This Startup CEO Works 7 Days a Week and Sleeps on a Mattress in the Office: ‘Most Intense Workplace Culture in America’
Employees at the startup are also expected to work seven days a week and can take a rest day “every now and then.”
Key Takeaways
- Corgi cofounder and CEO Nico Laqua has engineered an extreme, seven-days-a-week office-centered culture, including keeping a mattress at the office so he can sleep at work.
- He frames this intensity as a rational trade-off, saying he would rather shorten his life than see the startup fail.
- Laqua argues that a conventional weekend is incompatible with building a world-changing company, insisting that whatever can be done in five days can be done better in six or seven.
Nico Laqua runs Corgi, an AI insurance company, like a permanent sprint. Podcast host Harry Stebbings calls it “the most intense workplace culture in America” in a new episode of the 20VC podcast.
The team works seven days a week, with Laqua sleeping three hours a night on a mattress on the floor of the office. He even built a 24/7 cafe inside the office so people never need to leave to get coffee.
Stebbings asked Laqua: “Would you rather Corgi was a trillion-dollar company, but you died at 50, or it was a fail, and you live till you were 80?”
“The answer to that is pretty easy,” Laqua said, choosing the option to die at 50. “I’m dying either way.”
Laqua said he would rather account for his lifespan “in victories than years,” adding that he isn’t sleeping much.
He said that Corgi employees can take a rest day if they need it “every now and then,” but they don’t have weekends off.
“If your days off happen to be Saturday and Sunday every week, then you will not have a place at Corgi,” he said.
Laqua cofounded Corgi in 2024. The startup hit unicorn status in May, raising a Series B at a $1.3 billion valuation, then raising a Series B1 round later that month at a $2.6 billion valuation.
Candidates interviewing at the startup do weekend work trials and walk into a full office on Saturdays. If that sight scares them, Laqua thinks they should not join the company.
Other Silicon Valley startups are working on weekends
High-growth startups in Silicon Valley increasingly require full offices on the weekends. “I don’t think it’s a coincidence,” Laqua said on the podcast. Startups are popularizing 996 work culture, where employees work from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. six days a week. The trend was banned in China in 2021, but has recently caught on in Silicon Valley.
Employees also show their commitment to the company with tattoos. Two-thirds of the first 30 workers at the startup have tattoos of the Corgi logo, a mark of deep loyalty to the mission.
According to Laqua, culture equals winning. He noted that a normal five-day work week is not enough to solve hard problems in regulated finance.
“Whatever you can get done in five days, I promise you you’ll get more done in six and seven,” Laqua said on the podcast. “You should go all out.”
Another founder advocates for balance
Karri Saarinen, founder and CEO of workplace productivity startup Linear, wrote on X that Laqua’s philosophy reflected that of young entrepreneurs when “the startup becomes their identity.”
“They have a hard time doing anything else, and cannot understand that your work is not the person that is you,” Saarinen wrote. “But activities outside of work can grow you as a person too and make you do better work.”
Laqua defended his approach, writing in a response on X that “if you’re obsessed with a problem, you work hard.”
Key Takeaways
- Corgi cofounder and CEO Nico Laqua has engineered an extreme, seven-days-a-week office-centered culture, including keeping a mattress at the office so he can sleep at work.
- He frames this intensity as a rational trade-off, saying he would rather shorten his life than see the startup fail.
- Laqua argues that a conventional weekend is incompatible with building a world-changing company, insisting that whatever can be done in five days can be done better in six or seven.
Nico Laqua runs Corgi, an AI insurance company, like a permanent sprint. Podcast host Harry Stebbings calls it “the most intense workplace culture in America” in a new episode of the 20VC podcast.
The team works seven days a week, with Laqua sleeping three hours a night on a mattress on the floor of the office. He even built a 24/7 cafe inside the office so people never need to leave to get coffee.
Stebbings asked Laqua: “Would you rather Corgi was a trillion-dollar company, but you died at 50, or it was a fail, and you live till you were 80?”
