How to Turn Culture and Meetings Into a Competitive Edge

Author

Benjamin Friedman
September 09, 2025

Morning beehiivcommunity!

This newsletter turns experience into lessons for your startup. As a growth partner for visionary founders, we help sharpen leadership skills and unlock growth potential.

Meetings: Turning a Necessary Evil into a Catalyst for Innovation

“Your job as a leader is to be right at the end of the meeting, not at the beginning.” – David M. Cote

Many founders view meetings as draining obligations. Yet when thoughtfully designed, meetings can serve as powerful catalysts for insight, creativity, and alignment.

Effective meetings require a clear purpose, thorough preparation, and a culture where everyone contributes. By striking the right balance between structure and exploration, leaders can transform meetings into springboards for problem-solving and growth.

This post offers practical tips for before, during, and after meetings. You’ll discover that it’s possible to have shorter high-impact meetings where both introverts and extroverts enjoy participating.

Startup Lean Coffee: Where Founders Find Useful Ideas and Real Connections

Since 2019, Startup Lean Coffee has sparked valuable conversations and delivered breakthroughs for over 1,000 founders, advisors, operators, and investors.

Each session features a dynamic exchange where participants bring and discuss pressing questions based on their diverse experiences and transform insights into actionable next steps. Come ready to challenge your assumptions, discover proven tactics, and stretch your thinking.

Our sessions have addressed critical topics including fundraising, social equity, zero-budget marketing, idea validation, and co-founder matching. Startup Lean Coffee is the community where real results happen and meaningful connections are formed.

Our next event is on September 17, 9-11 AM, in Midtown. You can register HERE.

Expert Tips for Startups

Successful Startups Don’t Just Scale Products—They Scale People

Many early-stage founders obsess over external metrics: chasing customers, adding features, and securing investors. But your biggest risk is building the right team.

Culture is your startup's operating system, so to move fast and effectively, treat HR as strategic risk management.

When you hire exceptional people, align performance with clear outcomes, and develop strong leaders, you can scale quickly.

Since startups must achieve more with leaner teams, a strong culture is your competitive advantage.

Tamar Cohen is the Founder and CEO of HaloEffect, helping founders drive performance, retention, and long-term value.

Need Some Help?

What if the quietest person in the room is the one who changes the world?

Build Scale Grow provides expert strategies and clear metrics for social impact, EdTech, and health tech startups, with a focus on introverted founders. With five successful M&As in ten years, we’ll help your startup reach its full potential and beyond.

Book a free 30-minute call HERE to see how we can help.