It depends. I can’t imagine if numbers weren’t great that the culture could be great, for various reasons. However theoretically, culture could be the primary asset and treated like IP in certain situations like justin.tv that became Twitch.
Culture was the IP. This isn’t too odd nowadays in emerging tech, gaming and other ecosystems that rely heavily on the culture of the company leading the community. The culture permeates through to their customers. Yet, this will undoubtedly mean that KPIs will reflect this (high retention, low CAC, high LTV, etc).
And therefore, leads me back to the original response that I don’t think you’d find great culture with poor numbers, unless you specifically mean financial.
