Evolving your culture as you scale.
Every founder says they have a great culture. Ask them to describe it and you'll usually get a list of values from the careers page.
That works at twenty people, where the culture is simply how the founders behave. It starts creaking around fifty, when most of the company has never worked directly with you. By two hundred, your culture is whatever your managers are actually doing rather than what you want it to be. It's something we see time and time again.
Natasha Lytton, Gabbi Cahane and Dan Garrett have each seen this from a different seat: as operators, as investors, and from inside the founder's chair. They're joining us to talk honestly about what culture really is at each stage of growth, what breaks first, and what you can actually do about it.
What we'll cover:
What culture genuinely means at 20, 50 and 200 people and the point at which it stops being something you can hold in your head
How to protect what made you distinctive as you grow: which parts are sacred, and where you may need to adapt it
What to do when the culture you have isn't the one you need. How to change it deliberately, without breaking trust
Hiring and retention: what "culture fit" should and shouldn't mean, how to assess for it without simply hiring more people like you and using it as a talent magnet to attract the best people.
Bringing senior hires into a culture that's already formed
Holding it together when the team is distributed or fully remote
Why "we're a family" is the wrong frame — and what to say instead.
About Gabbi:
Gabbi is a Partner at Stride.VC. Prior to joining Stride.VC, he spent decades building, backing and branding startups, scale ups, and global corporations across multiple sectors and geographies.
He's worked with 100s of founding teams on building brand, developing culture, driving growth and raising capital and has been an advisor to numerous VC firms including Stride, Seedcamp, 2150, Kindred, Connect amongst others.
He also likes being tattooed. A lot.
About Natasha:
Natasha has spent over 15 years supporting early-stage companies, first as an operator and CMO, and then a decade in venture at leading VC Seedcamp, where she worked with hundreds of founders and their teams as they navigated hiring, growth, fundraising and organisational change.
She now works independently with founders and boards on positioning, commercial strategy and the stories companies tell, both externally and to their own teams. She is particularly interested in the gap between the culture a company claims to have and the behaviours it actually rewards.
Known to spontaneously burst into song, Natasha is a fitness fanatic and splits her time between London and Lisbon.
About Dan:
Dan co-founded Farewill, scaling it to 165 people and raising £30m from investors including Highland Europe and the founders of Wise and Headspace. Farewill became the UK’s largest will writer, was named Best Employer at the UK FinTech Awards, and generated more than £1.5bn in pledges for charity before being acquired by Dignity.
Dan now advises startups and scale ups on fundraising, go-to-market and people strategy.
About Foundation Partners:
Foundation Partners provide fractional and embedded People and Talent experts for ambitious small businesses helping companies grow faster and perform better. From building the People ops foundations and hiring exceptional people to aligning your leadership team and creating a company that can scale, they provide the expertise you need when you need it. In the last two years they've worked with over 400+ brands including Fyxer AI, Dex, Bricklane, Perceptic and Flash Pack.