At woom USA, our mission has always been clear: to inspire millions of children to fall in love with cycling—and to make the world a better place.

But here’s the thing: having a mission on paper isn’t enough. It only matters if it’s lived daily by the people who bring it to life.

By 2017, we realized we had a gap. A cultural blind spot. We were scaling fast, but our mission wasn’t anchored in the way our team operated. From that moment forward, we set a new goal: not only to build a mission-driven business, but to create a values-driven team that lived and breathed that mission every day.

The Challenge of Culture in Fast Growth

Founders often assume culture will “just happen.” In reality, as companies grow:

• Processes outpace people
• Growth pressures replace clarity with chaos
• Teams start making decisions based on speed or convenience instead of values

That’s what was happening to us. We were growing fast, but our cultural foundation wasn’t visible or consistent. I was relying on unwritten rules, assuming everyone knew what mattered most.

The truth? They didn’t. And the bigger we got, the more dangerous that gap became.

This is a common mistake in startups. Founders focus on product and revenue, and culture becomes an afterthought. But culture isn’t a side project—it’s the glue that holds everything else together.

The Catalyst: A Moment of Truth

The turning point came in the warehouse.

Two team leads were in a heated debate over a customer issue. I stepped in and said: “Just think about our values—you’ll know what to do.”

The reply stopped me cold: “What are our values?”

In that moment, I realized I had failed as a leader. I had been talking about mission and integrity, but I hadn’t made our values visible, repeatable, or actionable.

That moment became the spark for one of the most important pivots in our history.

The Solution: Keys to Success

We gathered the team and asked a simple question: “What are we already doing when we’re at our best?”

The answers weren’t abstract. They were real behaviors we could see in action. From that conversation, we created our Keys to Success. These weren’t lofty aspirations. They were reflections of who we already were when we were aligned, focused, and thriving.

woom USA – Our Original Keys to Success

1. Focus on delivering the best children’s bikes
2. Offer an amazing customer experience
3. Continuously improve everything we do
4. Work as a team: make each other better
5. Take initiative: see an issue, find a better way
6. Maintain and enhance an active and fun atmosphere

These Keys became the operating system of our culture. They weren’t just words on a wall—they were the way we made decisions, celebrated wins, and gave feedback.

How We Made Culture Real

The real shift wasn’t writing them down. The real shift was embedding them into our systems, rituals, and daily language.

Recognition and Celebration

We created consistent, values-driven ways to recognize contributions.

• The #shoutouts Slack channel: every post had to tie back to one of the Keys.
• Peer-to-Peer Awards: teammates nominated colleagues for living the Keys.
• Friday Wins: every weekly meeting started with stories of success framed by our values.
• Customer feedback: positive reviews were shared internally to connect our values to the external experience.

Lesson: recognition only matters if it reinforces what you want repeated.

People, Performance and Process

We baked values into how we hired, onboarded, and developed people.

• Onboarding: new hires learned the Keys on day one, before diving into their roles.
• Hiring: we screened for alignment with our values as much as technical ability.
• Performance reviews: living the Keys was part of promotions and career growth.
• Feedback loops: team members reflected on how they applied the Keys in real situations.

Lesson: values die in the gap between intention and evaluation. If you don’t measure them, they won’t matter.

Daily Experience and Rituals

We used rituals and visuals to keep culture top of mind.

• Agendas: meeting templates included prompts tied to the Keys.
• Visuals: the Keys were displayed across the office and on Zoom backgrounds.
• Shared language: “Which Key is showing up here?” became a way to cut through confusion.

Lesson: small rituals create big alignment. Culture is lived in the daily moments, not in annual speeches.

The Result

By turning values into systems, we built:

• Alignment and trust across a fast-growing team
• Faster, more consistent decision-making
• A culture that kept energy high and turnover low
• Customer experiences that reflected our internal integrity
• 1,666% growth and three consecutive years on the Inc. 5000

Culture didn’t slow us down—it helped us scale. It became a competitive advantage.

7 Key Lessons for Founders and Culture Builders

1. If you don’t define your culture, someone else will. Leave it to chance and you’ll get inconsistency at best, dysfunction at worst.
2. Build from the inside out. Don’t invent values. Ask what already defines your team at its best.
3. Recognition is your multiplier. Celebrate not just results, but the way those results were achieved.
4. Bake values into the hard systems. Onboarding, hiring, promotions—these are where culture becomes real.
5. Visibility matters. People need daily reminders. Make values unmissable.
6. Leaders set the ceiling. If you don’t live the values, no one else will.
7. Culture compounds. Every ritual, every shoutout, every reinforcement adds up. Over time, it creates unstoppable momentum.

Final Thought

At woom USA, our mission—to inspire millions of children to fall in love with cycling—was never just a tagline. It was our why.

Our Keys to Success became our how. They turned mission into daily action, alignment, and trust.

If you’re scaling a business, don’t treat culture as an afterthought. Codify it. Celebrate it. Operationalize it.

Your values might just become your greatest advantage.