In recent years, Silicon Valley has become virtually synonymous with startup companies. These companies are defined by their famous "startup culture." An interesting and unanticipated outcome of this research was the finding that the discourse of Silicon Valley startups is framed centrally in terms of culture. I use discourse analysis to understand the way people create and perpetuate structures of power, gender, and culture. By studying the way people in startup companies talk about their expectations and experiences, this analysis hopes to gain a deeper understanding into the normalized cultural discourses surrounding startup organizations, as well as the way individuals negotiate their subjective realities within this sphere.

Assessing the team is an essential part of the evaluation process conducted by venture capitalists before an investment opportunity. In turn, the team is completely influenced by its organizational culture. Therefore in this study, I investigate how organizational culture can become an integral part of the VC evaluation process to improve this pro-cedure. This is done by exploring how the culture assessment is performed and what culture factors that are considered important. For this purpose, semi-structured in-terviews have been conducted with seven investment managers from five different VC firms. My findings indicate that the investors lack a structured methodology to assess culture. The assessment is mainly focused on the founders and management team, and performed through interactions with their network, personality tests and discussions. Except from the founders and management team, the investors also highlights the im-portance of assessing the degree of teamwork and consensus, diversity and inclusion, receptivity and adaptability, talent attraction ability, employee turnover, defined and shared responsibility and focus within the venture. Ultimately, this thesis suggests an assessment framework regarding organizational culture for venture capitalists. / Att utvärdera teamet är en väsentlig del inom utvärderingsprocessen, som utförs av riskkapitalister, inför en investeringsmöjlighet. Vidare är teamet fullständigt influerat av dess organisationskultur. Av den anledningen undersöker jag, i denna studie, hur organisationskultur kan bli en integrerad del av riskkapitalisternas utvärderingsprocess, för att förbättra denna procedur. Detta görs genom att undersöka hur utvärderingen av kultur utförs, och vilka kulturella faktorer som anses väsentliga. För detta ändamål, har semi-strukturerade intervjuer utförts med sju investerare från fem olika riskkapitalbolag. Mina resultat visar att investerarna saknar en strukturerad metod för att utvärdera kultur. Utvärderingen fokuserar främst på grundarna och management teamet, och utförs genom interaktioner med deras nätverk, personlighetstester och diskussioner. Förutom grundarna och management teamet, sätter investerarna stort värde på att utvärdera nivån av teamwork och konsensus, diversitet och inklusion, lyhördhet och anpassningsförmåga, förmåga att attrahera talanger, personalomsättning, definierat och delat ansvar samt fokus inom startup bolaget. Slutligen, erbjuder uppsatsen ett förslag på ett analysramverk som gör det möjligt för riskkapitalister att identifiera viktiga kulturella faktorer.