Timestamps:

6:13 - Why culture can’t be copied

12:24 - Hiring fast and well

15:30 - Creating a sense of belonging

17:36 - Making tough decisions for the sake of culture

20:36 - Being clear about your values

About Victoria Ransom:

Victoria Ransom is the co-founder of Wildfire, a social marketing software-as-a-service company which was acquired by Google, and of Prisma, a global virtual school (grades 4-12). She holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and worked as a Financial Analyst at Morgan Stanley before co-founding Access Trips, the travel startup that led her to creating Wildfire.

During her chat with us, Victoria reflected back on the values which sustained Wildfire and which drive Prisma nowadays. She thinks they boil down to 5 characteristics:

Being non-hierarchical (though this also created some problems further down the line at Wildfire);
Being transparent, i.e. sharing both the good and the bad with your employees;
Being scrappy, or resourceful: even though Wildfire’s biggest competitor raised about 10x more money, Wildfire still beat them, because they knew how to do more with less;
Encouraging innovation and accepting failure, i.e. showing enthusiasm for employees who decide to try new things, and understanding that it’s okay if these experiments fail;
Being humble and down to earth.

Victoria is not surprised that the same culture reproduced itself at Prisma, since startup cultures are, in her opinion, a reflection of the founders’ values. When it comes to maintaining your culture, Victoria thinks this can be achieved by ensuring 4 things:

That you hire the right people;
That you often reward the people who live up to your values;
That you are quick to fire those who don’t;
That you yourself are seen upholding these values.

This means making tough decisions at times, like when Victoria had to fire their top sales person at Wildfire.

The cover portrait was edited by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.smartportrait.io⁠

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