What if I found a startup

If I founded a software company tomorrow, these are the principles I'd encode into its DNA before writing a single line of code.

Before founding a company, the prerequisite is knowing why it should exist: establish the mission.

Culture & Values

Core Values

• Default to Open - Share work early and often. Radical transparency in decisions.
  • Learn in public - Document failures and learnings openly
• Strong opinions, loosely held - Advocate fiercely, but pivot quickly with new data.
• "Ship daily" - Bias toward action and visible progress over perfect planning

Decision-Making Framework

• Type 1 vs. Type 2 decisions - reversible decisions made quickly by individuals, and irreversible ones with group input (Jeff Bezos mentioned this as "one-way" vs. "two-way" doors.)
• Disagree and commit - One decision made, full team alignment regardless of initial position
• Data-informed, not data-driven - Use metrics as input but trust intuition for innovation

Cultural Principles

• No brilliant jerks - Competence never excuses poor collaboration
• Work-life integration not balance - Flexible boundaries, results over hours
• Celebration of craft - Take pride in elegant solutions and beautiful code
• Yes, and... culture - Build on ideas rather than shooting them down

Team Structure & Hiring

Hiring Philosophy

• Builder-first mentality - Every hire should be capable of shipping something independently within the first week.
• Cultural add, not cultural fit - (for founding hires) The person should add net positive to the company culture.

References: https://x.com/zfellows/status/1824443390244594000?s=46

Core Competencies

These criteria are assessed in interviews and contract-to-hire projects:

• AI utilization skill is expected - Leverage and augment AI usage into your produced values
• Excellent writer - I don't believe someone can be a good thinker and a bad writer
• Fluent in English, especially in writing - This is a proxy skill requirement, it proves that you are an intrinsic learner
• Autonomous and high agency - They spot out the problem before me. They come up with solution and execute it even if I don't ask for it

Team Composition Strategy

• Small pods (2-3 people max) - with full ownership of specific products/features

• No middle management - flat hierarchy with direct communication

• Rotating leadership - Different people lead different initiatives based on expertise

• Two-pizza teams - 6-8 people on a team is the sweet spot.

Growth Plans

• Slow hiring - the first 10 hires over 12-18 months. Each one raising the bar.

• Contract-to-hire - Test compatibility through Project work first. Interviews are capricious, projects are the best litmus tests.

  • Case study: Kepano got hired as Obsidian CEO through contractor works.
  • Evaluation: I have to be amazed by the output to consider hiring the person.

Performance Evaluation Framework

• Glory list - Each member is obliged to jot down their list, revised with me (on 1-1). The list will be the primary input factor for performance evaluation. That means no predefined OKR / KPI. Planning and direction get pivot all the times, rendering those performance framework volatile and inefficient.

Tool stack

• Notion as primary company knowledge base
• Slack as the main means of communication - No internal emails

Communication Protocol

• Treat mentioned chat messages as mail inbox. Process them in a cadence, address each of them accordingly. Treat non-mentioned as broadcast bulletin board information, read them as news.
• If a message should be seen by a person, mention their name
• If a message must be seen by a person, write ackp (acknowledge please) in the message.
• Replying to either should or must level when you saw it is a decent etiquette to maintain, especially when it has an action to take.
• If synchronous communication or immediate action is required, pat the other back or use phone call. Synchronize sparingly.