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Culture

Every resource in the archive tagged with culture.

25 resources

Don't Fuck Up the CultureEssay

Don't Fuck Up the Culture

Brian Chesky

Apr 2014 · 3 min read

Why culture matters more than anything else — the letter Chesky sent the entire Airbnb team in 2013.

Guide to Big Companies: Retaining great peopleEssay

Guide to Big Companies: Retaining great people

Marc Andreessen

Jul 2007 · 12 min read

How big companies lose their best people, and what it takes to keep them.

CEOs Should Tell It Like It IsEssay

CEOs Should Tell It Like It Is

Ben Horowitz

Jul 2010 · 11 min read

CEOs who hide bad news destroy trust and prevent their best people from solving hard problems.

Making Yourself a CEOEssay

Making Yourself a CEO

Ben Horowitz

Oct 2012 · 12 min read

Being a CEO requires mastering unnatural skills, especially the foundational practice of giving honest, authentic feedback.

Employee RetentionEssay

Employee Retention

Sam Altman

5 min read

Why keeping early employees matters more than hiring them, and three strategies that actually work.

How to HireEssay

How to Hire

Sam Altman

12 min read

Hiring is the most important thing a founder does; spend a third to half your time doing it well.

Jony Ive recounts the time Steve Jobs called him vainVideo

Jony Ive recounts the time Steve Jobs called him vain

Jony Ive

Mar 2026 · 1 min read

In the clip below, Jony Ive recounts the time he asked Steve Jobs to be less harsh in his critique of a piece of work.

Mark Zuckerberg: “You can’t 80/20 everything”Video

Mark Zuckerberg: “You can’t 80/20 everything”

Mark Zuckerberg

Mar 2026 · 1 min read

Why some problems demand 100% of the work — you can't 80/20 everything.

Jeff Bezos’s two pieces of advice for aspiring entrepreneursVideo

Jeff Bezos’s two pieces of advice for aspiring entrepreneurs

Jeff Bezos

Mar 2026 · 1 min read

Why entrepreneurs shouldn't chase the hot thing — position for the wave, then wait.

What's The Most Difficult CEO Skill?Essay

What's The Most Difficult CEO Skill?

Ben Horowitz

9 min read

No essay prose was present in the provided resource.

Why Startups Should Train Their PeopleEssay

Why Startups Should Train Their People

Ben Horowitz

9 min read

Training employees builds competitive advantage and reduces turnover in high-growth startups.

How to Minimize Politics in Your CompanyEssay

How to Minimize Politics in Your Company

Ben Horowitz

9 min read

Strategies for reducing destructive internal power dynamics and factionalism in growing companies.

A Good Place to WorkEssay

A Good Place to Work

Ben Horowitz

9 min read

Ben Horowitz is a cofounder and general partner at Andreessen Horowitz.

Peacetime CEO / Wartime CEOEssay

Peacetime CEO / Wartime CEO

Ben Horowitz

9 min read

No essay prose was included — only navigation, bio, and a list of other content titles.

2020 Letter to Shareholders — FarewellLetter

2020 Letter to Shareholders — Farewell

Jeff Bezos

Apr 2021 · 25 min read

Bezos's parting message in his final shareholder letter as CEO, framed via a Richard Dawkins passage on biological homeostasis.

2018 Letter to ShareholdersLetter

2018 Letter to Shareholders

Jeff Bezos

Apr 2019 · 18 min read

Bezos arguing that risk-taking, not just revenue, must scale with company size.

2016 Letter to Shareholders — Day 1Letter

2016 Letter to Shareholders — Day 1

Jeff Bezos

Apr 2017 · 8 min read

Four practices to prevent organizational stagnation: customer obsession, rejecting proxies, embracing trends, and fast decision-making.

How to Hire the Best People You've Ever Worked WithEssay

How to Hire the Best People You've Ever Worked With

Marc Andreessen

Jun 2007 · 12 min read

Drive, curiosity, and ethics matter more than raw intelligence when hiring the best people for a startup.

Guide to Startups, Part 6: How much funding is too little? Too much?Essay

Guide to Startups, Part 6: How much funding is too little? Too much?

Marc Andreessen

Jul 2007 · 9 min read

How much funding a startup should raise: enough to reach product/market fit or full exploitation, with a buffer for setbacks.

How You KnowEssay

How You Know

Paul Graham

May 2003 · 25 min read

Why startups beat incumbents in design wars: design-by-committee deliberately trades away upside to avoid downside.

Why It's Safe for Founders to Be NiceEssay

Why It's Safe for Founders to Be Nice

Paul Graham

Apr 2004 · 9 min read

Hackers' disobedience and rule-breaking are essential to their brilliance, not flaws to suppress.

Mean People FailEssay

Mean People Fail

Paul Graham

Nov 2014 · 5 min read

Meanness correlates with startup failure because it costs you talent and prevents the transcendent thinking startups require.

Cities and AmbitionEssay

Cities and Ambition

Paul Graham

May 2008 · 16 min read

Graham's argument for why where you live matters far more than the 'couple percent' you'd expect.

How to Start a StartupEssay

How to Start a Startup

Paul Graham

Mar 2005 · 43 min read

Three things determine whether a startup succeeds: good people, a product customers want, and spending little money.

Guide to Startups, Part 1: Why not to do a startupEssay

Guide to Startups, Part 1: Why not to do a startup

Marc Andreessen

Jun 2007 · 10 min read

The emotional, logistical, and interpersonal reasons why starting a company is much harder than most people realize.