Scott Jagodzinski is a friend and board member who  has built and sold a couple of companies.  He is hard at work doing it again at  a software company that has developed a web based ad building platform.  From time to time, he will write some articles and posts for WWDS.

by Scott Jagodzinski 


 I’ve recently invested in and joined the board of a fast growing software company comprised of mainly geeks, but cool geeks.  They work hard and they play even harder.  I’ve seen many of them passed out from doing keg stands and beer drinking relay races  (at company events) .  The culture isn’t for everyone, but the really smart,  hard working, competitive types (who can also drink a lot) who don’t like a lot of corporate bs seem to last  and do well .  People who don’t fit this profile tend to last 1.5 days or so.

 

Last week I called the CEO at 5:05 p.m. and got his assistant.  She said Wayne is here right now but he is busy fixing the Kegerator (for those of you not familiar with this unique piece of office equipment, check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kegerator).  People pay for a glass or two or seven with “chits” they can earn based on performance.  You can’t buy them with cash so it is a performance based drinking system.  If you don’t work hard, you don’t get to play hard.  For some reason, this animal house style approach makes sense to me and it works for them.

 

 While the HR types around the globe are cringing as they read this,  the moral of this story, I think, is that if you have a unique, strong culture and can attract people who fit that culture, you have the chance to really do well.  If you have a “one size fits all” culture, guess what?  Boring work environment, great people  leave , and the oatmeal/vanilla types stay too  long, most probably resulting in a company that will produce lackluster results (and not have much fun doing it).Â