Hey there! I’m the founder and CEO of Athyna, a global talent company helping startups build great teams, and the founder of Open Source CEO, a media company for founders, investors and leaders in tech.

I’ve spent the last decade building companies, working with founders and obsessing over what makes great businesses tick. Along the way, I’ve become a top-ranked mentor at Startmate and worked with startups around the world. I’m particularly interested in leadership, culture and brand, and how founders can use all three to attract incredible people, build companies people genuinely want to work for, and hopefully have a bit of fun doing it.

Everyone says culture matters. Almost nobody can tell you how to build it when your team is fully remote and spread across a dozen time zones. At Athyna, we've done it the hard way, and the highest-leverage move wasn't ping pong tables or offsites. It was giving our people real ownership through equity.

In this session, I'll break down what actually builds and holds world-class culture in 2026: ownership, high standards, and rewarding the people who go hard.

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What you'll leave with:

1. Why real ownership through equity is the highest-leverage culture lever most companies ignore, and how to actually structure it so that it's not a burden on your team.
2. How to build and hold a high-standards, high-trust culture across a fully remote, global team.
3. The practical stuff: who to hire, how to reward your best people, and the quiet mistakes that kill culture before you notice.