Tech Startup Toolkit

22 Beyond foosball: Crafting a positive culture that retains your team

This chapter covers

• Why does culture matter? And why does it matter more for a startup?
• How is culture formed and maintained?
• Is there a core set of principles that drives company culture?

Startup culture is related to organizational culture, an idea introduced in 1951 by Elliott Jaques in his book The Changing Culture of a Factory, where he submits that organizational culture incorporates a set of shared assumptions that guide the behaviors of its members. Shared assumptions will involve all aspects of your work life at a startup, such as how team members treat each other, how disputes are handled, how communications are delivered, how customers and partners are treated, ...