Team Development for Tech & Start-ups: Defining Our Purpose Together
It happens somewhere between Series A and the fiftieth employee. The team that used to know everything – why we do what we do, what gets us out of bed in the morning, what sets the company apart from all the others – is growing. Faster. More fragmented. Remote staff across four time zones. Engineering and Sales who barely know each other. Onboarding on a weekly basis.
And suddenly, the founder or the culture lead asks themselves: how do we hold together what once defined us?
Incidentally, established tech companies ask themselves the same question following an acquisition, a pivot or an internal reorganisation. Culture isn’t just a ‘nice-to-have’ in the tech industry. It’s the difference between a team that solves problems – and one that creates them.
Team Baba has an answer to this. And it sounds better than you’d expect.
Why music works in a tech context – and doesn’t end up being cheesy
Tech people are sceptical. And rightly so. They’ve got a bullshit radar. They’ve already had to sit through too many trust-fall exercises and ‘purpose’ workshops, where all that happened in the end was a photo of a flipchart being posted on Slack, and three days later, nothing was left of it.
Team Baba is different – for one simple reason: something tangible is created.
A real song. Professionally produced. Written by your team. This isn’t a warm-up exercise; it’s a deliverable. And everyone in the tech world understands that straight away.
Behind Team Baba is the successful Swiss band Baba Shrimps – Adrian Kübler, Luca Burkhalter and Moritz Vontobel. They have been performing on stage for over 15 years, have topped the Swiss charts on several occasions, provided Switzerland’s official Olympic song and played almost 1,000 concerts worldwide. With Team Baba, they translate professional musical craftsmanship into a format that works in the corporate world – across all sectors, and particularly effective where there are high expectations of authenticity and quality.
The challenges in tech & start-ups – and what Team Baba specifically solves
Remote and hybrid: when the team is spread out
Shared experiences are the foundation of team culture. But when half the team works remotely and a quarter are never in the same room, ‘together’ becomes a logistical challenge.
A song workshop can be designed as an anchor event – one of the few occasions each year when the whole team comes together to create something that subsequently connects everyone, regardless of where they usually work.
Hypergrowth: When culture doesn’t scale with headcount
Start-ups grow quickly. Culture does not automatically scale with them. Those who were there in the second year still carry the DNA within them. Those who join during the fiftieth onboarding session first have to learn it.
A company song created collaboratively brings the DNA to life. It isn’t a mission statement you read – it’s an experience you’ve had. And new recruits who join later experience this song and understand straight away: ‘My team created this. That’s me too.’
Purpose: How to embed it without romanticising it
There’s a lot of talk about purpose in the tech industry. Sometimes too much – and too abstractly. What really helps isn’t the twentieth strategy document full of ‘mission, vision, values’, but a moment when the team decides together: What do we want to say? How do we want to sound?
This creative process is, in itself, team-building. The end product is proof that it has worked.
Team development for tech & start-ups – The formats: agile, modular, scalable
- Boost – the fast, intensive team sprint
Like a hackathon for culture: Team Baba brings a mini-stage to your office or your next company offsite. In a compact format, a team jingle is created – collaboratively, energetically, with a concrete output at the end of the day.
Ideal for: company off-sites, quarterly kick-offs, team onboarding events, all-hands meetings
- Studio – from jingle to finished product
The jingle becomes a fully produced song. Your team gets to experience a professional recording session in the studio – lyrics are refined, melodies arranged, and the sound is professionally mixed and mastered. An experience that lies far beyond the usual tech bubble – and that’s precisely why it brings people together so strongly.
Ideal for: annual events, cultural projects, brand milestones such as Series B funding rounds or product launch anniversaries
- Journey – when the song takes to the stage
The song, produced collaboratively, is rehearsed and performed live. In front of the workforce, at an investor event or as part of a major company milestone. Unforgettable. And definitely share-worthy.
Ideal for: company anniversaries, Investor Days, major team events
Audio Transcript – your all-hands meeting summarised as a song
Team Baba actively supports your next all-hands meeting, strategy day or off-site kick-off: they listen in, pick up on key points and the overall mood – and at the end, distil the day’s core messages into an exclusive live performance. Not just a summary on Slack. But one that really hits the mark.
The finished audio transcript can then be reused internally – for the intranet, Confluence pages, follow-up meetings or as an inspiring opener for the next quarterly kick-off.
Ideal for: all-hands meetings, strategy processes, company retreats following a major pivot
Employer branding that doesn’t require an agency budget
Tech companies are competing for talent. And the best candidates don’t just look at the salary – they check whether a company truly lives up to what it says.
A professionally produced company song, created with your own team, is one of the most authentic employer branding tools there is. No glossy image video, no stilted ‘We are hiring’ posts – just a genuine insight into what makes this team tick.
Suitable for use on LinkedIn, in recruitment videos, on the careers page, at the next tech event or as background music in the office. Includes a ‘making-of’ video.
Optional component: employee survey as a data foundation
For data-driven companies that prefer to measure culture rather than guess at it, Team Baba offers a preliminary employee survey in collaboration with the market research institute gfs-zürich. Anonymous, brief, insightful.
The results feed directly into the workshop – and provide an honest snapshot of the team’s morale before the collaborative work begins. For HR teams that make decisions based on data: this is the format for you.
What your company will take away
- A professionally produced song – for employer branding, onboarding videos, social media, company events or simply as a shared artefact
- A ‘making-of’ video that enables authentic storytelling about team culture
- Genuine connection – between remote and on-site teams, between engineering and business, between the founding team and new recruits
- An emotionally grounded purpose – not just a slide, but an experience
- A format that scales – from 10 to 500 people, bookable in modules depending on the occasion and budget
Culture isn’t a sprint. But sometimes it needs a kick-start.
Anyone who wants to scale successfully in the tech industry knows this: the product alone isn’t enough. Team alignment, shared values and the feeling of working together on something bigger – that’s the real infrastructure.
Team Baba is the most unlikely, yet most effective, infrastructure investment you can make for your corporate culture.
And it sounds bloody good.
Want to book Team Baba for your next company offsite or all-hands meeting?
Premium Speakers will guide you from the initial idea right through to implementation.
Enquire now with no obligation: 1 (704) 804 1054 or team.baba@premium-speakers.com
About Team Baba: Behind Team Baba is the successful Swiss band Baba Shrimps – Adrian Kübler, Luca Burkhalter and Moritz Vontobel. They have been performing together on stage for over 15 years, with multiple chart entries, the official Olympic song for Switzerland and almost 1,000 concerts worldwide. Through Team Baba, they are bringing this experience to the business world.