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Masters of ScaleHubSpot's Dharmesh Shah: Build your culture like a product | Masters of Scale
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Chapter summaries
A Reluctant Culture Builder Meets Employee Pushback
Dharmesh Shah explains that HubSpot barely talked about culture in its first years. After Brian Halligan was pressed on it by a CEO peer group, Dharmesh was handed the job and got harsh reactions to his first email.
- •HubSpot did not use the word culture for its first five or six years
- •Brian Halligan's CEO group told him nothing matters more than culture
- •Dharmesh felt unqualified, calling himself an introvert, but took the task on
- •His company-wide email drew harsh, negative replies
- •Employees assumed only companies that have lost their way talk about culture, as posters and mugs
Building Culture Like a Product: Define, Iterate, Sell
Reid Hoffman introduces his thesis that a culture should be built like a product. He sets out how the product approach applies to culture and introduces Dharmesh and HubSpot.
- •Reid's thesis is to define, iterate and sell your culture
- •Product design involves outlining features, collaborating and iterating on feedback
- •The same dedication produces an honest, lasting culture
- •HubSpot's culture is known for transparency, customer focus and employee empowerment
Writing the Culture Code Like Software
Dharmesh approached the culture deck as code, defining a narrow problem and shipping an early version. Version 1.0 was 16 slides, and the team's feedback pushed it to cover how decisions get made.
- •Dharmesh thought of the deck as Python code to run the company
- •The first deck answered one question about which attributes make people successful and happy at HubSpot
- •Employees found the first version useful but wanted guidance on decisions
- •Surveys, focus groups and one-on-ones made it a living document and won buy-in
Going Public with Netflix's Inspiration and Feedback
The HubSpot team drew on the Netflix culture deck and asked Patty McCord about publishing theirs. After it went public in 2013, the deck grew from 16 to 128 slides, and Dharmesh says feedback is a gift.
- •The management team had read the Netflix culture deck many times
- •Patty McCord said publishing was life-changing for Netflix, despite the discomfort
- •Reed Hastings emailed Dharmesh to say he thought the deck was brilliant
- •Public feedback came from many readers
- •Culture must change over time to keep delivering value
Component One: Solve for the Customer
Reid introduces the first of four components. Dharmesh describes an internet provider's email that never said sorry, and how HubSpot keeps its team close to customer pain.
- •The internet provider's email never apologized, which Dharmesh calls the cardinal sin of customer experience
- •Execs hold a monthly meeting with a live customer, often an unhappy one
- •Engineers are pushed to talk to customers directly
- •Putting the customer first means the collective of customers, not each individual request
Component Two: Extreme Transparency
Dharmesh explains that HubSpot's transparency began by sharing everything with its first employee. For the 2014 IPO, they made every employee a designated insider rather than break that value.
- •Transparency empowers individuals to make good decisions for the company
- •The rule of sharing everything was never modified as the company grew
- •Lawyers suggested five to seven designated insiders, and no SEC limit applied
- •Every employee became a designated insider: about 800 at IPO, around 7,000 today
- •Compromising one component of a culture can have wide knock-on effects
Component Three: Being Bold and Taking Risks
Dharmesh describes how HubSpot encourages risk-taking while keeping accountability clear. Everyone has a voice but not a vote, and the company backs each decision once made.
- •Big outcomes come from someone taking an uncomfortable risk
- •Roughly ninety percent of effort goes to the core, with some time for risks
- •Some failures are needed or it was not an experiment
- •A single person is responsible for each decision rather than consensus
- •The team lines up behind decisions, which they call sailing a ship
Component Four: Strength Comes from Diversity
Dharmesh recalls how HubSpot's early hires were mostly MBAs from his own circle, and how a hallway of employee photos revealed the lack of diversity. He explains the changes made and why diversity matters for customer empathy.
- •Early employees shared a background and vocabulary, which was efficient but narrow
- •The photo hallway showed the whole company lacked diversity
- •Dharmesh says you must be able to define your culture before claiming to hire for culture fit
- •HubSpot appointed a director of diversity, inclusion and belonging and tracked metrics
- •A monoculture struggles to empathize with a diverse customer base
Culture Is Never Done: Closing Takeaways
Dharmesh argues that founders should not try to preserve startup culture, because a company builds one product for customers and one for its people. Reid closes by urging listeners to write down their culture and ask when they last rewrote it.
- •Preserving startup culture is a misguided goal
- •No product is ever done, so culture is never done
- •Some startup-era elements no longer fit, and new feature requests emerge
- •Treating culture as a product builds team investment
- •Reid urges writing your culture down and asking when you last rewrote it
