When Arvind Rajan joined LinkedIn in 2008, the company’s success was not a foregone conclusion. At the time, most assumed Facebook would dominate both social and professional networks. And despite a rapidly growing team, employee morale was at an all-time low.

“To be honest, it was a pretty challenging place to work,” reflects Arvind. 

These days, Jeff Weiner, ​LinkedIn’s Executive Chairman and former CEO, credits the company’s culture and values as one of its greatest competitive advantages. That didn’t happen by accident—it was the result of a deliberate effort led by Arvind to define and codify the company’s culture and values that would help the platform grow to over 1 billion users worldwide.

But first things first: What is culture and when should startups start building it?

For Arvind, culture and values are the guiding principles that align everyone in an organisation towards achieving its mission. Values should directly support business goals, ensuring every team member fosters a positive environment while delivering results. 

When should startups get intentional about culture? “As a general principle, you can never start the journey too early,” says Arvind. “Frankly, if all your team fits around one table, the culture comes from the founder as everyone sees it and lives it daily. Once you hit around 12-15 people, it’s time to get ahead of it.”

In a recent webinar with the Airtree community, Arvind, who joined LinkedIn as a consultant and spent 6 years there in various executive leadership roles, shared the power of company culture throughout his career and how you define, build and scale company culture. 

The power of culture

Arvind has spent most of his career building startups. “This showed up in my bank account because I was broke by the time I was in my late thirties,” shares Arvind. “Startups aren’t a great way to make money–unless you’re lucky–and I've been fortunate to be lucky a few times since then.” 

A constant theme in Arvind’s company-building journey has been a deliberate focus on culture.

Grassroots, which predated LinkedIn, wasn’t a commercial juggernaut but stood out for its remarkable cultural integrity. In its final 7 years, when the organisation hit its stride, it achieved something quite extraordinary: zero regrettable losses. Not a single key player departed. 

“This was during a time in which we never had more than 12 weeks cash in the bank,” says Arvind. “We were incredibly transparent about how much money we had and I shared the company’s financials in meetings. But they stayed because people believed in the company and what we were doing. That showed me what having a strong culture could mean for an organisation.”

The early days of LinkedIn

When Arvind joined, LinkedIn was scaling from 50 to 250 employees. What was once a close-knit startup felt like a sprawling, misaligned organisation and the experience for many was far from ideal. 

Amid this rapid growth, there was no apparent effort to define LinkedIn’s values or articulate its purpose. Employees were left navigating a company without clarity or direction. 

“Each phase of growth requires you to operate in slightly different ways,” says Arvind. “LinkedIn hadn’t changed and was still operating like a small startup. There was no consistent way of deciding who got a raise, who was hired and who was fired. There was a lot of tension in the organisation.”

Arvind engaged a third-party consultant to assess the organisation’s culture through a tool benchmarked against thousands of companies globally to address this. The results were sobering: the longer employees stayed, the more negative their view of LinkedIn became. Senior staff, in particular, were discontent–a clear sign of turbulence ahead. 

During this period, LinkedIn also saw a change in leadership with Jeff Weiner coming on board as CEO. “I remember when I first met Jeff, I said this is a real problem and we have to fix the culture,” says Arvind. “I told him the only reason people are still working here is because they think we’re going to go public one day, not because they like working here.”

Jeff’s immediate reaction was scepticism; having experienced poor cultures in  previous companies, he was doubtful of the impact culture could have. But as Arvind notes, Jeff soon changed his view. He embraced the idea of changing and investing in LinkedIn’s culture; and on this, as he did with most aspects of the company in his early tenure, he led from the front. 

Practical strategies for embedding culture

The process of turning LinkedIn’s culture around was no small feat. For Arvind, the key to navigating the challenge was transparency and practicality. 

“People knew what the reality was. It was no big secret that this wasn’t a particularly pleasant place to work at,” says Arvind. “The fact we were so honest about identifying the problems and committed to fixing them, went a long way.”

If the executive team had rolled out a new set of values and asked everyone to hold hands and join in, it would have gone down like a lead balloon. Instead, Arvind and his team took a more grounded approach. The process began with discussions with the executive team to define the desired culture. They then reached out to around 40 directors and above—a sceptical bunch—and asked for volunteers to help shape the new culture.

“I said, ‘You’re the ones complaining all the time about the company; who wants to be part of fixing it?’,” says Arvind. “I gave them the work the exec team had come up with and full permission to throw it all away if they wanted. We then went through an exercise to talk about what the places they dreamed of working at would be like, look like and feel like. We talked about all the things that frustrated them about their jobs at LinkedIn or elsewhere and used those to shape what we wanted the company to be and not be. It had to be rooted in the DNA of LinkedIn and the best versions of ourselves.”

