The ultimate startup lesson: knowing what matters | Hacker News Reader

The ultimate startup lesson: knowing what matters

gigaom.com

67 pointsgvr12 comments

That was a terribly written article.

How so?

I wouldn't call it terrible, but it was entirely platitudes. Everyone already believes company value systems (more commonly called "company culture") matter, and that's all that's being said here.

Most people think company culture is important in the same way they think life is fragile. Everybody agrees and people rarely act accordingly.

It's disappointing that a mean comment with no content gets upvotes.

The point was to create values early on and test potential candidates against them before hiring. It was written in an abstract fashion which might not be what you're used to.

Curious as to what Otelic (the author's company) does, as I could not decipher their mission statement [0]:

"A company dedicated to bring full engagement and sunshine to individuals and companies using simple tricks and mathematical magic."

[0] http://otelic.com/about

@FD3SA our goal is to help people qualitatively and quantitatively understand the culture in companies, so that they can address problems, cultivate their character, and attract the types of people that find it (the character) compelling.

We don't think there's such a thing as an objectively "right" culture or value system, but there are definitely some that are subjectively _wrong_ for any given individual.

Thank you, that sounds very interesting. Would be interesting to see a compare and contrast between Amazon and Google. Almost antithetical cultures, yet both wildly successful companies.

Completely agree regarding comparing the two - if you want to meet up and discuss feel free to contact us at founders at otelic.com :)

Out of curiosity, why did you select your current mission statement instead of the the description you gave me? I like yours much better. Magic and sunshine are difficult to understand sometimes :)

"Our goal is to help people qualitatively and quantitatively understand the culture in companies, so that they can address problems, cultivate their character, and attract the types of people that find it (the character) compelling."

Sounds like a much better springboard for a mission statement!

You're right, our thinking has evolved a lot since we started and the sentence that is live is arguably stale. Will fix tomorrow. :)

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