Some misquoted aphorisms for tldr:

“We shape our products; thereafter they shape us”

“Culture eats everything for breakfast”

“Your culture is my opportunity”

• The “us” being shapped is not just us as individuals but us as a collective
• For modern SaaS products that collective is the teams using the products
• What’s being shaped is the team culture
• Products that enable great team cultures are loved and valued and become deeply embedded in organisations

I’ll stop with the misquotes now I promise, and I’ll write in full sentances to this doesn’t read like ChatGPT…

A ‘little things’ example – Slack and Teams

Slack and Teams; two business chat apps. Two very different experiences. Try telling a team that they have to give up Slack and move to Teams – more than just annoyance, the reaction you’ll get is people questioning whether they want to work at your company any more. It’s seen as ripping up the culture. Maybe “felt as” is more accurate.

It’s a tiny example – allowing users to create custom emojis – but it’s the sum of small stuff that matters. Custom emojis become powerful units of team culture. Creating, say, a customised emoji that celebrates someone’s success strengthens inter-personal bonds, demonstrating that that persons is seen by the team, and over time as it’s reused and takes on new meaning while weaving a cultural legacy within the team. Mini-memes that bond. Part of being a team is, necessarily, that others are not in the team and allowing the team to be a little different is part of that.

Teams, ironically, makes it harder for teams to be teams. The expression of emotion and culture is limited to the ways that Microsoft have deemed ok. Teams projects Microsoft culture rather than culturing team culture.

And this is a big reason why people love Slack and, well, tollerate Teams.

Culture is product gold dust – we should design for it

New B2B SaaS products are usually looking to change their industry, not just showing data in fancy new ways but changing how their customer organisations operate in some way. Multiplayer collaborative experiences are tablestakes for SaaS in 2026; well designed, these interactions can (should!) transform how teams work. We need to ask what it looks like for a team to interact with a product and how the product will make that team great, rather than just think about usability for individual team members

Product and design teams need to understand and design for the ways in which teams can build culture around the product. What are the social objects in the system and how can teams have the flexibility of expressions that allows atleast a little fun and creativity to creep in?