Jay Samit Quotes

About every other week, I sit down with all of our new Zynga hires and I talk to them for about 90 minutes, have an open Q&A. There is no formal presentation. I talk about our values, where they came from and why they are so important, and I ask them to challenge those values.

It's so important for startups to get their culture right at the start. They need to feel unique and that they are on their own important mission in the world.

As CEO, I had a standing 30-minute meeting every Monday to greet and connect with new hires.

I love being part of a company, and telling a story.

I have a foundational belief that business results start with culture and your people.

Someone asked me about what's it like managing 2.2 million associates, and I said, 'When they're Wal-Mart associates, it's not all that hard because of the quality and the depth of our talent.' I'm really proud of the fact that 70% of the managers in the U.S. started as hourly associates with our company.

Chick-fil-A is what it is today because of its people, purpose and product.

When we start a new store, we make sure that we transfer enough starter culture from other stores that are already Whole Fooders, who've already incorporated our values and our culture within themselves into the... into the store.

The first day, week and month of an employee's experience carries a lasting impression.

Our culture is the foundation for our company.

Every new HubSpot employee has to go through training to learn how to use the software. That's a good idea, and it also keeps me from having to worry about what I'm supposed to be doing here or why Cranium, who hired me, still has never come by to say hello or talk about what he wants me to work on.

Company culture is my number one priority. It's more important than the team, the product, the business model, or the investors. All of those things can be fixed and made better over time. But culture has to be established on Day 1.

Values can set a company apart from the competition by clarifying its identity and serving as a rallying point for employees. But coming up with strong values - and sticking to them - requires real guts.

If you're thinking about your brand over your people, you've lost yourself.

The people inside the company are the people who define GE, not the people outside the company.

There's a dance happening on both sides of the table. Individuals are giving their personal and career values a lot more weight when it comes to finding a company that aligns with both. At the same time, companies are becoming a lot more transparent about their core values as an organization and the types of people they want to attract.

Anybody who ever left Microsoft to Amazon, we could count on them coming back within a year or two, because it's not a great place to work to do innovative stuff as an engineer.

If there is one thing that offers challenges to small companies as they start to grow and expand, it is the hiring process... every single area. The issues that can arise run the full spectrum, from 'finding good help' to that ubiquitous catch-all 'training' and everything in between.

The Ford Motor Co. should stand for something more than cars and trucks. There is a Ford way of doing things that we cannot lose... We need to be continuously polishing that Ford oval.

We've always operated on the thesis that a company can have a personality, that people can be themselves, and be very successful in business at the same time.

It's not just hours and pay that are important anymore. People want to know what the company is like, what the culture is.

I work with CEOs and their executive teams... and very few of these people are really indifferent about their employees or their customers.

A new 'look' for any organization cannot be a papier-mache cover, tacked on with Scotch tape under the heading of 'beautification.' It has to be based on a probing examination of the company and the people who work for it. As a result, the eventual external visual design becomes the graphic extension of the internal realities of a company.

Our employees chose SK on belief that they will be happier working here and that the company will make the society happier.

My goal is to create one of the greatest companies that's ever existed, and that has everything to do with the people, the culture, and what our core values are versus what we build or how we're perceived out in the market.