{Image: The Linden Lab team celebrating two years of Second Life, June 2005. That’s me right in front. I was the community manager for our members — and, without a title for it yet, for the office too.}

I’ve always held that when you’re a Community Manager by trade, you end up doing a lot of the same things for your own office that you do during your “day job.” Planning the holiday party. Talking someone off the ledge after a rough Slack thread. Rewriting the internal announcement so it doesn’t sound like it was written by a lawyer. You’re the person with the skills to make it happen, even when it’s not technically your job.

It’s not a coincidence. The instincts that make someone good at building an external community (reading a room, noticing who’s gone quiet, knowing when to step in and when to just let people talk) don’t turn off at 6pm or stay pointed only at customers. They’re the same instincts a company needs turned inward.

There’s Already a Name For This
Some companies have figured this out and given it a title: Culture Manager, People Ops, Head of Culture. The good ones aren’t planning trivia night just because someone has to. They’re designing the culture on purpose: part therapist, part party planner, part internal anthropologist, watching the way a company actually behaves versus the way its values deck says it should.

These roles usually show up in bigger companies with enough headcount to justify a dedicated seat. But the need is actually greatest long before that.

Somewhere Between 50 and 200 People
A 20-person startup doesn’t have a culture problem yet. At that size, everyone absorbs the vibe by proximity. No translation required. The friction shows up later. Somewhere between 50 and 200 people. That is when you can’t fit everyone in one room anymore, the founders stop onboarding every new hire, and “how we do things here” stops being something people feel and becomes something you have to say out loud.

That’s the moment a company either stays rooted in what made it worth joining, or quietly becomes just another place people work. It is the same stakes David Spinks lays out in The Business of Belonging, just applied to the team instead of the customers.

Nobody’s watching for that transition on purpose. It happens in the gap between “we’re small enough that culture takes care of itself” and “we’re big enough to hire someone for it.” That gap is usually much longer than anyone plans for.

Underused Expertise, One Slack Channel Over
Community Managers are trained to see these exact shifts. Reading the health of a group (knowing when trust is fraying, when someone’s about to burn out, when the elephant in the room matters most) is the whole job. We do it all day for people who don’t even work at the company. Turning that attention toward the people who do isn’t a stretch; it’s underused expertise sitting one Slack channel over. CMX has highlighted this crossover directly: the same mechanics that build belonging externally are what it takes to build a tight team culture internally.

Every startup might not need a full-time Head of Culture on day one. But every startup should ask who is already doing that work anyway. Quietly, unofficially, and without credit. And whether it’s time to actually give them the mandate.