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If you don’t enforce the bar, you lower it.
This episode tackles the uncomfortable line between being humane and looking out for employees while also being a high-performing organization - and what a real culture reset looks like when you’ve let it slip.
Our guest is Cat Noone who went through such a major reset herself with the company she co-founded, Stark - which is trusted by over 50,000+ companies and >$10M raised from Uncork and us at focal.
In Today's Episode We Discuss:
01:46 - How being hell-bent on mission while avoiding "bro culture" backfired
03:54 - The early warning signs that performance was drifting at Stark
04:14 - Why I stopped doing reference checks and paid the price
08:38 - How the lowest performer sets your company's bar, not the best
09:17 - When busy work replaces real productivity in remote teams
12:32 - You can't have shitty input AND shitty output - pick one
15:01 - Why founder insecurity about being "employee friendly" kills companies
18:28 - The brutal emotional cost of firing people you've worked with from day one
25:00 - How to communicate layoffs to survivors and rebuild momentum
29:39 - Why urgency beats speed for maintaining quality standards
33:38 - Demo Thursdays as quality control checkpoints, not show and tell
37:06 - The four-day work week experiment and why Fridays aren't free
40:01 - Why most startup principles are worthless wallpaper
44:12 - If you're going to cut deep, cut deeper - don't play it safe
45:58 - Move fast and break things is an excuse to ship shit
48:34 - Get an executive coach before you think you need one
This episode tackles the uncomfortable line between being humane and looking out for employees while also being a high-performing organization - and what a real culture reset looks like when you’ve let it slip.
Our guest is Cat Noone who went through such a major reset herself with the company she co-founded, Stark - which is trusted by over 50,000+ companies and >$10M raised from Uncork and us at focal.
In Today's Episode We Discuss:
01:46 - How being hell-bent on mission while avoiding "bro culture" backfired
03:54 - The early warning signs that performance was drifting at Stark
04:14 - Why I stopped doing reference checks and paid the price
08:38 - How the lowest performer sets your company's bar, not the best
09:17 - When busy work replaces real productivity in remote teams
12:32 - You can't have shitty input AND shitty output - pick one
15:01 - Why founder insecurity about being "employee friendly" kills companies
18:28 - The brutal emotional cost of firing people you've worked with from day one
25:00 - How to communicate layoffs to survivors and rebuild momentum
29:39 - Why urgency beats speed for maintaining quality standards
33:38 - Demo Thursdays as quality control checkpoints, not show and tell
37:06 - The four-day work week experiment and why Fridays aren't free
40:01 - Why most startup principles are worthless wallpaper
44:12 - If you're going to cut deep, cut deeper - don't play it safe
45:58 - Move fast and break things is an excuse to ship shit
48:34 - Get an executive coach before you think you need one
Creators and Guests
Host
Pascal Unger
Co-founder / Managing Partner at focal.vc We lead pre-seeds in North America with up to $1M: We exclusively back AI native software startups at the very start. Thereafter, we help them get off the ground better and faster, supported by a network > 200 GTM executives. That's our singular, unwavering focus.
What is focal podcast?
Pivotal early lessons of today's best startups.
Welcome to the focal podcast where we go deep with some of today's best founders and operators on ONE crucial lessons from their early days.
This podcast is not the usual "highlight reel" startup podcast that goes one inch deep across 20+ topics. Rather, we ask the questions you’d ask if you were sitting across from them. No fluff, just the real, actionable insights you’d get if these founders were mentoring you 1on1.
We cover topics including:
- What worked and why.
- Costly mistakes and how they fixed them.
- Frameworks that truly made a difference.
- Tactics to move faster.
- What they wish they’d known sooner.
- And much more!
"Only a fool learns from their own mistakes. The wise learn from the mistakes of others."