Shaping Culture: From Big Tech to a Startup
A reflection on Seattle's startup scene
Welcome to Scaling Down, a newsletter written by the team at Statsig for engineers and product builders who made the leap from Big Tech to a startup.
Tools shape culture
During my decade at Facebook, I watched the company grow from 500 million users to more than 3 billion and scale to over a hundred thousand employees. Despite this massive growth, what kept the company feeling like a startup (nimble and fast-moving) was the tooling.
These tools shaped Facebook’s innovation culture. They allowed orgs to distribute decision-making to small teams, maintain precision, and move quickly even as the company grew beyond “a startup.”
This realization influenced my decision to start Statsig. I was convinced that the right tools can shape engineering cultures across companies of all sizes.
Now, after four years of building a startup in Seattle, I've extrapolated this perspective beyond a single company to an entire ecosystem: how do you shape the innovation culture across a city?
If tools shape the culture of a company, then startups shape the culture of a community.
Seattle’s competitive advantage
Sitting on stage with Ben Gilbert at the inaugural Seattle Startup Summit, we reflected on the region's unique position.
As we covered in our fireside chat, Seattle has such a strong concentration of talent. We have robust experience building at scale for large companies, and are highly motivated to build some really, really cool things from scratch.
Seattle has an extraordinary competitive advantage. We're home to two trillion-dollar companies, Microsoft and Amazon, and host significant offices for nearly every major tech player.
As Ben highlighted, "despite the fact that this room looks large, there's still like one one-hundredth the number of companies in the Bay Area and maybe one one-hundredth the local capital." This disparity in the number of startups exists in Seattle despite housing hundreds of thousands of engineers.
All that to say, Seattle’s talent pool often feels unnoticed and underappreciated. It feels like a “quiet talent.”
The activity that goes on behind the scenes
What struck me most while walking the expo floor was how many incredible companies I had no idea existed - and even more surprising, how many I didn't realize were based right here in Seattle.
From AI model deployment startups like OpenPipe to developer tools like Spice AI, these companies are building the tools that will shape the next generation of software development. Many are founded by veterans of our tech giants who understand deeply what developers need.
The Summit represented something we've been missing in Seattle - a tool to scale our culture. At Statsig, we've hosted smaller gatherings, but nothing on this scale. This was one of the largest tech startup events in Seattle's history, bringing together over 600 attendees and showcasing dozens of companies operating in relative isolation from each other.
We need more ways to build connections among startups and those looking to make the leap from Big Tech. Whether that be online or offline forums, more (virtual) doors being opened can lead to more cohesion.
Startups shape culture
At Statsig, we're doubling down on our commitment to the Seattle ecosystem. We're investing in more community events, opening our office for meetups, and creating programs specifically for startups to use our tools.
The Seattle tech community doesn't need to imitate Silicon Valley. We have our own strengths. What we do need is to make the invisible visible. To create more moments where the community can see itself, connect, and grow stronger together.
Seattle doesn't lack technical talent or innovative ideas. What we've missed are the regular touchpoints that transform a collection of companies into a true ecosystem.
Let's build on this momentum together.