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How to create culture at a 100% remote company

Victoria Stepp
culture
17 March 2026 • 3 min read

Culture is a loaded word. I could wax poetic about what culture even means for an embarrassing amount of time. When Embrace got word that we were (again) on the Forbes list of Best Startup Employers, I began thinking about our culture and how it has continued to thrive and evolve in a fully remote environment.

Culture isn’t about company values or flashy team building exercises, though those things certainly have a time and place. It’s about the way we take those tangible representations of culture and how we choose to act with that knowledge (especially when no one else is looking).

You can see glimpses of culture in the way we talk to and about each other, our customers and even our product – but to look for what you can’t always see, it starts with what you can.

Cultural tenets of Embrace

Embrace’s company values were thoughtfully planned and, while they have been iterated on a bit since their initial inception, their core remains the same:

Perspective: Seeking to understand your perspective

Investing: Investing in discovering value, unprompted

Honesty: Delivering brutal honesty kindly

Simplest: Finding the simplest solutions by focusing on outcomes

Ownership: Empowering yourself and others through solutions, not answers

Dark Humor: Finding levity together, even when tackling hard problems

These cultural tenets guide the way we interact with folks in our day to day, both in and out of our company. We even intentionally use these values to craft thoughtful questions during our interview process as a method to reinforce our culture as we grow. While these values may be the framework to our culture, they aren’t the reason why it’s special. Having words on paper is great, but the way our team lives these values is why they matter.

Dark Humor is essential

My favorite example is what we call value zero: “Dark Humor”.

It’s where you see Embrace’s tenets really shine. To us, Dark Humor isn’t (just) laughing at taboo jokes, but finding positivity and joy in things that may be challenging or difficult.

It’s no secret that being at a startup has its ups and downs, but how you weather those in your day to day as a company speaks volumes. The fact is: things don’t always go right, your product will break, you will lose a sale, and you will have friction. Our ability to pull things together as a team and bring levity to the occasion wins out every time.

Culture is cultivated face-to-face, even for a fully distributed company

Another clear tangible in Embrace’s culture is that we love getting together. We make an concerted effort as a fully remote company to get together a few times a year as both a full company and as individual teams.

Ask most anyone who has been here for more than a few months, and they can tell you a story about meeting a fellow Embracian in person. We all pause our lives for a few days each year to gather for our annual company trip, the highlight of intentional culture at Embrace.

What’s special about these trips isn’t the cool locations we go to (like Napa, Palm Springs or Austin), it isn’t the fun activities we do together (like White Water Rafting, Food Tours or Boating), and it certainly isn’t the important presentations that brought us together in the first place.

What’s special is the interactions we get to have with each other and the connective tissue it brings to our day-to-day remote work. We all walk away from these trips with a story, a new friend – or at the very least a new-found appreciation for the person sitting on the other side of the screen.

These retreats are packed to the gills with activities, team meals, and strategic bonding time. But it isn’t the flashy things that make the biggest impact. Money can’t buy better team building than folks from all departments working together to clean up a space and taking out the trash after a 50-person meal. These micro moments of teamwork become stories and inside jokes, and eventually, company lore that is ingrained in who we are.

Is it hard work? Yes, but it’s more than worth it

Each of these events is logistically unique and full of finicky details. I can sometimes find myself focused on the agenda and lost in the execution of the event. However, at every single gathering, I make myself find a moment to pause and look around the room at my coworkers.

I see folks in different departments talking and laughing like they have been friends for decades (to be fair some have).

I see entire teams singing karaoke songs together while ICs and VPs swap stories about first jobs over tacos.

Finding these moments has brought me to tears more than once over my last eight years at Embrace. Every single person who has come through these (virtual) doors has made a positive impact on my life and this company in one way or another.

Right culture + right people

The biggest danger to any company culture is its own makers. No amount of intentional culture matters if you hire or keep the wrong people. But when you hire the right people, you create a company and environment that people want to be in – one that brings out the best in people. The people then channel that same energy into their work, the product and the greater community.

Embrace is lucky to have the culture it does and the incredible people that make it so. Want to join us?

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Author
Victoria Stepp
Victoria Stepp
Victoria Stepp is the head of people operations at Embrace. She’s been with the team since Embrace’s early days, joining the company in 2017. Victoria prides herself on her role in shaping Embrace’s company culture and maintaining our values of honesty, perspective, ownership, and more. She’s been integral in fostering this culture and growing the team from its initial size of seven people to today’s number of more than 80.
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