FAST COMPANY: Why is company culture important to growth?
DAVID SELINGER: Why is culture such an important part of growing a company? There's three main reasons: the first one is, as you grow, you go from the different stages of one, to ten, to a hundred people, you reach these new challenges and it helps create a sense of cohesion. The second reason culture is so important is it helps you overcome obstacles you don't even foresee. There's these opportunities, these challenges that take an incredible amount of energy to go tackle and to overcome. The final reason is that you've got to bring a sense of humor and a comedic element to the office and you gotta be able to have fun. It helps bring the whole team together.
Why is company culture important to growth?
David Selinger first garnered international recognition as an expert in the field of eCommerce data analytics and personalization with his groundbreaking work leading the research and development arm of Amazon’s Data Mining and Personalization team. In that role, David increased Amazon’s annual profit by over $50 million (25% of US profit, 2003) setting the industry standard for recommendation services.
David has decades of experience, from developing the first Javascript-powered ad delivery system for Flycast—the same technology used by Google AdSense, DoubleClick and Overture—to leading Overstock’s personalization efforts as Vice President of Software Development and Data Mining. David also cofounded Redfin, a venture backed, industry-leading real estate search/brokerage company.
David holds a broad collection of awards and standing patents in customer segmentation, analytics and data mining, including over a dozen pioneered at RichRelevance. David’s accolades also include the coveted PC Magazine Editor’s Choice Award (won for 2Roam Wireless, acquired by Air2Web). David received his BS in Computer Science from Stanford University.
@daveselinger
