Q&A with Andy Yang of 500px
Andy Yang, the CEO of 500px is passionate about company culture, values, and making his company the best place to work. Here’s what he had to say about what makes his workplace special and high performing.
How do you define culture?
To me, culture is the most important part of a company. I define it as values, behavior, and attitude. Let me go a bit deeper into each of these.
Values
About a year ago, I sat down with each of our employees to codify our values. At first, we established nine core values and then had our culture committee pair them down to five once our culture was cemented. We are very proud of the five values we came up with:
- Transparency
- Empathy
- Fun
- Creativity
- Excellence
Our values are the cornerstone of our culture. It’s the core attributes of our people.
Behavior
Behavior, as it relates to culture, is how people act both individually and within a team environment. Do our people operate as one organism, a well-oiled machine, or is there distance between them?
To ensure our culture is high-performing, we implement a maker’s schedule where we front load meetings on Mondays and Fridays, so Tuesdays through Thursdays are spent uninterrupted on product development. We very much operate on a work hard, play hard mentality where wins are celebrated. We like to have fun and joke around, laugh a lot. We also champion transparency and encourage direct and honest feedback.
Attitude
To me, attitude is the way people approach or feel about the company. A positive attitude happens when an employee fosters a love and passion for the company and is fulfilled both professionally and personally. As CEO, it’s my job to ensure people feel fulfilled by their work relationships and the work they do. At 500px, a positive attitude consists of humility and empathy, not just for one another, but for our entire community. We have 7 million users around the world, so our employees must feel empathetic towards them, as well.
Why is culture so important?
The workplace has changed. People nowadays are looking for meaning in work. It’s a statement that rings very true to me, as well as talent entering the workforce. Millennials don’t separate personal and professional life as much. To them, work-life balance is all encompassing.
I also find this true of people who are more tenured in their careers. They are also looking to make a mark for themselves. Many of them come from large companies, where they were a cog in the wheel, and made a decision to find a place where they can work on things they are passionate about and with a team that’s just as passionate.
Regardless of whether you’re entering the workplace or not, you’re searching for that fulfillment. The concept of not wanting to “waste life” is something that resonates with everyone. We all want to work with amazing people who are working towards the same goal.
Culture is all about the team and our people. We position our culture as a differentiator, so it’s something we think about constantly. It’s the lynchpin of how we translate our ideas, mission and values into actual work.
What do you focus on to make sure culture is sustained and lived?
I focus on culture every day, every hour, every interaction. I view every decision I make through the lens of our values and culture. If one of my employees notices a behavior that is counter to our values, I encourage them to point it out — especially when I behave or say something that’s outside our culture. There is no room for ego. We try and implement a very honest culture.
There are some tactical ways we live our values. For example, we have a Culture Committee that rotates each quarter to discuss the office and how people are meshing with one another. As a photography-focused company, we reinforce our values visually, too, by displaying amazing images on our walls that showcase our values. We also have daily standup meetings, weekly town halls that emphasize our values and help to align our employees. We communicate them often so they become ingrained.
You’ve also worked at large, successful organizations like Netflix, Goldman Sachs and Accenture. What’s different from going from a big company to startup? What can big companies learn from startups and vice versa?
For me, the biggest difference is action. At a startup, you want to keep moving, try something, figure it out, and see how it works. You don’t want to be static. At a startup there’s bias towards action because it’s heavily regulated and policies affect millions of people. At larger companies there’s a bigger emphasis on nailing the correct process and being more strategic. Big companies, I think, could do with injecting a stronger bias towards action.
That being said, at a certain scale if you’re too chaotic and nimble, it could cause a lot of chaos within the team and communication breaks up, tearing the fabric of the culture, as well. So balance is definitely important. Startups could leverage the decades of learning larger organizations have developed on formulating strategy and developing good processes (not process for process’ sake).
Netflix is a great example of a large organization that’s able to maintain its startup culture, despite its growth
Netflix’s culture deck is all about high performance, and it’s something we try to emulate whenever possible. Our vacation policy is the same at Netflix’s (ie: no formal policy, but don’t screw over your team). We don’t implement a dress code, but expect that our employees exercise judgement (ie: don’t show up to a client meeting with flip flops).
Your bio on 500px starts with “I’m all about GTD” (Getting Things Done). What are your rules for excellent execution?
In a team setting, in order to be high-performing, there needs to be personal accountability for everyone on the team towards the company and the product. There needs to be a clear understanding of what everyone is doing and if it’s being delivered when it’s said to be delivered. Everybody is dependent on one another. If you don’t do your part your results affect everyone else’s, so reinforcing accountability to the broader team is very important.
How do you measure accountability and consequences?
We used to do OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) for everyone at the company, but it was difficult to measure them as they relate to team goals and company goals. Now we use sprint planning commitments in Asana. Each team is responsible for setting personal accountability. If a team member is missing deadlines and setting their team back, these behaviors are recognized and addressed by managers and the executive leadership team.
Parting thoughts on creating a high performance culture?
As I started out with: culture is the most important part of a company. It defines how you hire, how you operate, how you make decisions. So culture can’t be an afterthought. It’s one of the core things you need to focus on as a leader. With culture you can embed the things that you believe a fundamental to success, like GTD and the importance of accountability.
Andy Yang
Andy Yang is the CEO of 500px and an advisor to several startups through Next36, MaRS’ Consumer & Commerce cluster, and Imagination Catalyst. He has spent the last 15+ years in technology as an investor, banker, consultant and operator. Currently, Andy is CEO of 500px, a premium photography community funded by Andreessen Horowitz, Visual China Group, Harrison Metal, and ffVC. Previously he was an investor at Extreme Startups and a venture capitalist at Relay Ventures.
