One of the main motivations of starting my own software development business was to create the workplace I wanted to have but couldn’t find. I am equally immensely proud as embarrassed that I achieved exactly that.
Back in 2012 I wanted a taste of the Silicon Valley startup vibe we got so used to seeing on social media. The tech revolution was changing the world through the hands of nerdy cowboys and hackers grinding at it with only a few pauses for coffee, videogames and the occasional nap. These people got to work hard but play harder, and become very successful in the process. As a very immature and workaholic human being I wanted that but couldn’t find it all the way across the Atlantic. Once the opportunity came to create it, I jumped on it.
The culture I built
Because I’m a tech guy, the culture was developer-centric. Developers were 95% of the company, they delivered our value — how could this not be the right call? So I designed it from a developer’s perspective: the environment I, as a developer, would want to be in. Flexible hours, minimal bureaucracy, full transparency, no pointless meetings, creative freedom, a flat(ish) structure where everyone had a voice.
And it worked. Incredibly well, at first. We attracted amazing people. We built genuine personal relationships. People loved being part of what we had. The loyalty and camaraderie were real, and I am forever grateful to those original heroes who took a chance on something that was, frankly, held together by enthusiasm and good vibes more than anything else.
But there’s a difference between a great place to work and a great business. And I had built the former while hoping it would automatically become the latter. It didn’t.
Where it went wrong
The foundation was wrong. Not morally wrong — it was honest and well-intentioned. But strategically wrong. We were optimising for how our people felt, not for what our clients needed. And those two things, while they should absolutely work hand in hand, have a very clear priority order. The one that pays the bills comes first.
I know how this sounds. I can hear the old spirits of the past calling me a “sell out.” But paying attention to the business side is not selling out. It’s like when we were kids and our parents told us not to eat before a meal or we’d ruin the appetite. We all know now that was a pretty reasonable request — we just had different perspectives. A business-conscious culture and a people-first culture are not incompatible. They should feed each other. But one does not survive without the other, and we forgot which one was holding the whole thing up.
What makes a great culture toxic
A great team culture can become a toxic one the moment it’s anchored to the wrong things. If the culture is built on making people comfortable, it will crumble the first time a hard decision needs to be made. If it’s built on consensus, it will stall the moment opinions diverge (and they always diverge). If it’s built on the idea that everyone has equal say in everything, it creates an implicit promise that the organisation can never deliver on.
The right foundations are trust, respect, communication, opportunity, transparency, involvement, and yes — fun. But these need to exist within a framework that has a clear direction, clear ownership, and clear expectations. Without that frame, “trust” becomes “no accountability,” “transparency” becomes “everything is everyone’s business,” and “fun” becomes “we don’t do hard things.”
The power imbalance nobody talks about
In small teams, culture becomes disproportionately influenced by the loudest voices or the most tenured people. I’ve seen it happen — one or two strong personalities effectively set the tone for the entire group, and because the culture was designed to give everyone equal footing, there’s no structural mechanism to course-correct when that tone drifts.
This doesn’t mean those people are doing anything malicious. Most of the time they’re not even aware of it. But in a culture that prides itself on being democratic, the people who are most comfortable speaking up end up with more influence than their role warrants. And the quiet ones, the ones who might disagree but don’t want to rock the boat, just go along. The culture looks healthy on the surface, but underneath it’s lopsided.
What I’d do differently
I wouldn’t change the values. I’d change the order of priorities.
Start with the business. Figure out what clients need, what the market demands, how to deliver real value. Then build the internal culture as the engine that powers that delivery. Not the other way around.
Within that frame, everything I originally cared about still fits. Great people, genuine relationships, creative freedom, minimal pointless bureaucracy. But now it has a purpose beyond “this is nice.” It has direction. And direction is what turns a group of talented individuals into a team that actually delivers.
I’d also be much more deliberate about ownership. Not titles or hierarchy for the sake of it, but clear accountability. Someone needs to own outcomes, and that someone needs to be empowered to make calls that not everyone will agree with. This is the part I avoided for years because it felt like it went against everything the culture stood for. It didn’t — I just didn’t understand yet that real empowerment requires real responsibility.
The hard truth
If I ask any of the original people from those early years their opinion, they’ll probably say we had an amazing gig and then ruined it. And from their perspective, they’re right. The shift from “optimise for people” to “optimise for value, then take care of people” felt like a betrayal to some. I understand that. I’ve had to sit with that discomfort and accept that doing the right thing for the business sometimes means doing the unpopular thing for the team.
But the alternative was a company that everyone loved being part of and that wouldn’t survive long enough to keep them employed. And that’s not a culture — that’s a pub. A great one, maybe, but a pub nonetheless.