The growth paradox: Why mass recruitment without a clear cultural framework is operational suicide for cyber players.
Culture is not an HR benefit: In critical sectors, it is an asset for security and resilience.
The danger of silos: How losing sight of the "founder's vision" slows down decision-making when every second counts.
The Strategic Compass as an antidote : Methodology for transforming abstract values into an operational compass.
Onboarding through meaning: How to filter and integrate talent that will serve the mission, not just those looking for a paycheck.
You have just completed your Series B funding round. The numbers are looking good, new hires are coming in, and yet a feeling of unease is setting in. There are new faces in the hallways, processes are becoming more cumbersome, and the "commando" spirit of the early days is fading.
For a cyber or defense company, this cultural dilution is not just an HR issue: it is a security breach.
Discover how to structure your hypergrowth without sacrificing the DNA that made you successful, by transforming your founding vision into a concrete management tool.
Three years ago, there were twenty of you. Twenty enthusiasts crammed into an open-plan office that was too small, united by a clear mission: to protect digital sovereignty or innovate for national defense. Everyone knew everything. Communication was instantaneous, alignment total.
Today, there are 120 of you. Soon there will be 200.
You raised funds, structured the departments, and hired "Heads of" and "VPs." But yesterday, at the coffee machine, you ran into three people whose names and positions you didn't know. More worrying still: during the last All-Hands meeting, you felt that your speech about the company's "critical mission" didn't resonate as strongly. Some people were looking at their phones.
It's the dizzying sensation of hypergrowth.
For many scale-ups, this is a normal step. For a company operating in cyberdefense or cutting-edge technology, it is a deadly risk. Because in our line of work, culture is not just decoration on the walls: it is your teams' operating system.
We often talk about technical debt—code written in a hurry that will need to be rewritten later. But cultural debt is more insidious. It accumulates every time you hire someone who doesn't fundamentally share your values, or every time you create a process without explaining the "why" behind it.
In a typical B2B SaaS startup, if the culture becomes diluted, productivity declines. This is serious, but not critical. In cyber and defense, the stakes are different:
Confidentiality and trust: Your teams handle sensitive data. Integrity is not only controlled by contracts, but by a moral commitment to the mission.
Resilience under pressure: In the event of a major cyber incident or geopolitical crisis, your teams must respond as a "pack." If team spirit has given way to individualism, the response will be slow and disorganized.
The war for talent: Top engineers are headhunted on a daily basis. If they are only there for the salary, they will leave for 10% more elsewhere. If they are there for the Mission, they will stay.
The most obvious symptom of this dilution? The emergence of silos. The "old guard" stick together, nostalgic for the days when "things moved quickly." The "newbies" apply methods learned in large corporations, which are often ill-suited to the agility you need.
The company becomes schizophrenic. The founder looks at his business and no longer recognizes it.
Faced with this observation, the classic reflex is to delegate the problem to HR or Office Management. A foosball table is installed, team-building seminars are organized, and a "Chief Happiness Officer" is appointed.
That is a fundamental error.
Culture cannot be decreed over a beer on Friday night. Culture is what happens when the boss isn't in the room. It is the sum of thousands of micro-decisions made every day by your employees.
Should I deliver this code now or test it one more time?
Should I reply to this customer at 7 p.m. or wait until tomorrow?
Should I report this minor anomaly or let it slide?
These decisions depend on one thing: Vision.
If the founder's vision is not clear, transparent, and known to all, everyone will make decisions based on their own compass, not that of the company. That is when the ship veers off course.
To avoid disruption during the scaling process, you must "set in stone" the company's DNA. You must move from the oral tradition (the founder tells the story) to the institutional (the story is the structure).
At Autour de l’Image, we call this tool The Strategic Compass.
It is not a 50-page PDF document that no one reads. It is a management tool that defines four non-negotiable cornerstones:
Beyond the product, what kind of world are you trying to build or protect? For a cyber scale-up, it's not about "selling firewalls." It's about "ensuring that no critical infrastructure can be held hostage." This nuance changes everything in terms of a developer's motivation.
Forget buzzwords like "kindness" or "innovation." Look for behaviors.
Instead of "Excellence," write: "We never deliver if we have any doubts."
Instead of "Team spirit," write: "Customer success comes before individual glory."
Clear, shared, quantifiable objectives. That is the destination. If everyone knows the port of call, everyone can adjust their sails, even in a storm, without waiting for orders from above.
Every major brand, especially in defense, defines itself by opposition. Are you fighting against hackers? Against complacency? Against technological complexity? Defining the enemy brings teams together.
Once this Compass has been defined, it becomes your number one recruitment and integration tool.
Imagine the arrival of a new talent.
Scenario A (Without Compass): He arrives, receives his Mac, his Slack login details, and a tour of the offices. He is shown the coffee machine. His manager gives him his tasks for the week. Result: He is technically operational, but he is a mercenary. He doesn't know "who" you are.
Scenario B (With Compas): Before even discussing technical matters, he spends half a day on the Strategic Compass. We explain the history, the battles won, the non-negotiable values (and why they exist), and the 5-year vision. We tell him: "Here, you have the right to make mistakes, but you don't have the right to hide them. It's written in our Compass." Result: He feels invested with a mission. He belongs to a body.
It is this immediate alignment that allows scale-ups such as Tehtris and HarfangLab to grow quickly without crashing and burning.
It may seem counterintuitive, but a good Strategic Compass should also be used to weed out candidates who are not right for you.
By clearly displaying a strong, demanding, mission-oriented culture, you will discourage those looking for a "run-of-the-mill" job. And that's great news. You save time, money, and management energy. On the other hand, you will magnetically attract those who are looking for that meaning and intensity.
In the tech talent war, don't try to please everyone. Try to intensely please the right people.
Hypergrowth is a storm. It's exciting, it's powerful, but it's turbulent. If your structure isn't solid, pieces will fall off.
You can't be everywhere at once to monitor the culture. You can no longer interview every candidate personally. What you can do is ensure that the compass guiding the company is calibrated, visible, and used by everyone.
Don't let your culture become an accidental average of the personalities of your last 100 hires. Take control.
Your company is scaling up. Your brand and cultural challenges have become business and sustainability challenges. If you feel that your vision is becoming blurred, it's time to reaffirm it.
The Strategic Compass is our signature methodology for aligning your executive committee, clarifying your message, and uniting your teams around a powerful shared vision.
Before launching your next recruitment drive, let's make sure everyone is on the same page.
