Does your startup company culture really matter? It sure mattered to Zappos founder Tony Hsieh, as we noted last week, who describes in an article in Inc, the battles he waged with investors who dismissed his efforts to cultivate a supportive, worker-friendly environment at the company. The importance of preserving that company culture, Hsieh suggests, led in part to his decision to sell his company to Amazon . Sponsor Company Culture: A “Meaningless Platitude”? A startup has to have a lot of things in place: a strong team, a good product, and a market interested in it. Is the company culture another thing that startups need to have situated in order to succeed? Or is it, as Dan Shapiro writes in a provocatively titled post “a meaningless platitude”? Shapiro points out that the official statements about the company culture of GE, Wells Fargo, and Zillow, for example, all sound remarkably similar. And even though this sort of statement might be “put together after much employee feedback and deliberation, and carefully designed to capture the key things that make your company great. It’s also a load of well-mixed fertilizer.” Shapiro contends that a company culture is what makes your company different, not necessarily what makes it great. In the case of the Zappos company culture, Hsieh is pretty adamant that this is what makes the online shoe store great. He writes that “what distinguished us from our competitors was that we’d put our company culture above all else. We’d bet that by being good to our employees – for instance, by paying for 100 percent of health care premiums, spending heavily on personal development, and giving customer service reps more freedom than at a typical call center – we would be able to offer better service than our competitors. ” What Really Makes a Company Culture? Arguably, developing a positive community culture requires more than just the commitment to health care and professional development. And as Shapiro argues that despite frequent invocation of catchphrases like “hire the best, teamwork, ethics,’” that “real” company culture is comprised of four things: 1. Polarizing decisions 2. Excesses 3. Quirks 4. Dysfunctions It’s how startups handle difficult decisions, how they foster certain quirks or excesses, and how they develop dysfunctional responses to various circumstances that will truly define the company culture. Despite the provocative title “Your Company Culture is a Meaningless Platitude,” I don’t think Shapiro is suggesting that the culture itself is meaningless. Rather, the buzzwords are irrelevant if you don’t pay attention to the things that actually make your startup a great – or horrid – place to work. Of course, this begs the question: what do you think makes up a good startup company culture? Discuss

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As the school year draws to a close, college graduates will making a move to the next stage of their lives. Will college have encouraged or discouraged them from making that next stage involve entrepreneurship? Venture capitalist Roger Ehrenberg penned an impassioned call-to-arms on Monday, challenging the venture capital and startup industries to do a better job recruiting young entrepreneurs from college. He urges the “seeding of a startup culture.” Sponsor Inspired in part by James Kwak’s post “Why Do Harvard Kids Head to Wall Street?” Ehrenberg calls for better efforts to “lure the best and brightest into game-changing areas such as start-ups and social enterprises.” Ehrenberg says that it may be that too much emphasis is placed on the risks and the fears associated with startups – “bad marketing, plain and simple” – something that makes jobs on Wall Street or with established corporations seem safer. Instead Ehrenberg wants young entrepreneurs to be steeped in a “startup lore” and encourages experienced investors and founders/CEOs to tell what he contends are “better stories” about the challenges and opportunities that come with starting your own company. Ehrenberg points to a number of VCs who have become instructors at universities in order to “use their positions as vehicles for identifying top students, building relationships that ultimately result in ideas getting funded or students placed in promising start-ups.” However, he questions whether it’s worth waiting for more hiring or for an institutional change at the university level to encourage entrepreneurship, and urges instead a “grassroots effort on the part of local venture investors and successful start-up executives to get into the classrooms and onto campus to re-orient talented students away from the money culture and towards the building culture.” Although some universities are working to develop entrepreneurial programs , it may be that the “culture” of business school isn’t the right place on campus for the cultural transformation that Enhrenberg wants. (Entrepreneurs do major in things other than business.) Ehrenberg’s essays calls for a better “startup culture” and focuses primarily on storytelling from experienced VCs and entrepreneurs in order to foster it. How else might we go about fostering such a culture? You can read Ehrenberg’s full blog post here . Discuss

