Updated 1 August 2026. First published in 2016.
Building a startup team, where do you begin? And once you have a team, how do you build a culture that keeps them as you grow?
I've had to answer both questions myself. I started Blu Mint as a digital marketing startup in 2016, and by 2020 we had a team of eight. Then Covid hit. Enterprises slashed their marketing budgets almost overnight, and I had to let the whole team go. It was the hardest decision I've made in business.
We rebuilt differently. Today, Blu Mint is a boutique agency with a team of 10 senior contractors across Estonia, France, Sweden, the UK and the USA. That model makes us far more flexible, for our clients and for our team.
Along the way, I've learnt a lot about who to hire, how to keep good people and what to do when things don't go to plan. This guide shares that advice, to help newer companies get from startup to scale-up.
Post summary
Eight lessons on building a startup team
Why company culture matters, and the evidence
Six ways to build a culture that scales
Part 1. Eight lessons on building a startup team
1. Know your company culture
Wikipedia defines organisational culture as the "behaviour of humans within an organisation and the meaning that people attach to those behaviours." Great, however what does that mean when you're building a startup team?
It's not only about hiring the right skill set. Will the person fit your company culture? Will they understand and live your values, reinforce your mission and help create a tighter team? Many younger workers look specifically for employers whose values match their own, so hiring for cultural fit is a win for both the company and the employee.
2. Hire to elevate, not to delegate
Great people have plenty of options, so your company's growth depends heavily on your ability to attract top talent. Employees can take or leave the beer, the video games and other novelty perks. What they really want is to work alongside people they're proud to call teammates.
Nobody's immune to a games room, catered lunch or a happy hour. However, at the end of the day, people beat perks every time. What really works when building a startup team is letting new hires off the leash and helping them build the company themselves.
Finding people to delegate to is easy. However, you end up with a team who are "good enough" for delegation and don't bring anything extra. You're looking for 1 + 1 = 3, people who bring something new to the team. Hire people to excel.
3. A and B players only
Startups have limited time and limited money, so you need the best teammates, those who score an A or a B rather than a C or a D. C and D players either lack the skills or only get tasks done with delays and pushing. In a startup, there isn't the time or the resources for constant hands-on management.
A and B players are task and goal oriented, good at what they do or well-rounded across most areas. They regularly exceed expectations, show initiative and, most importantly, learn fast when they don't yet have the skills a job needs. These are the people you need to build your team.
4. Look for attitude with aptitude
The right skills aren't enough. Your hires also need enthusiasm and drive. The idea behind hiring for attitude is simple. Skills can be taught, while attitude reflects personality, which is much harder to change. Traits like flexibility, passion and accountability make sense in a fast-changing workplace.
"I will only hire someone to work directly for me if I would work for that person," Mark Zuckerberg has said.
Hiring for attitude also helps you avoid the most common reasons new hires fail, such as struggling to take and act on feedback, a lack of motivation or the wrong temperament for the job.
Lele, our social media manager, is a great example. Nobody gets everything right, and that includes all of us. However, Lele will always go above and beyond to make her clients look good. That passion for the client means that even when a campaign doesn't hit every target, clients love working with her, because they can see how determined she is to make their company succeed. You can't teach that kind of attitude.
5. Don't hire jerks
It sounds obvious, and you're probably thinking you'd never hire one. Yet they aren't always easy to spot. Robert Sutton, author of The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't, describes the type as someone "addicted to rude interruptions and subtle put downs", who uses "sarcastic jokes" and "teasing" as insult delivery systems.
These people may think they're joking. However, they end up causing resentment across the team, which can lead to resignations and higher staff turnover. Do you really want your A players leaving because of someone else?
As long as the people around you are encouraging, thoughtful and respectful, the work will take care of itself.
6. Look for doers, not experts
When you start building a team, you need solid people around you who just get things done. There will come a time when you need deeper expertise. However, when you're building a team to scale, you need doers first.
Doers spend less time discussing what to do and more time doing it. They complete tasks, reach goals, need little managing and, as mentioned before, learn fast. Doers are great at getting the company set up, building brand awareness and creating a platform for growth. Then you hire the experts.
Many startups get courted by seasoned experts, especially for senior roles. However, people from large corporate jobs often expect support functions a startup simply doesn't have. Startups need people who, when they have an idea, go and do it themselves rather than looking for someone to hand it to.
7. Be careful with the Peter Principle
The Peter Principle observes that, in most organisations, employees keep being promoted until they reach a level at which they're no longer competent. Put simply, as your best doers keep getting promoted, at some point they'll land in roles they aren't suited to.
You need doers to begin with, as in lesson 6, however a time will come when you need experts and top talent to take the company to the next level. That may mean giving up some authority in your own company, and accepting that others have the skills and experience to move it forward.
8. Fire faster
This may sound counter-productive when you're building a team. However, you don't have time to pour resources into people who simply don't fit. In large organisations, there's plenty of support when someone isn't right for their role, from training courses and coaching to shadowing colleagues.
