This letter is turning one, and the writer, one more. 🎂
So first, before anything else, I figured I’d do something simple and make this one free for everyone. Partly because I’m getting older. Partly because I’m feeling generous. And partly because if you’re building a place, this is one of those subjects that deserves to be said out loud, not hidden behind a paywall like some secret sauce.
This week, I kept coming back to the same thought: founders love talking about culture, but very few understand when it actually begins.
They think culture starts once the place is open. Once the music is right, the uniforms are chosen, the tone of voice is clear, the Instagram looks good and the values are printed somewhere nobody will read. They treat culture like a second layer. Something you add once the real work is done.
I think that’s backwards.
Culture doesn’t start when you open but when you hire the first people.
Actually, let me say it more honestly. Your first team is your first culture.
Not your manifesto. Not your founder deck. Not the three words you wrote in Notion at 1am trying to sound clear and deep. The people. The real humans you bring into the room at the beginning. Their energy becomes the atmosphere. Their habits become the standard. Their attitude becomes the way guests will describe your place when you’re not there.
And that’s the dangerous part.
Because founders are usually very selective with design, concept, location, menu, furniture, branding. Then they rush hiring like it’s logistics. The opening date gets close, pressure rises, CVs are average, and suddenly good enough starts sounding reasonable.
That’s when the culture gets decided.
Quietly. Almost invisibly.
Not through one big mistake, but through a series of small compromises that later become the personality of the place.
I’ve seen beautiful spaces feel flat from day one because the first team had no warmth. I’ve also seen very simple places become magnetic because the first people behind the counter cared deeply and knew how to hold a room.
That’s why today, birthday or not, I wanted to talk about the first team.
Because if you get that wrong, no playlist, logo or strategy deck is coming to save you.
And since it’s my birthday, let’s keep going. No paywall today.
Culture is one of those words founders use a lot because it sounds serious. It makes everything feel intentional. The problem is that culture is rarely built the way people describe it.
Most of the time, culture is absorbed.
It comes from what the first team does when nobody is watching. It comes from the tone they use with the first guest of the day. It comes from what they consider acceptable, what they overlook, what they repeat, what they laugh at, what they protect.
That is why the first hires matter so much.
Not because they are your opening staff.
Because they are the first living version of your place.
The energy of the first team becomes the emotional temperature of the place
A lot of founders think energy is a soft topic. Something vague. Something secondary. It’s not. It’s one of the most concrete things in hospitality.
You can walk into a place in less than thirty seconds and feel whether the team is switched on, warm, present, proud, tired, cynical, disorganised, or simply not that interested. Guests feel it immediately, even when they don’t have the words for it.
I’ve seen places with beautiful interiors, strong branding, perfect cups, expensive stone, nice lighting, the whole package.
And still, the room felt dead. Nobody was doing anything terribly wrong. It was worse than that. Everything was technically correct, but emotionally empty.
Then I’ve seen tiny cafés with almost nothing going for them on paper. Bad tiles. Average chairs. No design awards coming anytime soon. But the first team was alive. They greeted people properly. They moved with rhythm. They remembered names. They made the room feel like something was actually happening.
Guess which one people came back to.
The first team doesn’t just serve the place. They set its emotional temperature, and once guests start associating your brand with a certain feeling, good luck changing that later with a new menu and a nicer website.
This is the part where founders usually tell themselves: We’ll train them.
Of course you will.
But let’s be honest. You can train standards faster than you can train care.
You can teach a sequence and you can’t manufacture presence.
Which brings us to the first uncomfortable truth: stop hiring only for competence. Hire for emotional effect.
Because some people can do the job and still lower the whole room.
The first habits become the invisible rules
This is where culture gets sneaky.
What happens in the first weeks quickly stops feeling like a decision and starts feeling like how we do things here.
That’s the real danger. The first habits become invisible rules long before the founder realizes it.
If the opening team resets the room carefully every morning, that becomes normal. If they cut corners with cleaning because everyone is tired and it’s not a big deal, that also becomes normal. If they welcome people warmly at the door, that becomes the tone. If they hide behind the machine until spoken to, congratulations, that’s now the atmosphere.
Culture is not what you say once in a team meeting, but what people repeat often enough that nobody questions it anymore.
I remember seeing this in a place where the founder wanted something relaxed and elegant. The problem is that the first team translated relaxed into slow.
Orders dragged. Tables sat uncleared too long. Service lost momentum. Nobody thought they were doing a bad job. They just thought they were contributing to the vibe.
Six weeks later, the place had a reputation: beautiful, but a bit messy.
The founder blamed operations. The truth was simpler. The first habits had already become the culture.
I’ve seen the opposite too. A founder of a small hotel I know had one obsession: Real care. She didn’t overcomplicate it. She simply repeated the same few things with the first team until they became muscle memory. Notice arrivals. Carry the room with your eyes. Fix the small thing before it becomes a guest complaint. Make people feel looked after without making a show of it.
That team created a standard so clear that even new hires understood it within days.
That’s culture.
Not a speech. A repeated rhythm.
The people you compromise on early are the people you struggle to correct later
This is the section nobody enjoys reading, which usually means it matters.
The first hiring mistake is rarely dramatic. It’s usually rational.
You’re under pressure. Opening is close. Someone is available. They’re not perfect, but they have experience, they can start Monday, and the team is short. You tell yourself it’s temporary. You’ll adjust later.
Later is a beautiful fantasy.
Because once the person is in, they start shaping the place. They train the next person. They set tone. They influence how problems are handled. And if they are slightly off, not catastrophically bad, just slightly off, they’re often the hardest to deal with.
Another example I’ve seen too many times is the strong personality hire. You know the one. Fast, efficient, experienced, talks a lot, seems to take control. At first, everyone is relieved because finally someone is driving service. Three months later, half the team is adapting themselves to that person’s mood, the room feels tense, and the founder starts noticing that the place somehow feels less generous than intended.
That’s not an HR issue. That’s a culture issue.
So the real question is: Do I want this person to define the first version of this place?
That’s a much more serious question.
And if the answer is hesitation, that hesitation usually knows something.
What I would do differently, every time
If I’m brutally honest, I think founders (and I include myself in it, as this letter comes from experiences and failures) should treat first hires with almost the same attention they give to the concept itself.
Not because teams are more important than ideas.
Because teams are what ideas look like in real life.
You can fix a menu later. You can repaint a wall. You can change the cups, adjust the playlist, update the typeface and convince yourself you’ve evolved. But if the early culture is wrong, the whole place carries a strange taste from the start.
And guests always notice, even when founders don’t.
So yes, it’s my birthday, and maybe that’s why I’m in a generous mood. But if I could give one gift to anyone about to open a place, it would be this:
Slow down on the first team.
Because your first team is not there to support your culture.
They are your culture.
At least until proven otherwise.
This is so true but how do you fix a bad first team?