When you hear the word “company culture,” what comes to mind?

If you picture a whimsical work environment filled with highly social Millennial co-workers, cruising around on hoverboards and gathering around the company’s kegerator on Friday (or Tuesday) afternoons, you’re not alone.

According to this week’s Awesome Office guest, you’re also completely wrong.

In this episode, co-host Sean Spear talks to longtime friend and mentor Tony Knopp, the CEO and co-founder of InviteManager. Together with his co-founders, Tony has built the leading entertainment enterprise SaaS company, so he knows a thing or two about building high-performing teams.

Tony is a fascinating, driven entrepreneur who reads two books per week, and who brought a ton of juice to this episode. In our conversation, he shares stories from his early days at StubHub, explains why he decided to strike out on his own at the age of 27, and details why InviteManager has made “relentless recruiting” one of their core tenets.

One of the things we found most interesting was Tony’s take on company culture, and why he thinks most people miss the mark when it comes to building the right culture for their business.

Recommended Reading

• “The Sure Thing,” by Malcolm Gladwell
• The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz
• The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton M. Christensen
• Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin
• Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey A. Moore
• Mindset by Carol Dweck

Links

• InviteManager
• Tony on LinkedIn
• @TonyKnopp on Twitter
• Can’t Buy Me Love