In many startups innovation abounds… until you get customers. Customers have practical needs that don't always line up with working on the exciting projects that made you join a startup in the first place. Balancing both is crucial to succeeding.

CrowdStrike is a big data computer security startup that has seen rapid growth in the past few years launching from 30 people to over 450 people across the globe, processing petabytes of data at millions of events per second, backed by investors such as Google Capital and Accel Partners. As a template of a modern company, CrowdStrike has a mixture of large offices, satellite offices and remote employees. Making a strong investment in culture has allowed us to successfully scale our distributed workforce.

I'll share my experience on how we're fostering innovation while also doing what's needed to pay the bills and making sure we're keeping our customers happy and employees engaged. I’ll walk through our culture template as a next-gen distributed company. I’ll share specific culture initiatives, team structures and management ideals that have worked for us such as "No Meeting Thursday", "Think Week", our virtual team structure, the culture team and more. I’ll also share my cultural experiences across several startups and enterprises.