Values we embrace to build a great startup culture that ships.
Building something great is a marathon. You need a strong team. Your work will be full of ups and downs. When your team faces the biggest challenges, that is the moment culture shows up. It is the operating system we fall back on when the playbook runs out.
What makes values actually useful
The most important startup company values are decision tools. The ones that work do three things:
- They act like shared code that "un-stucks" hundreds of daily decisions, big and small.
- They explicitly name tradeoffs, so they are controversial enough to change behavior.
- They are few, memorable, and used every day.
They are not perks, office decor, or vibes. As Ben Horowitz put it, perks are not culture, and most of what sticks is a small set of design points you reinforce forever. We avoid the trap of a “nice” culture that dodges hard calls. That is how you get silence, politics, and slow motion drift.
Our founding story lives right in this tension. Our mission was born from SE burnout, firefights over RFPs, and GTM bottlenecks that stalled revenue. That reality shaped what we value.
oper8r’s values
We keep four. They are simple to say, hard to live, and each comes with a clear tradeoff.
1) Choose impact over activity
We measure outcomes. Busy does not equal useful. We optimize for customer and business signal, even when it means saying no to visible effort that feels good in the moment. Our origin story is proof that activity without leverage burns teams and slows deals.
How we practice it:
- Ship work that moves a metric or unblocks a team.
- Kill effort theater and automate repetitive tasks where possible.
2) Challenge the default
There are no sacred processes here. If hit a bump/process/friction that does not make sense, we ask why. If there's no good reason, we change it as necessary. The tradeoff is short-term discomfort and slower consensus to get to better long-term decisions.
How we practice it:
- Run small experiments before big bets.
- Replace “this is how we do it” with evidence and learning.
3) One team, no heroes
Complex sales are a team sport. We optimize for a sustainable system. The tradeoff is individual autonomy gives way to shared standards, so we can move faster together. We blend freedom with a framework: clear exit criteria and data integrity, paired with operator autonomy in the field.
How we practice it:
- Small teams, aligned to company goals, responsible for outcomes.
- Share knowledge by default, hoard nothing.
4) Build systems that scale people
We favor leverage over heroics. Document the path, automate the repetitive, and leave breadcrumbs for the next person. The tradeoff is upfront discipline in exchange for compounding speed later. Values also collide here, which is normal. When simplicity and customer-first conflict, we surface the tension, carry the context, and decide together.
How we practice it:
- Use oper8r to build oper8r.
- Write it down once, reuse many times.
- Make the right way the easy way, so the data and outcome improve together.
How we keep values alive
Here is our operating rhythm to build great startup company culture that lasts.
- Hire and promote on behaviors. We screen for real stories that show ownership, bias to impact, and team play. Values must reflect what is, not what we wish.
- Decide with tradeoffs in the open. We write short memos that name the tension, the options, and the call. Focus on a few enduring design points.
- Make them visible in the work. Weekly callouts for “values in action,” and lightweight tooling to reinforce language in Slack and standups.
- Revisit on a cadence. Startups change, so values need maintenance. We'll review every 6 to 12 months and refine language to match how we actually operate.
- Embrace context and conflict. When values clash, we use the story behind them to decide. Context matters.
Why 4? There must be more things to consider...
Memorability beats completeness. We stick to a small set, so anyone at oper8r can apply them in the moment without a checklist. The rest is culture in motion.
If you are defining your own
- Start with what is already true on your best days. Avoid aspirational word salad.
- Write the tradeoff into the value. If nobody objects, it will not help you decide.
- Treat perks as perks and process as process. Do not confuse either with culture.
- Publish them, then prove them. Values earn trust when they shape hiring, promotions, and tough calls.
Most people searching for the most important startup company values do not need another wall of words. They need a working set they can live with under pressure.