Most startups don't have those options. So when it becomes clear that someone isn't going to work out, it's best to act before you spend more time on a role that isn't working, however harsh that may sound. How you do it matters just as much, which we come back to in part 3.
Part 2. Why company culture matters
Are employees happy because a company is successful? In our experience, it's the other way around. Companies are successful because their people are happy.
Building the right culture from day one is essential for growth, and it isn't just anecdotal. Research shows what happy, engaged employees deliver.
| Measure | Most engaged teams vs least engaged |
|---|---|
| Profitability | 23% higher |
| Sales | 18% higher |
| Productivity | 14% higher |
| Customer loyalty | 10% higher |
| Absenteeism | 78% lower |
| Staff turnover | Up to 51% lower |
Source: Gallup meta-analysis, comparing business units in the top and bottom quarters for employee engagement.
Higher productivity
A University of Warwick study by economists Andrew Oswald, Eugenio Proto and Daniel Sgroi found that happiness made people around 12% more productive. Over a standard eight-hour day, that's the equivalent of almost an extra hour of work, every day.
Yes, I know an eight-hour day probably sounds like a luxury if you work in a startup. That brings me to the next point.
Resilience against stress
Work can be tough, particularly at a startup, where people are constantly putting out fires. Your team never knows what's coming next. However, they'll handle it better if they're happy.
In a 1998 study, participants were given a stressful task, then shown either an uplifting or a downbeat film. Those who saw the uplifting film recovered from the stress more quickly. We can't remove every stressful moment at work, however we can help people cope with them better.
Greater creativity
Happy employees perform much better at creative tasks. The theory is that creativity needs the peace of mind to see connections between things that seem unrelated.
Psychologist Alice Isen tested this by giving one group of participants small gifts and funny videos before a creative task, while another group went straight in. The group whose mood had been lifted showed far more creativity.
Better attendance
In Gallup's research, the most engaged teams had 78% less absenteeism than the least engaged. Sick leave is far more disruptive than planned holidays, for clients and for the colleagues who cover, and it can build resentment in the team.
Greater loyalty
There's a well-worn joke in the startup world. Investing in an employee who then leaves is unfortunate, however it's not nearly as bad as not investing in an employee who then stays.
Keeping good people matters, and the most engaged teams have up to 51% lower turnover, according to Gallup. The worry about investing in someone who leaves is understandable, though. Replacing an employee typically costs the equivalent of six to nine months of their salary, according to the Society for Human Resource Management.
Engagement is also rarer than you might think. Only around one in five employees worldwide is engaged at work, and Europe has the lowest engagement of any region, at 12%, according to Gallup. A strong culture is a real advantage when it comes to hiring and keeping people.
Part 3. Six ways to build a culture that scales
Building your culture probably wasn't top of your to-do list when you started, which is understandable when you have a product or service to build first.
In the early days, culture is wrapped up in the personalities of the founders and first employees. As the company grows, it gets harder to keep that sense of cohesion without a set of values everyone understands.
My favourite example is an organisation that united its people behind a goal that was, quite literally, a moonshot. As the story goes, President John F. Kennedy was visiting NASA in the 1960s and stopped to chat to a janitor sweeping the corridor. Asked what he did there, the janitor replied, "My job is to help put a man on the moon."
Every startup's goal can feel like a moonshot in the early days. The companies that make it build their culture at the same time as their product, so the culture is still strong when they scale.
Fun and perks have their place. However, a great culture is about much more than perks. It means understanding what employees want most, which is respect, recognition and the chance to grow.
That matters even more to younger employees, millennials and now Gen Z, who make up a growing share of the workforce. They want a clear purpose and room to grow, and they aren't afraid to switch companies, or countries, when a better opportunity comes along. Many also want more say at work and less top-down management. They still value leadership and regular feedback, so the best managers act more like coaches than bosses.
So how do you turn all this into a culture that lasts as you grow? Here's what we recommend.
1. Foster strong values
Almost every company exists to solve a problem. Whether that's saving the world or making a small difference to a few people's lives, every company is trying to make the world a little better in its own way. Or other planets, if your company happens to be SpaceX.
For Blu Mint, that means helping businesses grow through search, content and social media, and being honest about what will and won't work for them. If we're not the right fit for you, we'll say so and won't take you on, because we don't want to waste your time or your budget. Only senior people work on our clients' accounts, and you get direct access to them rather than going through an account manager. That's what being a boutique agency means to us, and it's why we believe it beats working with a much larger agency.
That purpose should sit behind a wider set of values, covering what the company believes in and how it behaves, both with its own people and with everyone else. Keep them short and memorable, so people actually use them to make decisions.
As you grow into new locations or hire remotely, protect those values. Involve experienced team members in onboarding new people, so the culture travels with them.
Values also shape how people work. Our team works at the times when they're most productive, not the hours we set, as long as clients get the results and delivery we've promised. Trusting people to manage their own time is one of the best ways to show you value them, and it's helped us keep great people across five countries.
