum starts too slow, or things get back to normal, all of the sudden culture/leadership becomes the #1 problem, and groups of people all start leaving.
And most of the time, the #1 reason this happens is that the founders or early leaders made the (no) hires and fires decision that allows this to happen since business metrics trumps all in the company.
And digging even further, I often find that a lot of these decisions really reflect the mentality of the founder themselves, of how they view work, relationships, and sometimes most importantly what they define success to be. A lot of these founders aren't a*holes if you just have normal conversations with them.
The sad truth though, is that companies that has bad culture can still achieve a lot of success (e.g: Uber, etc), as there are lots of factor and luck that can contribute to your success. Therefore, for investors you can sometimes overlook certain aspects of a founder and bet on things like timing, advantage and execution.
However, I truly believe culture is the core that provides the foundation for not just a fast scaling / valuation 10x every year company, but for a long running and enduring business. It’s the difference between your core team sticking together to go through tough times or jumping ship as soon the rose pedals falls off.
And it all comes back to the founders, starting from the self-awareness about their own mental state and perspective about what work and life is.
