When Should a Startup Write Its Values Down?

Jeff Lawson says about a year in, or around 50 people, is a good time for a startup to write its values down. Culture is the feeling people have at work every day: whether they are excited to come in, how a disagreement gets settled, and whether they still like each other afterward. Values are words created to describe that culture, handles a founder can use to steer it.

Inertia has been operating for less than a year and still has not declared company values, though the conversation is active. Writing the words too early happens before a team knows who it is. The earliest employees, especially the founders, and the challenge the company has to solve shape how people act. Inertia recently crossed 50 people, so the company is writing the values now.

The point of the words is to say how people should behave when decisions are hard and coworkers disagree. Without handles, people do whatever they already do, and one shared feeling breaks into smaller local ones.