#company culture

#company culture

When I make an offer, I tell every single person ElevenLabs is going to be extremely difficult. We are a hard company to work for because we have extremely high expectations.

"Never ask what I would do, just do the right thing," said Steve Jobs on his deathbed, emphasizing the importance of individual decision-making and integrity.

I still interview everyone, so I ask quite brutal questions about, 'Why take a hard job? You could go work somewhere else,' Max Junestrand said.

For much of the modern corporate era, brand has been treated as surface area. A story told outward. A set of signals designed to persuade, attract, and differentiate. When companies spoke about brand, they were usually talking about perception: how they looked in the market, how they sounded, how they were received. That framing made sense in a world where markets moved a little more slowly, organizations were stable, and leadership could afford to separate strategy from culture, product from meaning, execution from belief.

Because AI is making the world faster - and rougher. This phenomenon, which he describes as "AI-driven coarsening," shows up everywhere: Social media posts are increasingly complete and polished, yet oddly lifeless E-commerce pages are packed with flawless copy, but nothing truly persuades you Product proposals from junior PMs are logically sound and well-structured, yet leave you thinking: everything looks right, but something feels wrong

"Winning matters most when it helps others win, too."

In his reflections on the 2025 Wall Street Journal CEO Council summit held in December, WSJ Leadership Institute president Alan Murray noted that CEOs are not actually preoccupied with AI, tariffs, or geopolitics. Instead, they're focused on something far more fundamental: people and culture. How do you build an organization that can adapt, collaborate, and innovate amid persistent volatility? That instinct is correct. Yet one of the most effective tools for strengthening culture and developing talent remains surprisingly underused-skills-based volunteering (SBV).

The company that pioneered small launch has had a big year. Rocket Lab broke its annual launch record with the Electron booster-17 successful missions this year, and counting-and is close to bringing its much larger Neutron rocket to the launch pad. The company also expanded its in-space business, including playing a key role in supporting the landing of Firefly's Blue Ghost mission on the Moon and building two small satellites just launched to Mars.

"I try to instill this into the rest of the team, but certainly I feel that what we have right now is just a giant piece of shit," he told the MIT Technology Review in 2014. "Like, it's just terrible, and we should be humiliated that we offer this to the public. Not everyone finds that motivational, though."

"That cartoon is a great example of someone else defining what became the cultural narrative more so than reality," Nadella told Stripe cofounder John Collison.

We initially started remote. My cofounder is based in the UK and is planning on relocating to New York. We have a sales guy in France, and we have someone running customer success in Illinois. Our goal has always been: How do we actually get people in the same office? You just work faster. I'm getting absolutely roasted by most of the remote tech worker community for my post in favor of the office.

In a company's early days, culture is forged through proximity-shared desks, late nights, and the push-and-pull of turning ideas into reality. Decisions happen on the fly, and everyone knows each other by name. But as you scale-especially as a remote-first organization-that sense of connection can quietly fade. Suddenly, you realize you can't attend every onboarding, celebrate every milestone, or even recognize every face on a Zoom call.

Before committing to working at his Greenville, North Carolina production studio, MrBeast, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, starts some workers on roughly three-month contracts. During that trial period, internally called a vibe check, the company gives staffers an apartment and a rental car so they can focus on work without worrying about relocation. The objective is to "ensure you don't uproot your entire life and move to Greenville, North Carolina, and not work out," a former MrBeast staffer said.

At AskNicely, we're on a mission to help service businesses grow by empowering teams to deliver consistently amazing customer experiences. Our platform makes it simple to collect real-time customer feedback and turn insights into everyday action, powering over 1,300 companies worldwide. Our culture is guided by three non-negotiables we call "living in the purple": Play to Win: We bring our best, collaborate closely, and move fast - progress over perfection. Love Your Feedback: We model curiosity and openness so we can keep learning and improving.

The video game industry has been a tumultuous place of late, with mass layoffs, game cancellations, and studio closures, not to mention ongoing fears about the role of artificial intelligence. These issues have affected developers big and small. One smaller developer that has endured and thrived is Supergiant, which just launched Hades 2 this week. Supergiant was formed in 2009 with seven people and has grown to 25 today.

Palmer Luckey says he learned the hard way that relying on Silicon Valley talent can be a trap. The founder of Oculus VR and Anduril Industries recalled how, after Facebook (now Meta) acquired Oculus in 2014, his other company's hiring funnel narrowed almost exclusively to Bay Area engineers. Many, he said, were "very mercenary-minded" and more interested in résumé building than mission.

Corporate events should focus on connection and fun, appealing to a diverse range of interests. With creativity, they can energize and inspire employees. Giving employees to showcase their inner capabilities easily. Such events are also crucial in reducing stress among employees. Here are 20 ideas for corporate events that can boost; Team morale, Inspire creativity, and Strengthen your business culture.

Some product managers become bottlenecks because they want to control all decisions and information. For others, company culture creates bottlenecks. Regardless, whether it's excessive approvals, fear of failure, or unclear accountabilities, product managers often become the single decision maker for product development. It's a lot of pressure to have team members waiting on you for something and to unblock them in their progress.

Listeners and readers of "Ecommerce Conversations" know I occasionally depart from interviews to share my experiences owning and operating Beardbrand, the direct-to-consumer brand I launched a decade ago. To date, I've addressed hiring, branding, profit-building, priority-setting, exiting, overcoming setbacks, and top business models. This too is a solo episode, addressing entrepreneurial doldrums, when a business is seemingly stuck in no growth or worse. Certainly that's the story of Beardbrand over the past couple of years.

We're on a mission to make evidence-based autism care accessible to families everywhere. 🌍 Families shouldn't have to uproot their lives to access support-that's why we break down barriers while keeping the human touch at the center of our work. Our goal? To positively impact the lives of 1 million children with autism. Rooted in a culture that values trust, collaboration, and balance, we foster a workplace where everyone feels valued and empowered.

The HR department pressured me to sign a paper acknowledging responsibility for an incident with no prior knowledge of what had occurred or who complained.

You have to be willing to do yourself, to an even higher degree, what you ask of everyone else.