In a startup, the first ten employees are not resources. These are foundations. Well beyond their job description, they define the way the company works, decides, communicates and evolves. Their choices, their doubts, their way of acting quickly become implicit standards. They are not content to execute: they embody. And what they embody – consciously or not – already reveals what the company will become.
We often talk about corporate culture as a formal project, to be structured later. It’s a mistake. Culture exists from the first weeksand it is written in the daily life of these first ten recruitments. It is observable. And she talks.
Who are they, and why are they there?
The first ten employees first say what you valued at the start: versatility or specialization, speed or rigor, initiative or obedience. They reveal your level of requirement. Have they been recruited because they were the best available? Or the most available? Have they joined the adventure by conviction, by opportunity or by default? Their individual aggregated motivations draw the type of collective you build.
If they share a strong engine – solve a problem, participate in a specific adventure, follow a clear vision – you lay the foundations for a culture of engagement. If, on the contrary, everyone is there for different reasons, without common frame of reference, you build an addition of talents, not a team.
How do they work together?
Observe their interactions: they speak stronger than the processes. Do they work in confidence? Are they able to say things? Do they take initiatives without delay the validation of the CEO? Do they coordinate in a fluid way or should we constantly arbitrate in their place?
If these first employees work in silos, or in an implicit competition, you institutionalize a culture of fragmentation. If on the contrary they share the information, document, reread, help each other, you build a culture of collective autonomy.
The functioning of this microsociety is the prototype of your future organization.
What they tolerate, you will install it
Your first employees also set the implicit standard of what is acceptable. If one of them changes a delivery and no one says anything, it is that The quality is optional. If another show sexism, contempt or manipulation, and it passes, you validate a flaw in culture.
Conversely, if the team values direct feedback, shared responsibility and rapid correction of errors, you install a requirement that will survive growth.
The first ten say not only what you are. They condition what you will become.
The role of the founder: not manager, but modulator
In this phase, the founder is still everywhere: he codes, sells, recruits. But he also plays, often without being aware of it, The role of cultural mirror. What he tolerates, what he lets pass, what he congratulates or ignores shapes the mental space of the team. It can be a coherence engine, or a factor of blur.
He must then assume a specific role: that of cultural modulator. This implies:
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- verbalize expected behaviors (even informally);
- Evolve recruitments as soon as a profile does not embody the right signals;
- Publicly recognize the aligned acts, not only the encrypted results.
Cultural consistency is not a declaration. It is a permanent calibration.
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