Building Culture That Scales: Four Lessons from Founders

In every Binary to Billions interview, one theme keeps cropping up when we discuss scaling a tech business: culture. Behind the talk of markets, funding, and AI, four very different founders show that the real growth catalyst isn’t technology. It’s people.

Mark never set out to build a remote empire - he built a family. Bunnell learned from an early age that resilience and teamwork beat titles. “Everyone’s remote except for the dev team in India,” he said. “There’s no protectionism in any of our people. Everybody shares their information and ideas seamlessly.” For Bunnell, culture is autonomy without ego. His interview process filters for self-starters:

“You’re gonna work harder and faster than you’ve ever worked - but you’ll have fun doing it.”

That blend of accountability and trust has powered Nuwave’s evolution from a telecom carrier into a global software innovator.

After decades in corporate boardrooms, Ifty Nasir founded Vested to give everyone, from founders to interns, “a stake in the dream.” His insight came from the ownership effect - that when people own part of what they build, their emotional investment transforms performance.

“Why should anybody bust a gut to make you a millionaire when it makes no difference to them?”

Through Vested, Nasir turned equity from a legal tool into a cultural one, linking commitment, transparency, and belonging. “Everybody who’s key to a great idea,” he said, “should have a stake in it.” For him, ownership isn’t just capital. Its culture codified.

From growing up in communist Poland to building billion-dollar companies in the U.S., Tomas Gorny learned that technology changes, but people endure. His leadership style prizes emotional intelligence and loyalty.

“If you get great people around you, hold on to them. It’s a huge competitive advantage.”

Gorny invests in personal growth as much as product innovation, arguing that empathy and emotional maturity create alignment that tools can’t. “I was rough around the edges when I was young,” he admits. “Now I know - rallying people behind you is everything.”

For Mike Tessler, co-founder and longtime CEO of BroadSoft, culture was the glue that held together a company spanning 2,000 employees and 23 countries.

“At some point we realized we were not operating as one. We quickly invested in activities to tie the culture together - something we called BroadSoft One.”

Tessler’s approach was rooted in communication and customer intimacy. He spent half his time on the road listening to clients, believing culture extends beyond internal teams: “It shouldn’t be transactional; it should be a relationship.” Even as BroadSoft scaled through 25 acquisitions, he made sure acquired founders stayed, ensuring that each local culture fed into a shared mission. His lesson for today’s founders: don’t just scale products, scale belonging.

Each founder we spoke to views culture as a growth strategy, not a corporate afterthought. Whether through trust, ownership, loyalty, or connection, they prove that in tech’s next chapter, culture isn’t what follows scale - it’s what makes it possible.

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