For founders, scaling a company is one of the most exciting stages of the journey, new funding, new customers, and new hires. But with that growth comes a problem that’s harder to solve than any product roadmap: how to keep your culture intact while you scale.

According to PwC, 70% of leaders say maintaining culture is their top challenge during growth. And for good reason: culture impacts everything from retention and productivity to investor confidence. Yet it’s often overlooked until cracks begin to appear.

Why Culture Breaks When Startups Scale

When you’re a team of 10, culture feels effortless. The founder sets the tone, and everyone absorbs it by being close to the work. But once you’re hiring 50, 100, or more employees, that proximity disappears. Without structure, culture starts to drift.

The common pain points founders face:

• Dilution of values – Teams interpret culture differently, creating inconsistency.

• Mis-hires – Rushed recruitment prioritises speed over alignment.

• Manager gaps – Leaders haven’t been trained to role-model the culture or potentially hire correctly.

• Unclear roles – Lack of job design leads to disengagement and duplicated effort.

• Compliance pressure – In regulated industries, culture gets sidelined for process.

The result? Turnover increases, employee engagement drops, and delivery slows down. What made the company successful in the first place begins to erode.

The Solution: Culture By Design, Not By Chance

The answer isn’t about having a bigger HR team or fancy perks. It’s about deliberately designing culture into your scaling strategy.

Here’s what works:

1. Codify Your Values Early

   Don’t rely on “unwritten rules.” Translate values into specific, observable behaviours that guide hiring, performance, and decision-making.

2. Hire for Culture, Not Just Skills

   Build structured interview frameworks that assess alignment with values, not just technical ability. One mis-hire can have outsized impact in a small but growing team.

3. Standardise Onboarding

   Every new hire should hear the same story, experience the same rituals, and understand the same expectations, no matter who brings them into the business.

4. Invest in Managers

   As teams grow, managers become the culture multipliers. If they’re not aligned, neither is the culture. Coaching and leadership development are critical.

5. Create Rituals That Scale

   Town halls, recognition programs, storytelling sessions, these build belonging. The form may evolve, but the rhythm must remain.

6. Measure Cultural Health

   Use engagement surveys, retention metrics, and employee feedback to track whether your culture is holding under pressure. What you measure, you protect.

What the Data Shows

• McKinsey: Strong cultures drive up to 4x revenue growth.

• LinkedIn Talent Trends: 77% of candidates consider culture before applying.

• BambooHR: Structured onboarding improves retention by 82%.

The evidence is clear: when culture is managed intentionally, it becomes a growth accelerant. When neglected, it becomes a drag.

The Founder’s Takeaway

Scaling doesn’t mean losing your culture. It means shifting from a founder-driven model to a system-driven model.

The solution is simple in theory but challenging in practice:

• Be explicit about values.

• Design processes that reinforce them.

• Equip leaders to live them.

• Keep listening as you grow.

Culture isn’t static; it evolves. The goal isn’t to freeze it in time, but to make sure the essence of what made your company thrive survives the scale-up phase.

At Pupal, we work with startups and scale-ups in high-growth and regulated industries to embed culture into growth strategies from day one. Because culture isn’t what you say, it’s what you scale.