GoKawiilKey Takeaways Corgi cofounder and CEO Nico Laqua has engineered an extreme, seven-days-a-week office-centered culture, including keeping a mattress at the office so he can sleep at work.
He frames this intensity as a rational trade-off, saying he would rather shorten his life than see the startup fail.
Laqua argues that a conventional weekend is incompatible with building a world-changing company, insisting that whatever can be done in five days can be done better in six or seven.
Nico Laqua runs Corgi, an AI insurance company, like a permanent sprint. Podcast host Harry Stebbings calls it “the most intense workplace culture in America” in a new episode of the 20VC podcast.
The team works seven days a week, with Laqua sleeping three hours a night on a mattress on the floor of the office. He even built a 24/7 cafe inside the office so people never need to leave to get coffee.
Stebbings asked Laqua: “Would you rather Corgi was a trillion-dollar company, but you died at 50, or it was a fail, and you live till you were 80?”
“The answer to that is pretty easy,” Laqua said, choosing the option to die at 50. “I’m dying either way.”
Laqua said he would rather account for his lifespan “in victories than years,” adding that he isn’t sleeping much.
He said that Corgi employees can take a rest day if they need it “every now and then,” but they don’t have weekends off.
“If your days off happen to be Saturday and Sunday every week, then you will not have a place at Corgi,” he said.
... continue reading