

What Are Your Startup's Core Values? - cpaul808
http://www.infochachkie.com/corevalues/
You can creative a competitive advantage by having and promoting strong Core Values - A Map For The Ethical Bumps In The Startup Road.
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DaniFong
We (a compressed air powered vehicle startup) have a few things we repeat from
time to time. I guess you could call them indicative of core values. The
biggest difference with those listed in the OP, I guess, is that all of these
are externally referent, describing what the company should be to the world,
rather than what a team member should be to the company:

"Efficiency is a fight to the death."

"The three laws of thermodynamics: you can't win, you can't break even, and
you can't give up."

"Don't burn stuff."

"We have to compete with conventional vehicles on their own terms. The market
has already decided what the range, performance and cost should be."

"But that's not... platonic" (where platonic is used as a rough synonym for
canonical, ideal, beautiful, elegant, etc.)

Our chief aim is to make vehicles, powered by compressed air, that are
completely green, practical, and affordable; less expensive than conventional
vehicles, if we can. Our focus on inexpensiveness seems to be largely unique
among green vehicle startups, probably because batteries and fuel cells and so
expensive.

My cofounder often says "All the matters is... results!" I parody him for
this.

"Be honest."

My cofounder also points out that I bring an intellectual rigor and level of
honesty that's altogether unusual to business. He says that normally it's a
hindrance, but in our case it just causes us to work harder to prove out our
claims, so it's actually a source of power.

Instead of just rushing ahead and building things, or shopping for solutions,
we always try to think things through from the ground up, following physical
principles. This isn't always the best way to do engineering, but it's where
we have an advantage, and in the fight for efficiency we necessarily push
technology beyond what's been before achieved.

We are also trying to cultivate high levels of openness. We don't bother with
NDA's, for example, and want to open source as much of our vehicle designs as
we can. The patent system was originally designed for this, but now patents
are highly obscure.

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kolya3
Based on my (unfortunate?) experience of last 4 startups: when a company
creates a multitude of these "core values" it begins making the transition
from an exciting start up to a mediocre depressing job. If you have to explain
to your employees that "Integrity, Passion, Commitment, Competence,
Conscientiousness" are "keys to success", perhaps you are hiring the wrong
people.

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johnrob
I agree, that kind of talk is creepy.

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JacobAldridge
I would suggest that 10 is WAY too many.

For me, the purpose of Values is that they can act as a filter for actions and
decision making - remembering and applying ten values (especially when some
are phrases) is beyond just about anybody.

When I run a values exercise with clients, 3 is the number I suggest. For my
organisation, our values are Open, Honest, and Fair, which is pretty easy to
remember and apply.

That aside, the purpose of the article was the importance of having values,
and I think that's great.

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mollylynn
CPaul - you beat me to the punch. I was just about to post this.

I like this entry - all too often the Core Values in books are from big
companies and are not applicable to most startups.

Nice to see 'real' Core Values that have impacted a real startup.

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brandonkm
I think that a startups Core Values are pretty important and say quite a bit
about that particular company. Whether these values are stated or a given is a
direct extension of the "company culture" thats at that particular startup.
Core Values can vary widely, but I think it's pretty universal that most
hackers are looking for a fun place to work and interesting/challenging things
to work on. If a startup isn't offering at least that, then no list of
positive character traits paraded as "Core Values" can save them

