From 0 to 1: unlocking the secrets of business and the future

Chapter 17 Building a Gang Culture

Let's use our brains first: What should an ideal company culture look like?Employees love their work very much, enjoy their work, do not strictly observe working hours, and no one is in a hurry to leave work.The workspace is open and comfortable: more bean bag chairs, ping pong balls than filing cabinets.Free massages, on-site sushi making, and yoga classes make the scene warm.Pets should be welcome, too, and perhaps an employee’s pet cat or dog could be brought along, along with the office tropical fish as the company’s unofficial mascot.

What's wrong with this picture?Some of these are the hyperbolic perks that Silicon Valley is famous for, but they have no substance and don't work.Likewise, hiring an interior decorator to spruce up an office, an HR consultant to refine company policies, or a branding expert to polish a slogan won't help. "Company culture" cannot exist without the company itself: no company has no culture, and the company is culture.A start-up company is a group with the same mission, and the quality of corporate culture depends on its connotation.

"PayPal Gangster"

The first team I created became known in Silicon Valley as the "PayPal Mafia," and many of my ex-colleagues have been helping each other start and invest in successful technology companies. In 2002, we sold PayPal to eBay for $15 billion.Since then, Elon Musk founded SpaceX and co-founded Tesla Motors; Reed Hoffman co-founded LinkedIn; Steve Chen, Chad Hurley and Javed Karim co-founded YouTube video site; Jeremy Stoppelman and Russell Simmons founded Yelp review site; David Sacks co-founded Yammer enterprise social networking service with other investors company; and I co-founded Palantir Corporation.Today, all seven companies are worth more than $7 billion.At PayPal, we didn't deliberately create an office environment, but the entire team and individuals did an excellent job, and this culture was enough to surpass the original company.

We didn't build the "PayPal Mafia" by sifting through resumes and hiring the best.I saw first-hand the messy results of this approach while working at a law firm in New York.A couple of the lawyers I worked with ran a nice firm, and they were all great, but the relationship between them was surprisingly weak.They spend all day together but rarely communicate outside of the office.Why work with a bunch of people who don't like each other?Many people feel that this is a necessary sacrifice in order to make money.But, from a purely professional point of view, like free agents getting in and out of teams because of trades, such workplaces are worse than mutual indifference, which isn't even sane.Time is the most precious asset, and it is not worth the effort to waste it on people who cannot cooperate for a long time.If you can't form lasting relationships at work, then you're wasting your time—even from a purely financial standpoint.

From the beginning, I've wanted PayPal employees to be close together, not just transactional.I think stronger relationships not only make us happier and more productive at work, but make us more successful in our careers, even when we're not at PayPal.So we're going to hire people who really enjoy teamwork.They have to be talented, but more importantly, they have to genuinely enjoy working with us.This is how the "PayPal Mafia" began.

Provide irreplaceable job opportunities

Recruiting is a core competency of every company and should not be outsourced.You need employees who don't just look great on their resumes, but who can work together with others once they're hired.The first four or five applicants may be attracted by large stakes or high-level positions.More important than these obvious benefits is your own answer to the question: Why should the 20th employee join your company?

Talented people don't need to work for you because they have options.You should ask yourself more bluntly: why give up the opportunity to go to Google for high salary and prestige, and go to your company as the 20th engineer?
Here are some bad answers: "Because the stock options you get in the company are worth more here than elsewhere." "Because you get to work with the smartest people in the world." "Because you can help solve problems." The world's most challenging problem." Is there anything wrong with big-priced stocks, smart co-workers, and challenging problems?No, but it's the same rhetoric from every company, so it doesn't make you unique.A cookie-cutter statement doesn't explain why a candidate should join your company over other options.

The only good answers are those that are tailored to your company, so you won't find them in this book.But there are two kinds of good answers: one about the mission of the company, and one about the team.If you can explain why your company mission is exciting, then you can attract the employees you need.Not explaining why the work is important, but explaining why you're doing important things that no one else thinks you'll be doing.This is the only way to make your reason unique.At PayPal, if you're excited about the idea of ​​creating a virtual currency to replace the dollar, then we'd like to talk to you, otherwise, you're not the right place.

