Every good startup is a cult. And it's really hard to create a cult if you are sharing space with people. Because a cult means you think you are better than every other startup, you have a special way of doing things that's better than anyone else in the world.

Don't accept the excuse of complexity.

You generally know when someone asks you to do something- am I more writing, or am I more editing? The editor is the best metaphor for your job.

I'd actually argue forging a company is far more harder than forging a product

So that's your job too, to clarify and simplify for everybody on your team. The more you simplify the better people will perform.

The office environment that people live in and work in, dictates your culture and how people make decisions.

The key metric of whether you've succeeded is what fraction of your employees use that dashboard everyday.