How Culture Actually Takes Root in SaaS Startups

ALL STAR SAAS FUND’s Tatsuya Kamisaki and Hiroto Saeki argue that culture is emergent from repeated actions, not a thing you impose — and that misaligned strategy, not weak values, is usually the real problem.

• Culture is accumulated implicit assumptions shaped by repeated actions, not psychological safety or good vibes — it cannot be “instilled” by decree.
• If values are failing to spread, the root cause is almost always a misaligned business strategy, not a communication problem with the values themselves.
• Values should be set ~95% top-down by founders, not by committee; the mountain you choose to climb (Takao vs. Fuji vs. Everest) determines which behaviors to demand.
• The most effective values are “shocking” — they counter the natural human drift toward complacency and force explicit, high-performance commitments the way M3’s ROI obsession or Loglass’s Feed Forward norm do.
• LayerX’s value of 徳 (long-term virtue and social contribution) is cited as a strong example of strategy and values being tightly aligned.
• Values show their highest ROI at onboarding: career-hire startups lack the implicit initiation rituals of large firms, so codified values and early feedback substitute for that missing context.
• ALL STAR SAAS FUND shocked Saeki by drafting his OKRs with him during the hiring process — and recently refreshed its own values, treating them as living documents that must evolve with strategy.

2025-06-26 · Watch on YouTube