However, a great mission is not enough.Potential future employees will still ask, "Would I want to work with these people?" So you also need to explain why your company is right for him.If you can't, maybe he's not the right guy.

In short, don't fight the benefits war.Someone who comes here for free laundry or pet sitting doesn't make a good member of your team.You only need to provide basic benefits such as health insurance, and promise what other companies cannot provide, that is, the opportunity to complete irreplaceable work with excellent colleagues.You may not be as good as Google in 2014 in terms of salary and benefits, but if you can give a good answer about the company's mission and team, you will be on the same level as Google in 1999.

Every employee is different

From the outside, every employee in your company should have the same distinctive ethos.Unlike people on the East Coast who all wear the same skinny jeans or pinstripe suits to work, young people in Mountain View and Palo Alto wear T-shirts to work.It's not news that techies don't care what they wear, but if you look at those t-shirts, you'll find their company's logo - something that techies really value.What sets startup employees apart from outsiders is the company logo on T-shirts and hoodies.Startup workwear embodies a simple but important principle: Every employee at your company should be equally unique — a consistent logo speaks to a like-minded group of people actively committed to the company’s mission.

Max Levchin, my partner at PayPal, believes that in the early days of a startup, employees should be as personal as possible.Startups have limited resources and small teams.In order to survive, they must operate quickly and efficiently, which is easier to do if everyone has the same worldview.The early PayPal employees got along because we were the same kind of people.We all love science fiction: The Codex is must-read, and we prefer Star Wars about capitalism to Star Trek about communism.Most importantly, we are all obsessed with creating digital currencies that are controlled by individuals, not governments.It doesn’t matter what your employees look like or their nationality to keep your company running, but they have to be as obsessed with digital currencies as we are.

Each employee only focuses on one thing

Internally, each person is clearly defined and differentiated by having a unique job.

When assigning tasks at a startup, you can treat it as an optimization problem, effectively matching talent to jobs.But even if you can arrange it to some extent, any established plan will quickly fail.This is partly because startups move quickly, so individual roles cannot stay the same for long.Also because job assignments are not just about the relationship between employees and jobs, but also about the relationship between employees.

One of the best things I've done while running PayPal is make everyone responsible for one thing.Everyone's work is unique and they know I'm only judging by that.I did this with the intention of simplifying management, but then I noticed a deeper consequence: Defining roles reduces conflict.Most of the conflicts in the company are caused by colleagues competing for the same position.Because of the fluidity of job roles in the early stages of a startup, there is a lot of risk involved.Eliminating competition makes it easier to build long-lasting friendships beyond purely work relationships.Beyond that, internal harmony is key to the survival of startups.We often blame startup failures on strong competitors in the competitive system.But every company is an ecosystem unto itself, and factional conflict can render it vulnerable to external threats.Internal conflict is like an autoimmune disease in which the cause of death may be pneumonia, but the real cause of death is hidden inside and cannot be seen at a glance.

About Cults and Advisors

In the closest organizations, members spend long periods of time together, neglecting their families and the world around them.However, they have a strong sense of belonging, and they may also realize the mysterious "truth" that ordinary people can't dream of.We call such organizations cults.To outsiders, this dedication may seem crazy, in part because some notorious cults have been murderous: Jim Jones and Charles Manson didn't end well.

But entrepreneurs should take extreme commitment seriously.Is apathy toward work a sign of employee mental health problems?Is a professional attitude the only normal attitude?At the opposite extreme of the cult are consulting firms like Accenture: Not only do they lack a specific mission, but each consultant within the firm is just in and out of the firm on a regular basis, with no long-term connection to the firm.

The best startups are probably less extreme than cults.The big difference: Cults are often very wrong about important issues, while successful startups are very right about things that other companies don't understand.You can’t know the secrets from consultants, and you don’t have to worry about the company not being recognized by traditional professionals. It’s not a bad thing to be called a cult or even a gangster by outsiders.

(End of this chapter)