Culture at 11:30: Lessons From SNL’s Writers’ Room

I recently left New York for Nashville to build something new. It’s been smoother than I expected – good food, fun people, a city sprinting to catch up with itself. But every now and then, something sneaks up and punches me in the gut with homesickness. One of those triggers happens on Saturday nights, right around 11:30PM (10:30PM CST 😒), when the band kicks in and Darrell Hammond does the “Live from New York” thing that makes me want to book a flight back home. I'm a superfan, not just of the show, but the way people talk about the show. I listen to the podcasts (Quaid Army), I read the articles, and I spent most of this year nerding out over all the SNL50 content.

It’s not just that I love the bits... it’s that I love the blood-and-guts process: the all-nighters, the feuds in the writers’ room, the moments where Lorne Michaels tilts his head and decides the sketch dies. Sometimes I catch myself imagining what it’d be like to sit in that room, swimming in chaos and brilliance every week. Problem is, I can’t write comedy, and the only impression I’ve got is a bad Arnold Schwarzenegger that comes out sounding Jamaican. But still, SNL keeps making me think: what if startups actually stole some of this chaos instead of cosplaying (looking at you, ping pong table and a keg everyone is too afraid to use) as “cultured” companies?

Startups talk about culture the way college freshmen talk about philosophy: loud, earnest, and half-baked. Everybody, especially in tech, has got a definition... most of them including flashy buzzwords and cheap perks run by other companies "of culture". In my experience, none of it really matters once the pressure hits. For me, culture is what happens when the money’s gone, the clock’s out, and everyone’s still staring at you like you’re supposed to have the answers.

Saturday Night Live has lived in that nightmare every week for fifty years. The lights will go up at 11:30. Doesn’t matter if the host is Tom Hanks or some half-comatose linebacker, doesn’t matter if the writers hit gold or stared at the wall all week, doesn’t matter if the dress rehearsal tanked. At 11:30 p.m. the lights go up, the band plays, and you either pull it off or crash in front of millions. That’s the job. And somehow, it survives – not because everyone’s a genius, but because the culture forces survival.

1. Hire Weirdos, Not Templates
SNL doesn’t hire for “competence.” It hires for combustion. Phil Hartman could anchor any sketch, no matter how half-baked, and make it look airtight. Right next to him was Chris Farley, hurling his body through tables like a human wrecking ball, knowing Hartman would hold the center while he set the room on fire. That’s not a hiring strategy – that’s a chemistry experiment.

Or take Norm Macdonald and Jim Downey. NBC execs told them to quit making O.J. Simpson jokes on Weekend Update. They didn’t just ignore the memo – they doubled down. Week after week, more O.J. jokes, sharper, nastier. It wasn’t satire anymore; it was mutiny. Eventually both were canned. (Downey was back in two years; Norm returned to host 18 months later.) That’s not “team player” energy – that’s true loyalty to the mission as they deemed fit.

None of these choices would survive a corporate hiring checklist. But that’s exactly the point. The show is built on weirdos who don’t slot neatly into the org chart – because weirdos are the ones who end up unforgettable.

Startups love “culture fits,” which usually just means finding someone who already dresses like the founders. That’s a great way to build an echo chamber. If you want fresh ideas, hire someone who makes you nervous. Hire the wildcard who might bomb but might also save your ass. Safety doesn’t scale creativity; if everyone on your team feels ‘safe’ to bring home to Mom, your culture’s probably dead already.

2. Ship Before You're Ready

SNL doesn’t wait for inspiration. Monday you pitch, Tuesday you write, Saturday you’re live. Ready or not, the lights come up at 11:30. Some sketches kill, others bomb. Will Ferrell once joked that when a sketch died on air, “you could feel your ancestors watching in disappointment.” That’s the deal: success or humiliation, live in front of millions. But nobody gets to hide behind “we’ll launch next quarter.” You put it out there, flaws and all, because the deadline doesn’t care.

Startups should work the same way. If you’re still polishing features in the dark, you’re stalling. Ship. Let people watch you miss. A hard deadline makes things real – it forces trade-offs, kills dithering, and unites a team faster than any offsite ever will.

3. Build the Writers’ Room
SNL’s writers’ room is brutal, chaotic, and sometimes too much – but that’s what makes it work.

Chevy Chase once came back to host after leaving the cast, and minutes before airtime he and Bill Murray got into a fistfight in the hall. The punches weren’t about who was “right” – they were about pressure, ego, and the fact that everyone in that building cared too much to just let it slide. And yet, minutes later, they were both on stage making the sketch work.

Or take Amy Poehler, who once pitched a filthy bit only for Jimmy Fallon to mutter that it “wasn’t cute.” She turned, stared him down, and said, “I don’t f***ing care if you like it.” The room exploded with laughter. Fallon shut up. And the bit lived.

This is the deal at SNL: you throw elbows, you take swings, and you don’t shrink because someone higher on the call sheet doesn’t get it. The culture isn’t polite – it’s survival of the funniest.

Your startup should feel the same. A place where someone junior can call bullshit on the founder, where a fight over an idea doesn’t mean the team’s broken – it means the team is alive. If your brainstorms are always “nice,” you’re not pushing far enough. Focus on building the right room.

4. High Standards, Low Ego
SNL has bad weeks. Sometimes whole seasons are duds. But the people there still care – a lot. Tina Fey remembers Bill Murray telling the writers, straight-faced: “This is the most exciting thing you’ll ever do. And when it’s over, you’ll miss it every day.” That’s not nostalgia, that’s truth from someone who lived it.

The Lonely Island put it another way: they said the best part of SNL wasn’t when a short went viral – it was being in the trenches at 4 a.m. with the crew, eating pizza on the edit bay floor, knowing they were all trying to get something insane on TV. That’s high standards (don’t air garbage) mixed with low ego (nobody’s above the grind).

Startups should aim for the same mix: set the bar high, but don’t get so full of yourself you forget why you started. Take the mission and each other seriously, but not yourself. Care hard, grind harder, then laugh at the mess and do it again.

Your Startup = A Sketch Show
If you’re in a real startup, you’re already chasing something audacious. If you're doing it right, your company is already like a sketch show – underfunded, overcaffeinated, constantly rewriting the script. Some weeks you kill, some weeks you bomb so hard you pray nobody screenshots it – and either way, rent is still due. The only constant is that the lights come on again, ready or not.

So act like it and have some fun. Hire the weirdo. Build the writers’ room. Ship the half-baked idea. Laugh at the wreckage. And then do it all again, because the show doesn’t have to be perfect – it just has to go on.