Deal Speed and Default Optimism
Codify the values you already have, not the ones you wish you had.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~ongoing to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 85%
Deel's culture model has two halves: what the team member brings, and what the company gives back. The team brings deal speed (urgency on the customer's behalf), default optimism (argue why it will work, then solve the risks), and genuine care for the customer's livelihood. In return the company gives total flexibility over where and when people work. Critically, the values were not invented in a workshop — they were named about a year in, after they were already observably in use.
Origin
Deel's culture, described by Berkowitz. 'Deal speed' emerged organically from the CEO telling people to do things 'at deal speed' long before anyone defined it. Lenny Rachitsky cross-references Airbnb, which codified six values around year four and later cut two because they were aspirational rather than true; and Frank Slootman's book Amp It Up on organizational urgency.
Core principles
- 01Values are descriptive, not aspirational — write down who you already are, not who you hope to be.
- 02Culture happens well before you name it; the naming exercise is documentation, not creation.
- 03Urgency is fulfilling, not exhausting: burnout comes from drift, not from things getting done.
- 04Default optimism is not naivety — it is inverting the order of objection and solution.
- 05An intense culture is legitimate if you are honest about it up front and pay it back in real freedom.
How to run it
- 1
Watch for language that is already load-bearing
Notice the phrases leaders and team members already use unprompted to describe how work gets done. At Deel the CEO would tell people 'I want you to do this, but I want you to do it at deal speed' long before it was a value.
Pro tip The signal you have found a real value: it is already in the swag jokes and the everyday instructions.
- 2
Define it explicitly and publish it
Around a year in, take the phrases you keep hearing, define what they actually mean for your company, set them in stone, and share them publicly with the team and the market.
Watch out Do not run the exercise as a blank-page brainstorm. Values invented rather than observed turn out to be untrue and get cut later — Airbnb removed two of six for exactly this reason.
- 3
Operationalize urgency with a customer-anchored standard
Make speed concrete and customer-facing: a customer with a problem gets an answer within 24 hours, not two weeks. A product many customers ask for gets built in a fraction of the time a competitor would take. The internal question becomes 'what is the quickest way I can solve this problem properly?'
Watch out Urgency has to be episodic, not permanent. Wartime sprints are energizing and memorable; endless late nights and weekends for years are not.
- 4
Install default optimism as a conversational protocol
Require the optimistic case first: instead of 'I don't think that will work because X, Y, Z', the expected form is 'I think it will work for these four reasons — now let's identify the risks and solve them.' Pessimism-first slows a new-category company down.
- 5
Name what the company gives back
State the other half of the bargain. At Deel: complete flexibility over where you work and what hours you work, on top of pay and benefits. Be openly honest that the culture is intense — and let people opt in with full information.
Pro tip The remote-from-day-one setup did the culture work early: people met each other's pets and partners, and nobody felt pressure to dress up or perform, which built camaraderie before anyone met in person.
In the wild
Nobody sat around a table asking what to call the values. Deel's CEO already told people to work 'at deal speed'; there were early jokes about company swag called 'deal Speedos'. About a year into the company's existence the team simply noticed the phrase kept recurring and formalized what it meant.
→ Deal speed became a publicly shared core value that was true on day one of its publication, because the culture existed well before it was written down.
When Silicon Valley Bank collapsed, Deel's entire team worked on a Sunday to reassure customers their money and payroll were safe. Berkowitz missed a theatre show she had been excited about.
→ She describes it as a war room that felt good — she showed up Monday feeling alive rather than burned out. Her point: urgency in the service of something you're proud of is fulfilling, provided it is episodic and not the permanent state.
Airbnb codified six core values around four years in. A few years later they recognized two of them were aspirational rather than descriptions of who they actually were.
→ They cut those two, keeping four true values. Rachitsky's lesson, which Berkowitz endorses: values should represent who you already are, not who you hope to be.
Common mistakes
Workshopping values from a blank page
Values invented in a room rather than observed in the work end up aspirational, don't click, and get quietly deleted later.
Treating pessimism as rigor
In a new category, leading with why it won't work just slows everything down. The rigor still happens — but after the optimistic case, in the form of naming and solving the risks.
Running permanent wartime
Intensity is fulfilling in bursts around things people are proud of. Endless late nights and weekends for years is a different thing and does burn people out.
Is it for you?
Best for
A founder or leadership team at a fast-growing startup deciding when and how to formalize company values without producing corporate wallpaper.
Not ideal for
Organizations whose people cannot or will not opt into an explicitly intense culture, or where the company cannot genuinely deliver the freedom half of the bargain.
From the transcript
“our version of velocity is something that we call Deal speed is that we want”
“we also care you know that we remain positive you know we have default optimism because we are in a new space”
“we need people to ask the question up I think it's going to work for these four reasons now let's see what are the risks…”
“deal speed was something that you know our CEO would tell it people he'd be like okay I want you to do this but I…”
“value should be who you are not who you hope to be”
From the episode
An inside look at Deel’s unprecedented growth
Meltem Kuran Berkowitz (Head of Growth)