Protecting start-up culture when scaling
Protecting start-up culture when scaling
The people in start-ups can achieve the impossible. Culture in those early days is unrivalled — it’s part war cry, part in-joke, part survival strategy. You need to interview new hires but don’t want to do it in a coffee shop, so you manically build IKEA desks to fill your empty office while simultaneously drafting offer letters and contracts.
It’s emotional, exciting, and exhausting — and it’s that start-up energy that fuses your first few team members together. We’re wired for connection, and the opportunity to grow something from scratch is where strong bonds are formed.
But what happens when the headcount grows? The stakes are higher, processes start to formalise, and the energy needed to grow the start-up changes — making it easier for those early connections to slip away. I’ve been Head of People at two tech start-ups in Cardiff and am now mentoring ambitious early-stage founders through the Fintech Wales Foundry.
Across these roles, I’ve seen one theme come up again and again: How do you scale without losing the soul that made you different? How do you empower your team while the founder still needs to keep tight control? Here’s what I’ve learned about walking that line — and protecting start-up culture as you grow.
Codify culture before you need to defend it
The best time to define your culture is before it’s questioned or diluted. At Space Forge, we were clear from the start: our mission was radical, so our culture had to be too. We didn’t try to invent a new identity — we observed the behaviours that already drove our success and codified them. Ambitious and Resilient, Reflective Learner, and Focused on Impact — these values shaped the behaviours we needed, and we hired accordingly.
We even created a Failure of the Month award to ensure the team knew they could try something difficult and get it wrong without fear of repercussions. This early clarity gave us a compass when decisions got hard — from hiring and onboarding to feedback and exits.
Tip: Culture isn’t what’s on the website; it’s what gets rewarded, celebrated, and repeated.
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Minimum viable structure: Just enough to keep moving fast
As you scale, things get messy. Decision-making bottlenecks. People want clarity. Suddenly, what worked over pizza becomes a friction point.
This is where many start-ups over-correct — rolling out too many processes too soon in a bid to “grow up.” But structure should be about empowerment and making decision-making easier, not control for control’s sake. At Rostella, we adopted a minimum viable structure — just enough scaffolding to keep things moving without losing agility.
Peer reviews and reflective learning sessions replaced top-down performance reviews. Progression was transparent but flexible, and we trusted people to lead. Yet in some areas, only the founders could sign off — that was real and necessary.
The paradox: Empowerment without full autonomy
Here’s the start-up tension most People leaders wrestle with but rarely name: you want empowered employees, but the founder still holds the pen on final decisions. It’s tempting to pretend otherwise — to promote autonomy while privately rerouting decisions back to the top. But this erodes trust fast. The answer I found is honesty and intentional design.
A few strategies that helped:
- Decision-making maps: We made it explicit which decisions needed founder sign-off — especially where brand, funding, or product integrity was at stake.
- Delegated authority with guardrails: Employees had freedom within agreed boundaries. Engineering teams could experiment and iterate — but supply chain and commercial pivots still came back to founders.
- Narrative, not just rules: We didn’t just say “the founder decides” — we explained why. Often, founders are the keepers of the long-term vision and external relationships. Framing their role as stewards, not bottlenecks, helped alignment.
Hire for culture add, not clones of the founders
In the early days, hiring often means finding people who “get it” — shorthand for “people like us.” But as you grow, this risks creating an echo chamber. The challenge is to hire people who align with your mission but challenge your thinking.
At Space Forge and Rostella, I saw the difference when founders shifted from hiring for fit to hiring for add. In my experience, this shift tends to happen around the 20-person mark.
We started to notice similarities in backgrounds and thinking styles, and needed to open the door to new perspectives. People who brought different experiences and approaches enriched the culture — as long as they were aligned on values and direction. Empowered cultures aren’t made of clones — they’re made of people who feel safe contributing something different and new.
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Make founders accessible, even if their time isn’t
As teams grow, access to the original leaders naturally shrinks. But perceived distance can kill culture. At Space Forge, we found ways to keep the founder team visible — through weekly All-Hands sessions and informal Slack check-ins.
The founders would regularly participate in Robot Wars — a monthly competition where anyone in the company could enter their own robot and compete! It was fun, and it worked — people could chat informally with the CTO, and bonds were strengthened.
You don’t have to make founders available all the time or at the expense of their well-being. You just need to make them feel present.
Let culture evolve — but not by accident
Culture should evolve as you grow — but it shouldn’t drift. At every new phase — Series A, doubling headcount, opening a new location — we asked:
- What parts of our culture still serve us?
- What needs to adapt?
- Which rituals have become less effective? Which are worth protecting?
For example, when Space Forge outgrew the All-Hands model, we didn’t scrap it — we split it. Smaller team briefings with designated speakers kept connection strong, while company-wide updates became more strategic.
Final thought: Growth with control
You don’t have to choose between control and culture — but you do need to be deliberate. Empowerment doesn’t mean chaos. Control doesn’t have to mean micromanagement or back-to-the-office mandates.
The healthiest scaling organisations find ways to distribute ownership without diluting accountability — especially at the top. It’s a balance of trust and transparency, of clarity and compassion. Your people will achieve the impossible for you — and they’ll help you find and keep others who will do the same.
