Brian Chesky Quotes

When we began Starbucks, what I wanted to try to do was to create a set of values, guiding principles, and culture.

I think the company that has the clearest set of values is Amazon. That company knows what it is. It may be that it's not your cup of tea, but every single person at that company knows what the Amazon values are.

Our culture is the foundation for our company.

You make sure to set True Norths for your company. You can't be involved in every decision and every meeting; you have to make sure the mission is very built into the culture, the product, and how you communicate.

Our enduring values as a company are the most important of our mission and purpose.

I love being part of a company, and telling a story.

It's so important for startups to get their culture right at the start. They need to feel unique and that they are on their own important mission in the world.

All the great organizations in the world, all have a sense of why that organization does what it does.

Set a clear, easy-to-understand vision for your company, and make it be a mission people believe in.

For me, I've learned about what it means to focus on a culture, to build social responsibility, and the idea of a company as a super-organism.

You know, as most entrepreneurs do, that a company is only as good as its people. The hard part is actually building the team that will embody your company's culture and propel you forward.

There's a dance happening on both sides of the table. Individuals are giving their personal and career values a lot more weight when it comes to finding a company that aligns with both. At the same time, companies are becoming a lot more transparent about their core values as an organization and the types of people they want to attract.

About every other week, I sit down with all of our new Zynga hires and I talk to them for about 90 minutes, have an open Q&A. There is no formal presentation. I talk about our values, where they came from and why they are so important, and I ask them to challenge those values.

Many companies claim they have core values, but typically what they're referring to are generic beliefs: having integrity, making a profit, responding to customers and so on. These values only have meaning when they're defined in terms of how people behave and are ranked to set priorities.

I don't know if a company can have a soul, but I like to think it can.

At Under Armour, we've created a very strong culture, a culture that first and foremost is built on people.

I would argue that the culture is not the frosting on the cake: the culture is the plate the cake sits on.

Company culture is my number one priority. It's more important than the team, the product, the business model, or the investors. All of those things can be fixed and made better over time. But culture has to be established on Day 1.

If you look at the history of our company, we don't do a lot of acquisition. The reason is, we need to see that people are culturally and philosophically aligned with the way that we approach the business.

I live, breathe, and die by what kind of company we're creating.

For acquiring companies, the excitement is almost always about where they are going - that is, their strategy for gaining greater growth and productivity. But when mergers fail, it's often because no one focused on who they are - that is, their culture, which is critical to successfully bringing different groups of people together.

The culture or environment of a company starts from the top. The leadership. The leadership of a company sends a message to its employees of what is tolerated and what is not.

Values can set a company apart from the competition by clarifying its identity and serving as a rallying point for employees. But coming up with strong values - and sticking to them - requires real guts.

An organization's culture of purpose answers the critical questions of who it is and why it exists. They have a culture of purpose beyond making a profit.

We live by our values at Levo. We began by surrounding ourselves with passionate, values-driven people who had their intentions in the right place, and learned that like attracted like.