TLDR: If not now, when? Burnout isn’t from hard work. Have fun.
I’ve been circumnavigating this topic for a long time without hitting it directly.
Culture of inception stage start-ups.
Most people will shake their heads and nod at the notion of culture being important, but few will truly manufacture culture as a competitive advantage.
Before we get to the three rules, it’s important to realize that culture exists whether you’re intentional about it or not.
If you don’t have a culture, that is your culture.
If you’re a solo founder and you choose to work at home, and you choose to work late into the night, those things are part of your culture.
Who you surround yourself with, how you show up, the bar you set for the business, it’s all part of your culture. And that’s not an exhaustive list of course. The professionalism or lack thereof, the rigor of progress, the way you use your corporate card, culture is made up of everything you do.
But at inception stage it’s hard to define what that culture is or will become at scale. Partially that’s because traditional start-up culture definitions are things like be creative, challenge the status quo, care about your customers, etc etc, garbage, garbage.
Most cultural definitions are just bologna corporate jargon that no one actually embraces.
That’s not true at the world’s greatest companies.
At the world’s greatest companies, culture is a through line on what talented people have in common, care about, and how they operate.
At inception stage, you’re not going to have defined corporate values—or maybe you will—but it’s just going to be you and a list on a post-it.
Instead, I would propose that you wait to define your culture until you actually know what your company is, and for now, consider three distinct rules for inception stage.
3 Rules of Inception Stage Culture
If not now, when? Burnout isn’t from hard work. Have fun.
“If not now, when?”
Last week, one of our founders taught me this concept. He’s just one year out of college, has already raised $2m since our investment in January. He’s off to the races building his team and closing customers. In similar fashion to the concept we covered of front-loading, “If not now, when?” is a personal reflection on the sense of urgency you’re building with.
Once you’ve raised that first bit of capital, presumably you have the idea or product, the cash you need, the people around you, and the time to build. So if not now, when?
If you don’t put everything you have into this company now, when will you do it?
If you don’t take advantage of this opportunity to its fullest potential, how will you know if you ever could have made the difference or built the business you dreamt of?
Specifically, he was talking about working 8am to 12am every day.
He was talking about treating every obstacle as a challenge and an opportunity to make progress beyond anyone else trying to tackle a similar problem
He was talking about building a culture where every single person without exception makes the business their absolute top priority.
He was talking about having respect for the rest of your team by committing just as much mental energy and time to the business as everyone else so that everyone can realize their potential and their dreams together.
He was talking about having breakfast as a team while reviewing everything that needed to get done that day and eating dinner together while finding solutions to technical challenges and preparing for customer meetings.
He was talking about giving it absolutely everything you have and not one ounce less.
He was talking about culture.
Burnout doesn’t come from hard work, it comes from lack of meaning
You might read the above and think “holy #$%^UI” or “yea ok hustle culture VC bro, that’s a straight line path to burnout.”
No. You’re wrong.
The reality is that most people do burnout when they work that hard, but it’s not because of the hard work.
It’s because they don’t like the work.
It’s because they lack meaning and purpose.
How many elite athletes have you heard of burning out because they’re too competitive?
Just look at Michael Phelps insane training schedule, zero days off for decades, or Kobe Bryant’s 4am three-a-days.
Sam Altman says the same thing, and it’s a hard truth for a lot people because to them, they’re burning out, and it means they haven’t found meaningful work.
If you’re working on something you don’t love, of course you will burnout.
But if you develop purpose and passion and meaning in what you’re doing, playing that game and winning that game becomes a lifelong endeavor.
When Mark Zuckerberg was offered $1B for Facebook, his personal cut would have been $250m, and Peter Thiel suggested they at least discuss it—it was a lot of money.
Famously, Zuck just responded something to the effect of, ‘What would I do with the money? Probably just build another social network, and I already like the one I’ve got.’
Having meaning and purpose in your work is crucial to building culture.
Have fun
Everyone forgets this one.
You’re supposed to work hard and grind and get told “no” a million times by investors and customers. It’s supposed to be exhausting. But why?
Why do 100-hour 100-no weeks have to be exhausting? Who made that rule?
Building your dream company should be fun.
I like to joke with people, “We’re adults, we can do whatever we want,” but it’s true, we are and we can.
If you want to play Mario Kart on a projector screen in the office, go for it.
If you want to buy a team dinner to keep the roadmap debate going, do it.
If you want to take long lunches to go workout and then comeback to work late into the night, no worries, you’re the boss.
There are infinite possibilities of how to make work fun.
Celebrate the wins. Decorate the office. Come up with rituals. Have a contest. Play games. Come up with inside jokes. Do it all.
It’s hard to burnout from fun.
And the more fun you have, the more you’ll look forward to the work because it will feel like play.
The last time I checked, winning was fun. Being surrounded by people you truly like was fun. Creating momentum, closing deals, raising money, and bringing something to life that changes the world was fun. Don’t forget that. Your team needs to see you set the example of that too.
When you make truly exceptional work feel like play, that becomes a powerful culture.
Working hard, finding meaning, and having fun are essentially good start-up habits. If you do all three every single day, just like great habits and systems, they will compound into incredibly meaningful results when delivered consistently over time.
At inception stage you don’t need to define some corporate BS to build a compelling culture, you just need to be intentional about how you show up, who you surround yourself with, how hard you work, how you inspire others, and do everything you can to have as much fun as possible.
Taken together, all of these things will also foster the incredible resiliency required to keep going through what is undoubtedly one of the hardest professional journeys anyone can choose.
See you Monday.
Love the Hillel the Elder quote Jeff. Your voice is refreshing in a very noisy field.