Upscale: What it takes to scale a startup. By the people who've done it.

‘Even at the earliest stages of a company’s development, the most important thing in establishing a strong culture is the leadership team constantly demonstrating those values through their own behaviours.

‘reference the heck out of them’. That encompasses both formal referencing through a headhunter, but also informal referencing through back channels, he says.

‘Grove famously said that about a third of the people he hires are great: they transform the function they’re in charge of, they inspire brilliant people and make his business fundamentally better,’ summarised Marsh. Another third are OK. They don’t really do much harm, or much good. And about a third are a disaster, and if he didn’t get rid of the

Marsh’s second step is to test the candidate’s true motivation.

‘So what does that mean [in practice]? It means don’t rely on your own intuitive judgement alone; also rely on it, but empower people you trust, who have context, to participate in an interview process. So if there are two founders, each of you separately meet the person and everyone is licensed to veto. If you have a board member whom you trust, t

the transition from a tight-knit group of multi-tasking entrepreneurs and early hires with a ‘Vision’, to dozens if not hundreds of team-members, often in multiple offices around the world.

‘I like to say if brand is the promise to a customer, then culture is how you deliver on that promise.

why,’ she says. ‘If you don’t know why you are doing something and you don’t know why it contributes to the team goals and the company goals, then it’s probably not a good idea to start doing the task until you do understand the context and why it’s important. Because there’s never a shortage of things to do in a startup.’

‘When you start out, it’s basically the behaviours and how the founders and the original employees treat each other which define the culture. But when you get to some scale, you need at least an articulation of what the values of the company are.’