KSR's culture
For context, we're building large-scale AI prediction systems for sports (see previous posts). Unsurprisingly, our culture is deeply shaped by the world of sports:
We enjoy competition
We compete amongst ourselves in sports, prediction accuracy, trading strategies, office games. More importantly, we compete together: against other companies and against the market. And, though it's hard, we enjoy it.
Next play mentality
Winning in sports, or as a company, requires learning from previous attempts and focusing on the next one. As a startup, things will go wrong. But, as long as you're in the right iterative mindset, you'll be fine.
Great teams are systems
Magic happens when there's a cohesive unit playing off each other. Systems thinking means understanding your role while enabling others. We also build large-scale predictive systems, which requires whiteboarding the whole picture together.
Radical optimism, systematic execution
Yes, the first part is a Dua Lipa album title - feature not a bug. Hear me out though. Doing something difficult, like becoming a world-class athlete, requires (i) actually choosing to do it (radical optimism) and (ii) figuring out how (systematic execution). Both matter.
Why define these at all?
Company culture is an abstract concept that can often feel like a mix of total bullshit, a poor post-hoc explanation for why a company succeeds or something that shouldn't exist at all. Yet, we've still defined some. If a company is just a group of people working together to do some economically valuable thing, it does seem important to be deliberate about the "working together" part.
The specifics - remote policies, work hours, office perks - aren't really culture. They're instantiations of the deeper set of opt-in, shared principles which I call company culture. It's more useful, and forces crisper thinking, to tease out the right abstractions rather than conflate them with implementations that change over time.
Once defined, these general principles should align individual execution towards collective success. And be voluntarily adopted. The voluntary part is critical for two reasons. First, principles that aren't genuinely shared don't improve coordination. Second, well-constructed principles should be fairly unique to your company and your version of success - which means people need to consciously opt into them rather than assume them. After all, common principles that help any group cooperate towards any goal (trust, communication, ...) are obvious and low-signal. Company culture becomes interesting when it defines principles particularly well-suited for the specific goal at hand. Hopefully, this is what we've managed to do.
If this resonates, drop a line to draftpicks@kairos-research.ai - we're hiring!
Sportingly yours,
Kairos Sports Research