Brie Wolfson's guest appearances

Brie Wolfson

Village Global's Venture Stories

In Depth

Execs

OwlTail

Our guest today is Brie Wolfson. Brie spent nearly 5 years at Stripe, where she worked on bizops and launched Stripe Press, followed by a stint at Figma where she worked on education. She then started her consultancy, named The Kool-Aid Factory, to share her lessons on building team cultures. And now she’s operating as a first-time founder building Constellate, a new productivity and communications tool for teams.In today’s conversation, we’re focused on company culture. A decade or so ago, companies like Google and Amazon dominated the cultural zeitgeist, with founders wanting to emulate their secret sauce. Today, there’s a newer guard of companies that startups want to model themselves after, with Stripe at the very top of the list. Brie peels back the layers into not just the cultural pillars that drove Stripe’s meteoric rise, but also how these showed up in day-to-day work. We also zoom out beyond Stripe to talk about her work teaming up with companies with The Kool-Aid Factory, seeing culture and company-building up close. Brie shares advice on codifying your operating principles, establishing meaningful rituals, and growing this kernel of culture as the company scales. Read the full essay Brie recommended during the interview: Reality has a surprising amount of detail and the article she penned for First Round Review: Ditch Your To-Do List and Use These Docs to Make More Impact.You can follow Brie on Twitter @zebriezYou can email us questions directly at review@firstround.com or follow us on Twitter @ twitter.com/firstround and twitter.com/brettberson 

Our guest today is <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/brie-wolfson-17758724/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Brie Wolfson</a>.  Brie spent nearly 5 years at Stripe, where she worked on bizops and launched Stripe Press, followed by a stint at Figma where she worked on education. She then started her consultancy, named The Kool-Aid Factory, to share her lessons on building team cultures. And now she’s operating as a first-time founder building Constellate, a new productivity and communications tool for teams. In today’s conversation, we’re focused on company culture. A decade or so ago, companies like Google and Amazon dominated the cultural zeitgeist, with founders wanting to emulate their secret sauce. Today, there’s a newer guard of companies that startups want to model themselves after, with Stripe at the very top of the list.  Brie peels back the layers into not just the cultural pillars that drove Stripe’s meteoric rise, but also how these showed up in day-to-day work.  We also zoom out beyond Stripe to talk about her work teaming up with companies with The Kool-Aid Factory, seeing culture and company-building up close. Brie shares advice on codifying your operating principles, establishing meaningful rituals, and growing this kernel of culture as the company scales.  Read the full essay Brie recommended during the interview: <a href="http://johnsalvatier.org/blog/2017/reality-has-a-surprising-amount-of-detail" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Reality has a surprising amount of detail</a> and the article she penned for First Round Review: <a href="https://review.firstround.com/ditch-your-to-do-list-and-use-these-docs-to-make-more-impact" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Ditch Your To-Do List and Use These Docs to Make More Impact</a>. You can follow Brie on Twitter @<a href="https://twitter.com/zebriez" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">zebriez</a> You can email us questions directly at <a href="mailto:review@firstround.com">review@firstround.com</a> or follow us on Twitter @ <a href="http://twitter.com/firstround" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">twitter.com/firstround</a> and <a href="http://twitter.com/brettberson" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">twitter.com/brettberson</a>

From kickoffs to retros and Slack channels — Stripe's documentation best practices with Brie Wolfson 

Figma

Stripe

Brie Wolfson writes detailed organizational frameworks like the ones you hear on this show  at https://koolaidfactory.com/ . Before she launched the Kool Aid Factory, she was a leader on Figma’s education team after four and a half years at Stripe building Stripe Press.--- Execs is a show for founders, operators, and pioneers who want to understand the playbooks, frameworks, and tactics that leading tech companies today have used to scale.  To engage further:  Check out the On Deck job board Share your thoughts with us on Twitter:  Hosted by: @eriktorenberg Featuring guest: @zebriezProduced by: @jacksonsteger Brought to you by: @beondeck 

Brie Wolfson writes detailed organizational frameworks like the ones you hear on this show  at <a href="https://koolaidfactory.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://koolaidfactory.com/</a> . Before she launched the Kool Aid Factory, she was a leader on Figma’s education team after four and a half years at Stripe building Stripe Press.--- Execs is a show for founders, operators, and pioneers who want to understand the playbooks, frameworks, and tactics that leading tech companies today have used to scale.  To engage further:  Check out the <a href="https://beondeck.com/careers" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">On Deck job board </a>Share your thoughts with us on Twitter:   Hosted by: <a href="https://twitter.com/eriktorenberg" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@eriktorenberg </a> Featuring guest: <a href="https://twitter.com/zebriez?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@zebriez</a> Produced by: <a href="https://twitter.com/jacksonsteger" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@jacksonsteger </a> Brought to you by: <a href="http://twitter.com/beondeck" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@beondeck </a>

Brie Wolfson (ex Figma, ex Stripe)

Brie Wolfson (@zebriez), founder of the The Kool-Aid Factory, joins Erik to discuss:- Why there are detailed playbooks for creating products and other tactical advice for startups, but very little on building culture at your startup.- Why culture is “how it feels to get the work done” and why it’s a set of actions rather than beliefs.- Why it always starts with the founders.- What she learned from Stripe’s approach to crafting their company culture.- The power of setting your company’s “non-values.”- The importance of treating internal comms as a first class product.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We’ll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

Brie Wolfson (@zebriez), founder of the The Kool-Aid Factory, joins Erik to discuss: - Why there are detailed playbooks for creating products and other tactical advice for startups, but very little on building culture at your startup. - Why culture is “how it feels to get the work done” and why it’s a set of actions rather than beliefs. - Why it always starts with the founders. - What she learned from Stripe’s approach to crafting their company culture. - The power of setting your company’s “non-values.” - The importance of treating internal comms as a first class product. Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.  Check us out on the web at <a href="http://www.villageglobal.vc" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">www.villageglobal.vc</a> or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal. Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We’ll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. <a href="http://www.villageglobal.vc/signup" rel="noopener nofollow" target="_blank">www.villageglobal.vc/signup</a>