Last week we brought together over 20 founders, CEO’s and senior managers from 6 portfolio (AbeBooks, Suite101.com, Nexopia.com, TeamPages, Techvibes, Carrie & Danielle) and 2 associated companies (LiveCurrent, the company behind Perfume.com and Cricket.com, Strutta) for our first Burda Digital / W Media Ventures event in Vancouver. It was a day packed with best practices and company presentations but the talk that resonated most with everybody was Brian Scudamore‘s “How to build a great company culture” speech. Brian is the founder and CEO of 1800-Got-Junk and an entrepreneur I truly admire. It wasn’t so much that anybody needed convincing that a strong company culture is something to strive for – it was more that Brian reminded us how much hard work it is on a daily basis and how easy it is to forget about this aspect in day-to-day operations. The one thing that really works for 1800-Got-Junk is the daily huddle that brings together the whole company for 7 minutes every day. 7 daily minutes during which the team can feel the current vibe of the company , 7 daily minutes during which everybody can be reminded of the company values, 7 daily minutes during which everybody from customer service agent to CEO can show leadership in front of the whole company. And as 1800-Got-Junk now has over 200 employees, the excuse that our companies are too big for such a daily all-company meeting is not really valid for most of us – try it out!