2. Hire super carefully
Hiring the right people is among the most important things any company can do, and especially a startup. As we'll come back to, if you need to fire someone you've hired, that's ultimately the employer's responsibility.
Referrals from your own team are often the best source of new hires, because your people know what it takes to fit in. A referral bonus is a simple way to encourage them.
Take your time over interviews, even for referred candidates, and involve a founder in the final stage while you're small. Talk about your culture and values, to see how a candidate understands them and whether they'd embrace them. Talk about their future development too. It helps when someone already has clear goals that match the company's.
3. Value every employee
Once hired, every employee matters, and it's not enough for you to know it. They need to feel it too.
Stock options or profit sharing are a powerful way to give people a sense of ownership in what the team achieves.
That may not be possible for every company, however there are plenty of other ways to show people they matter. Bring the team together in person when you can, especially remote hires in their first weeks, and set aside a budget for socialising. Recognise good work publicly and often.
4. Let people grow
This is the most fundamental part of building a great culture. By now, you should have a company with a strong purpose and great people who are driven and feel valued. They'll want to reach their full potential with you, so give them the support and space to do it.
A big part of this is having the right team leaders in place to act as mentors and coaches. That doesn't just mean passing down instructions. Great leaders are great listeners.
They need to be active listeners too, understanding what people are telling them and sometimes reading between the lines. They also need a positive attitude, the ability to motivate others and a knack for solving problems. Team leaders don't have to work out every detail, however they should help people reach the answer.
As your company grows, team leaders carry a huge responsibility. If they help each person on their team grow, the company grows too.
5. Build a 1-on-1 culture
When everyone's working flat out, it's hard to find time to look up from your screen, let alone hold one-on-one catch-ups. Some companies offer little more than an annual review.
Regular one-on-ones between employees and managers, away from the day-to-day work, are vital. They aren't rushed tick-box exercises either. They can last up to 90 minutes and should always end with the next one in the diary.
Regular one-on-ones make sure good ideas get acted on and problems are spotted and fixed quickly. Without them, people can feel undervalued and demoralised.
Build them around open-ended questions, then talk through how to solve whatever comes up. It's a two-way exchange, so managers should use it to get feedback on their own work and build trust.
This matters even more now that so many teams work remotely or in hybrid setups. We cover that in our guide to remote team communication.
6. Fire quickly, but humanely
As in lesson 8, you sometimes need to act quickly when someone isn't working out. However, remember this. When a hire doesn't work, it's your responsibility, not just the employee's.
It's your company and your decision to hire them, so you must take responsibility for ending their employment if they don't fit your culture.
In practice, that means treating the person with complete respect throughout. Act swiftly once you reach that point, however remember it's a difficult situation for anyone to be in. Any delay will only make things worse, and it can affect the rest of the team.
Bringing it together
When your company is small enough that everyone knows each other well, a personality and culture form naturally. As it grows, a clear, positive culture across the whole company becomes essential. Everyone plays a part, especially team leaders, who need to listen and give regular feedback.
People are complex. When they join a company, it's because they want something from it. Listening to your team, understanding what they want and finding where it fits with your company's goals is incredibly important. If they grow, your company grows. It's the most important lesson we've learnt growing Blu Mint.
Too many companies see their people as little more than job titles, and never build the culture they need. Hire carefully, then look after the people you hire. The evidence is clear. Happier, more engaged teams build more successful companies. For more on this, read our manifesto of a happy organisation.
Where Blu Mint fits
We work best with scale-ups and established businesses that are ready to invest in growth, usually through a monthly retainer covering SEO, content, PPC and social media. You can read more about the kind of company we work best with.
If you're at an earlier stage, building the right team comes first. When you get to marketing, our guide to the reasons startups fail at digital marketing is a good place to start.
If you'd like expert guidance without a full agency retainer, we also work as a fractional CMO. Our founders advise your team on SEO, PPC and social media and show them how to do it, so you build the skills in-house while keeping costs down.
When you're ready to scale, get in touch and we'll help you take the next step.
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Start with your culture and values, then hire for attitude as much as skills. Look for doers who get things done and learn fast, keep to A and B players, and avoid people who damage the team, however talented they are. Bring in experts as you scale, and act quickly and respectfully when a hire isn't working.
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Culture drives how people work, how long they stay and how well the company performs. In Gallup's research, the most engaged teams are 23% more profitable, 14% more productive and have 78% less absenteeism than the least engaged. For a startup, where every person counts, those gains matter even more.
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Set clear values early, hire people who share them, and make every employee feel valued, for example through stock options or time together in person. Give people room to grow, train team leaders to coach and listen, and hold regular one-on-ones. If someone doesn't fit, act quickly and treat them with respect.
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Early on, generalists who get things done usually serve you better than specialists. Bring in experts once the company has a platform for growth and needs deeper skills to reach the next level, and be ready to give them real authority when you do.