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Lies, fake news about Facebook and outright scams have grown more common on the giant social network than weeds in a Farmville player’s fields. Now the problem has reached the very top of the organization, with one of only four members of Facebook’s hyper-exclusive Board of Directors apparently handing his account credentials over to a service that started spamming his friends with a fake offer of a “Facebook phone number.” If a guy like that falls for it, who can blame little old you or me if we fall for such a scam, too? Apparently the Board Member, investor Jim Breyer, has had his Facebook account suspended over the spam. “Users whose accounts have been compromised are put through a remediation process, where they must take steps to re-secure their account and learn security best practices,” a Facebook official told leading financial industry blog PEHub yesterday, “This is what happened with Mr. Breyer’s account.” If Facebook becomes all the more awash in scams and spams, this may be a key symbol of when the tide turned and it became too much. Sponsor If you’re a regular Facebook user and have friends outside the tech industry, you no doubt see all kinds of scams, spam and rumors being passed around. For example, that Facebook will soon start charging users for their accounts. (Totally untrue.) Facebook is now a very mainstream phenomenon, and so the same millions of people who are too busy doing other things in their lives to know what an internet browser or other basic technical matters are, now push messages around Facebook sometimes with little familiarity with how things work and with less friction than ever before. In as much as Facebook has brought push-button publishing and social graph technology to hundreds of millions of people around the world for the first time – this is a big challenge the company is going to have to deal with in order for its service to have maximum, long-lasting impact on our culture. Smart people fall for phishing scams, there’s nothing new about that. Phishing is old enough too that it probably doesn’t make sense to feel ashamed, either. In as much as Facebook has brought push-button publishing and social graph technology to hundreds of millions of people around the world for the first time – this is a big challenge the company is going to have to deal with in order for its service to have maximum, long-lasting impact on our culture. Can Facebook Kill the Spam? See also: What Happens When You Deactivate Your Facebook Account and “How Do I Delete My Facebook Account” – A Fast Growing Query Facebook does have a unique advantage over email, the company points out. When a message from a source is discovered to be spammy, the company can zap it system-wide all at once. Apparently that’s only proven so effective so far, though. If every social network rises and falls, though, effectively tackling this problem may be important to protecting the Facebook user experience from “pulling a MySpace.” When the problem reaches the very top of the company, it may be time to be concerned. MySpace took big steps to kill spam years ago, but not until it was too late and the company’s reputation was set. Can Facebook save itself from a similar fate? We’ll see. Discuss

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Over the weekend, startup accelerator TechStars announced a partnership with Startupbootcamp , a Copenhagen-based incubator and the very first member of a new global affiliate program hosted by TechStars. With programs in Boulder, Boston and Seattle, TechStars is now expanding and “open sourcing” their incubation model by providing guidance and support for independent international startup accelerators. A TechStars presence in Europe, in any way, shape or form, is a positive step for seed funding in Europe , which – as we’ve discussed earlier – is in dire need of growth. Sponsor Startupbootcamp is a three month program running from August through October where a select group of companies will fine-tune their ideas, develop prototypes and develop their business. At the end of October, the teams will present their products to a group of over 100 investors in hopes of securing further seed or Series A funding. TechStars founder David Cohen recently wrote a blog post announcing the partnership and noted the advantage foreign accelerators will have by utilizing the open methods of the U.S.-based TechStars. “TechStars can help affiliates to quickly build their mentor networks, teach best mentoring practices, and thereby also attract the region’s best entrepreneurs,” writes Cohen. “It’s great for investors because they see high-quality startups who have been well coached. And it’s great for the community because mentorship becomes more ingrained into the culture, which then attracts still more entrepreneurial talent.” Having an accelerator like TechStars bring its reputation and success overseas is a big step forward for the seed funding market in Europe. Traditionally, most venture firms in the area have focused their attention of proven business models and companies with some years of success behind them. Finding support for young first-time entrepreneurs has been significantly more difficult in Europe than in the U.S., which has caused many great minds to leave Europe to seek funding. “TechStars can help affiliates to quickly build their mentor networks, teach best mentoring practices, and thereby also attract the region’s best entrepreneurs.” – David Cohen Companies accepted to Startupbootcamp will be provided with 25,000 Danish kroner (which is a little over $4,300) per team member, as well as office space and access to over participating 50 mentors. All that the program requires of applicants is that they be dedicated, hard-working teams with innovative ideas and clear business models. Startupbootcamp does, however, require a 5% to 10% equity share in participating companies. With this new partnership, Startupbootcamp is helping to build the fence that will keep Europe’s talent at home. In the last few months, Europe has seen the creation of several new seed level initiatives, including Index Capital’s Index Seed , as well as the Berlin-based Team Europe Ventures . Hopefully with the TechStars name behind it, Startupbootcamp will help strengthen Europe’s startup talent pool. Discuss