Over 8 weeks, the group drafted a vision for the company. Arvind reviewed it with Jeff and, importantly, Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn’s Chairman and founding CEO, to ensure it aligned with LinkedIn’s identity. With Reid leading the company meeting and with Jeff’s support, the new culture was introduced. Instead of plastering posters around the office, they integrated the culture into everyday operations–gradually and organically. 

One value, which Arvind acknowledges sounds “pretty banal and obvious”, is We put members first. Far from a trite statement, its beauty lies in its simplicity:

“We said our members come first, not our customers. What that meant in practice was anything we do to make money had to be value accretive to our members. We wouldn’t do something to make money that wasn’t beneficial to the free member. It’s a helpful rubric through which we parse every revenue-making decision.”

An aspect of culture they wanted to bring to life was a culture of transformation. That was the catalyst for “In Days”, where employees could take time off from their regular tasks to take classes or learn more about another part of the company. It was a massive success. Later it evolved to include “transformation of the world” through volunteer opportunities. These initiatives became integral to LinkedIn’s culture and were a testament to the company’s commitment to continuous transformation.

Within 12 months, the culture felt noticeably different. Repetition was key: Jeff highlighted culture in every meeting, offering concrete examples. Headcount grew by over 300 during that period and it got to the point where new starters only knew this new way of operating and it became deeply embedded in the way the company did business.

“What I was really proud of over that time and even after I left was, as we grew in scale, the culture grew stronger, not weaker,” says Arvind. 

Scaling culture across global 

Culture isn’t static and will evolve organically–particularly when you’re opening offices around the world. As Arvind discovered at LinkedIn, successfully embedding culture in new locations requires a blend of consistency and local nuance. 

“Whether we had Jeff or a Product Manager visit another LinkedIn office they would all say the same thing: ‘It’s a little different, but gosh, it feels like LinkedIn,’” says Arvind. “I think that speaks to how well the culture has been exported.”

This wasn’t left to chance–it resulted from a deliberate strategy. When opening a new office, they embedded someone from headquarters who deeply understood LinkedIn’s culture. Though not officially labelled as a “culture champion” this person naturally embodied and promoted the company’s values through their actions. This ensured each office maintained the core LinkedIn experience, even with local variations.

Despite this structured approach, Arvind acknowledges the process wasn’t without flaws. “It wasn’t always perfect and we made some bad hires. But we were quick to fix those mistakes.”

Balancing local autonomy with centralised control was another critical challenge. During Linkedin’s rapid growth, the strategy was to hire entrepreneurial individuals who could operate with limited resources. Initially, local hires reported to the market leader and maintained a dotted line to someone at headquarters. As the company scaled, the reporting structure switched, with local leaders reporting to headquarters along with a dotted line to the country leader, facilitating greater alignment with the overall company strategy.  

Hiring with culture in mind

One of Arvind’s core beliefs about values is that they have to be specific.

“If they [values] don’t help you make decisions, they’re a waste of time.”

One example is how LinkedIn’s culture of transformation influenced hiring, promotion and firing decisions. “One of the commitments we made as a company was that if you came to LinkedIn and gave us your time, we’d make it worthwhile and transform your career trajectory,” says Arvind. This bold statement showed up in the sales organisation–getting promoted to Director or above required concrete evidence that, as a manager, you had transformed someone’s career. No concrete evidence, no promotion.

In interviews, Arvind and his team looked for traits that aligned with LinkedIn’s culture. When hiring sales leaders, they sought candidates who highlighted their team’s accomplishments rather than their own. “Sales leaders don’t sell–their job is to manage the team selling,” says Arvind. One candidate’s pride in her team’s success was a clear indicator of effective leadership and culture alignment. 

Operationalising company values also helped LinkedIn address difficult personnel decisions. “When I first arrived, no one was ever let go,” says Arvind. “And some leaders should’ve been let go a long time ago.”

As Arvind took charge of HR, he tackled the issue head-on. He made the tough decision to let go of two senior leaders who, despite being high performers, didn’t align with the company’s values. “They weren’t operating from a place of respect for the people who worked for them and we weren’t going to tolerate that which sent a clear message.”

Key takeaways

• Culture starts early. It comes from the founder organically in the beginning. As soon as a startup begins to grow beyond a small team, it’s time to define and codify values. 
• Transparency builds trust. At Grassroots and LinkedIn, Arvind found that being transparent about challenges, such as financial struggles, fostered loyalty and commitment among employees. 
• Culture is a long-term investment. Transforming LinkedIn’s culture took deliberate effort, from gathering employee input to embedding values in daily operations. It wasn’t an overnight change but it made a lasting impact. 
• Scaling culture globally. Successfully embedding culture across LinkedIn’s global offices required a balance of consistency and local adaption, often through strategic hires who embodied company values. 
• Hiring and promotion decisions should reflect culture. At LinkedIn, cultural alignment was non-negotiable. Promotions required evidence that managers had transformed their team members’ careers, ensuring leadership lived the company’s values.