How Relyance AI builds culture

Founders treat culture like office furniture early on: It’s something you buy when you have an office.

Everyone knows culture matters from the start - few intentionally build it.

Most learn by tripping over it.

As Abhi Sharma, Co-Founder and CEO of Relyance AI (>$60M raised by Menlo, Unusual) put it:

Most realize they have a culture problem when things break and they can’t pinpoint why. Culture is what happens when you’re not in the room.

Here’s how Relyance AI builds culture:

1) Tie every value to a behavior

Most startups define culture with abstracts statements (”we operate with trust”).

This means nothing.

At Relyance, “trust” maps to 3 concrete rules:

1. Live the Stockdale Paradox: Be brutally honest about current reality while maintaining absolute conviction you’ll prevail.

2. We have responsibilities, not jobs: A surgeon’s job is the procedure; her responsibility is the patient’s outcome.

3. Good news fast, bad news faster: Information moves at the speed required to fix it.

All 3 are specific enough to coach.

2) Teach with stories, not slogans

Stories stick, abstract values don’t.

E.g. “unreasonable hospitality”, another Reylance cultural value, shown during deals, recruiting, product work, etc, gets shared in a dedicated all-company Slack channel.

Examples lower the activation energy to copy.

3) Hardwire values into hiring

Every interview process uses the I-5-5 funnel:

5 culture value tests, 5 superpower tests, and 5 reference checks (hot and cold). A non-negotiable.

Culture fit matters as much as superpowers.

4) Install rituals that survive over time

For example:

• Abhi personally leads culture onboarding for every new hire cohort monthly

• Every quarterly leadership meeting assesses culture

• Even small details matter: They never say “escalating” - it has negative connotations. Instead, they use “increasing urgency” or “priority” to drive action

5) Create a belief system to glue it together

If cultural values are the cake, the belief system is the cherry on top.

Relyance has 6 cultural values (e.g. trust) with 3 operating principles each (Stockdale Paradox, responsibilities vs jobs, good news fast).

The belief system ties it all together with 3 statements:

• Excellence is a choice

• Success comes in cans; failure in cannots

• There’s nobody behind the curtain (removes “someone else will handle it” / turns employees into owners)

6) Repeat until bored (then keep going)

Culture doesn’t stick because you announced it.

It sticks because you repeat it constantly - in all-hands, team meetings, interviews, onboarding, and reviews, etc.

Most founders under-repeat by an order of magnitude, even when they think they’re talking about it constantly.

But culture isn’t enforced through speeches alone.

You enforce it through who you hire, promote, celebrate publicly, when you stop the line, etc.

When I asked Abhi what he’d do differently starting over, he said:

“Focus on culture even earlier”

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Enjoyed reading this?

Then check out my conversation on the focal podcast with Abhi Sharma, Co-Founder and CEO of Relyance AI (>$60M raised by Menlo, Unusual, M12).

Youtube | Apple Podcast | Spotify

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