Minimum Viable Culture
Startups live or die by focus. In the early stages, it’s easy to convince yourself that “culture” is something you’ll figure out later: after the product launches, after the next round closes, after you hire just a few more people.
But culture happens by design or by default. It starts forming the moment your team does.
I have seen early-stage companies ignore culture entirely, only to wake up months later with a team dynamic they do not recognize. I have also seen founders overengineer their culture docs, wasting time on broad generic ideas and marketing language that never impacts day-to-day work.
This post outlines the essential elements of culture every startup should define.
What Is Minimum Viable Culture?
Minimum Viable Culture (MVC) is the smallest set of cultural foundations that every startup should define early and update often. These foundations don’t require offsites or consultants. They require honest discussion and the willingness to write down what actually matters.
MVC is the minimum viable set of documents (or leadership discussions) that help your team act faster, communicate better, and stay aligned as you grow.
They should be short, actionable, and revisited every 6–12 months or whenever a major change reshapes your company. Think of MVC as a lightweight scaffolding for your culture, just enough structure to keep you focused, without slowing you down.
Here are the four components every early-stage startup needs:
1. Mission & Vision
Why does your company exist?
Your mission answers what you can be the best in the world at. Your vision is what you aspire to become in success.These two ideas help your team make decisions on what you will or won’t focus on and tell a compelling story to future employees, partners, and customers.
Read: Why Does Your Company Exist?
2. Core Values
What behaviors are expected or prohibited?
Your values should help employees make daily decisions. They should be specific enough to be lived, not just stated. They define what good looks like and where the line is when something needs to be addressed.
Read: Why Every Company Needs Core Values
Read: How to Write Your Company’s Core Values
Read more with these examples from Proletariat:
3. Cultural Communication Guide
How do we work and communicate as a team?
Every team has unspoken norms and this document will make them explicit. Your communication guide should cover how you give feedback, make decisions, run meetings, and use tools like Slack or email. It promotes clarity, reduces drama, and speeds up onboarding.
Read: Culture Communication Guide
4. Compensation Guide
How do you reward and incentivize the team?
Be explicit about your philosophy on salary, equity, titles, promotions, bonuses, and PTO. Even a one-pager makes a difference in making thoughtful choices on decisions that are difficult to reverse.
Read: How to Write a Compensation Guide for Your Startup
Final Thoughts
One of the most important roles of any leader is allocating resources. Minimum Viable Culture is meant to establish the highest impact cultural tools with the smallest investment footprint.
Take the time to have these discussions and do the work to record the output. A focused leadership team could cover all of this ground in a single day offsite with the proper preparation and research.
Don’t spend too much time making everything perfect, just be ready to iterate. These documents will evolve, just like your company. That’s the point. But getting them in place early will give you a cultural foundation that scales.