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On Saturday Apple let the public get their hands on their newest creation, the iPad , setting off a flood of hype and media coverage which has likely yet to reach its peak. Yes, this is yet another post about the iPad, and my apologies go to those who are tired of being choked by the frenzy of stories surrounding the iPad launch, but a few things I learned from this weekend might come in handy for undecided developers. Sponsor Personally I tried to avoid the iPad hype this weekend, and not because I’m not a fan of Apple products or because I have a specific disdain for the iPad; I tried, and failed, to avoid the hype because I believe I underestimated its potential impact. This is just part of the reason I believe any developer even contemplating the idea of making an iPad application should do it, and do it as quickly as possible . Here’s why. There Aren’t That Many iPad Specific Apps Yet When I first joined Facebook in 2004 it was still very small and very young and I could remember being able to page through the less than 100 groups that existed on the site. Then it was easy to either find a group you wanted to join or to create one and gain a large membership. Now, the network has hundreds of thousands, if not millions of groups and finding the ones you actually want is much harder. The iPhone has gone through this same process. When the App Store launched, only a few thousand applications were on it, making searching for apps easy and making the potential impact of new applications much larger. Now, as we know, hundreds of thousands of applications clog the App Store and make searching and discovering new applications exponentially harder than before. The same thing will happen to the iPad, which means now is the time to jump on the train. A current search of the App Store for iPad apps turns up just over 3,200 applications, a fraction of the number of iPhone/iPod Touch apps which will likely pass 200,000 later this year. While the iPad does run these other apps, there is a dearth of iPad apps, especially those that are not just scaled-up versions of their iPhone predecessor. The time has, obviously, never been better for app developers because right now with so few iPad apps, the probability of being discovered early is much higher. The Apple Buying Culture Wants Your App People don’t love Apple for their low prices; they willingly hand over hundreds, if not thousands of dollars for the company’s various products. The culture of the people who buy these products has taught them that price is not the main motivation behind why they buy something, while at the same time making them more willing to hand over their cash in micro-payments for individual games and applications. From the iPod to the iPhone, iTunes and the App Store have bred a new a customer willing to pay $1.99 for music, or $2.99 for an app they’ve never tried without hesitation. I know I’ve done it before, and I should feel worse about it but I don’t. I’ve spent a few bucks here and there on applications that I used only a handful of times but I don’t get angry about it. Honestly, my music purchases are much farther scrutinized than my app purchases. For better or worse, we’ve been taught to accept the throwing away of a few bucks here and there, and app developers have been cashing in on that for a while now. The other opportunity around this buying culture for the iPad is that people will likely pony up a few extra dollars for each app on average. While developing an iPad app may not be twice the effort it takes for an iPhone, the customer will likely be willing to pay $1.99 for an app that was $.99, especially just after launch. If I had an iPad right now, I’d want to test out the best applications on it, and some of those apps are likely to cost as much as $9.99, but I would likely still buy them because, hey, I just spent $500 on a device, what’s a few extra bucks? The Hype Window Is Big, But Not Too Big The hype over the iPad has just begun, and it will only get bigger as more people discover what it can do and start being stared at by strangers on the subway. The hype will continue later when the 3G version of the iPad launches, though it will not be quite as large as this weekend’s surge. The 3G launch will likely get the media buzzing about it again, and it will help the hype live longer than normal, however, that window of excitement could close this summer. New MacBooks and new iPhones are expected to be announced, if not launched, this summer, and they could likely steal a majority of the spotlight away from the iPad, especially if the mythological creature that is the “Verizon iPhone” does in fact become a reality. Apple will likely do everything in its power to keep the hype surrounding the iPad up until the holiday season when the company does its best business, by then, however, there will be a lot more iPad apps than there are right now. This Thing Is Likely Bigger Than Most Expected Originally analysts had estimated that between 200 and 300 thousand iPads would leave shelves this weekend, but Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray revised his guess to between 600 and 700 thousand after seeing the hoards of people waiting in line Saturday. Numbers aside, the impact of the device before its launch speaks volumes to its potential from here on out. Several media companies announced they would be developing special no-Flash sites specifically for iPad browsing, and others said they would be providing HTML 5 video capability in anticipation of the device. All the while, several outlets, like WIRED and the Wall Street Journal announced they were working on iPad applications for viewing their content. After Apple’s past success with the App Store on the iPhone and iPod Touch, it’s no surprise that these companies are jumping on board even before the iPad is in customers’ hands; they recognized the importance of early adoption and being in the store at launch. Popular technology journalists have given mostly positive reviews of the device as it seems actually seeing, holding and using the device speaks louder than just reading, or hearing about it. Personally, I didn’t think the launch would be this big, but it has certainly been another success for Steve Jobs and Apple. That being said, the reasons to develop on the iPad pile much higher than those not to, so if you’re even considering it, do it. Do it now. Click here to see ReadWriteWeb’s full coverage of the iPad’s launch . Discuss

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