Why Culture Needs to be the Fifth Element of any Company

Article reposted with permission from Oana Olteanu

Peter Thiel’s single most important piece of advice for Airbnb is ‘Don’t fuck up the culture’. Other executives and venture capitalists like Brian Chesky, Ben Horowitz, and Steve Jobs have expanded on why culture is important for a startup company, and Marc Andreessen's tweet ‘...Ruin Culture -> Destroy Company’ summarizes the point neatly. No doubt, culture is crucial for success.

The Fifth Element in the eponymous movie contains four stones with the classical elements. It combines them all into a divine light capable of defeating the evil . Company culture combines the power of other four elements: vision, mission, strategy and priorities.

Ten employees at a now large software company described the key values when they joined this company as a startup 30 years ago. These values were critical in turning the small startup into the highly successful market leader that it is today. They should be applicable to any budding startup team:

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