The Two Types of Culture (And Why One Dies)

Every startup has a culture.

If you think you don't, you do. It's just not intentional.

The mistake most founders make: They confuse culture with values statements. They write down "We value transparency, speed, and boldness" and put it on their website and assume culture is solved.

It's not.

Declared culture is what you say. Revealed culture is what you do.

Declared vs. Revealed

Declared Culture: "We value work-life balance." "We trust our team to make decisions." "We believe in radical transparency."

Revealed Culture: The founder works 80 hours a week and expects others to do the same. Major decisions are made by the founder in private. The company has a Slack channel labeled "strategy that's secret from the team."

Which culture will people believe?

The revealed one. Every time.

New employees join because they read about the declared culture. They stay if the revealed culture matches. If they don't match, they leave.

This is why 80% of startups have a culture problem by 50 people. The founders declared one thing but revealed another.

The Two Types That Last

Type 1: Culture of High Standards

This is Internally Focused. The culture is about excellence, craft, and continuous improvement.

The declared values might be: "We do exceptional work. We hold each other accountable. We ship quality."

The revealed culture backs it up: The team genuinely cares about good work. Code reviews are rigorous. Product decisions are debated hard. Shipping something mediocre is seen as letting the team down.

This culture is sustainable because it's self-reinforcing. People hire people like them. Excellence hires excellence. The bar gets higher.

This culture scales until the company is too big to maintain standards. Then it breaks.

Type 2: Culture of High Autonomy

This is Operationally Focused. The culture is about trust, ownership, and letting people figure out how to do their jobs.

The declared values might be: "We trust people to make decisions. We believe in autonomy. We're all owners."

The revealed culture backs it up: People actually make decisions without asking permission. Failure is treated as learning. People are expected to be self-directed.

This culture is sustainable because it attracts and keeps independent thinkers. It scales better than Type 1, because it doesn't depend on founder judgment.

The culture breaks when autonomy turns into chaos. When people optimize for different things and there's no shared direction.

The Cultures That Die

Type 3: Culture of Hype

"We're changing the world." "We're moving fast and breaking things." "We're the most innovative company in India."

This is fragile. It depends on external validation. As long as the company is growing and winning, the culture holds. The moment growth slows, people realize the culture was built on narrative, not on how work actually happens.

When people leave (and they will), they don't remember the hype. They remember what it actually felt like to work there.

Type 4: Culture of Comfort

"We're like a family." "We take care of our people." "We believe in harmony."

This sounds nice until the company has to make hard decisions. Layoffs. Restructuring. People who don't fit. Suddenly, "family" culture becomes "how could they?" and people leave.

Comfort culture can't survive hard times. It breaks.

How to Build Real Culture

1. Figure out which type you actually are (or want to be). High standards or high autonomy? You probably can't be both at scale.

2. Declare it clearly. Tell people: "Here's what we care about. Here's how we operate."

3. Reveal it consistently. Your actions should confirm the declaration. If you say you care about standards but ship sloppy work, people notice.

4. Make hiring decisions that reinforce it. Hire people who fit the culture. Not people who fit your friend group.

5. Make hard calls when culture is violated. If someone is brilliant but toxic, they have to leave. If someone is mediocre but doesn't fit, they have to leave. Otherwise, the culture erodes.

6. Revisit it as you scale. The culture that works at 10 people might not work at 50. That's okay. Be intentional about the change.

The companies that have strong cultures at 100+ people are the ones that built intentionally early and fought to preserve it as they scaled.

The ones with culture problems are the ones that assumed culture would just happen. It doesn't.

It only happens if you make it happen.