Culture Is the Engine
Cubbo
By Consuelo Valverde
October 2025
The room names tell the story first. Not “Conference A,” not “Mezcal.” At Cubbo, meeting rooms are named after customers—the top accounts—with three credits beneath each plaque: who hunted the client, who closed it, and who signed the contract. It is scoreboard and compass at once, reminding everyone that wins are collective—and that individual contributions matter most when they make the team stronger.
Culture at Cubbo is not an afterthought. It is the engine, powering a company that began with ecommerce fulfillment and is now unlocking the data and intelligence behind those flows to create new services for its customers. As Cubbo pushes further into AI-driven solutions, culture is the thread that keeps the company aligned through growth, expansion, and evolution.
“Never quit.” —Josu Gurtubay
The Weight of Transparency
Ask anyone at Cubbo what makes it different, and they’ll point first to transparency. It is not cosmetic—this is the CEO explaining cash constraints at a town hall, the founders breaking down why a leader was let go, or the team openly reviewing mistakes on a major account. What elsewhere would be whispered about, Cubbo says out loud.
As co-founder Ignasi Vegas puts it: “To build trust, you have to be transparent and explain the good things, but also the bad.”
That radical transparency is not naïve—it is the foundation of trust. Transparency eliminates speculation; trust empowers people to act with ownership. Gossip has no oxygen when the official story is clear, even when the news is difficult. In an industry that runs on speed and precision, clarity is culture’s sharpest tool.
At Cubbo, transparency is not a slogan—it is the engine of trust.
Mantras That Move the Team
Each of Cubbo’s co-founders carries a mantra that has become cultural shorthand. For Josu Gurtubay, it is simply: “Never quit.” For Ignasi, it is: “Speed wins.” Both emerged not from whiteboards but from lived experience, rallying calls forged in execution.
“Never quit” surfaces when resilience is tested—through mistakes, heavy workloads, or tough exits. The company does not fire people for slipping once; it demands they learn, improve, and own their failures. To quit on a challenge, or on growth, is the one unforgivable act.
“Speed wins” speaks to Cubbo’s DNA as a fast-moving operator. But Ignasi is careful to add nuance: speed wins on reversible decisions, but not on choices that lock the company in. For Cubbo, speed is not recklessness—it is precision about when to accelerate and when to hold the line.
Culture Is What Happens When the Founders Aren’t There
Culture shows up in the details. A small customer who might leave gets the same urgent attention as a major account. And inside the company, performance reviews focus less on numbers and more on how people live the values—because in both cases, it’s culture, not size or metrics, that drives the decision.
Hiring enforces the same standard. Every candidate faces at least one culture interview—sometimes two. You can ace the technical case, but if you do not embody Cubbo’s values, there is no offer. Painful in the moment, but cheaper than a mis-hire. And at Cubbo, people who don’t fit the values don’t stay long; the culture makes that clear.
“Speed wins.” —Ignasi Vegas
Growth Without Losing the Core
Scale often erodes culture. Cubbo has resisted that drift by anchoring around a tight core of about fifty office-based employees—the “heart” that sets the rhythm of innovation and values. Around them is the operational muscle—more than 300 employees— guided by the same cultural framework.
The Brazil expansion tested that framework. At first, without a founder or trusted veteran on the ground, it became two companies wearing one logo. The fix was embodied, not emailed: founders spending time in Brazil each month, a new country manager who lived the values, and tough calls explained with candor. That’s when Brazil began to feel more like Cubbo. The lesson has become part of the playbook: never expand without cultural carriers at the front line.
Rituals of Belonging
Culture also lives in ritual. Cubbo’s swag is earned, not given. A thermos in the first stretch. A hoodie at two years. Sneakers at three. A custom Funko doll at four. During peak campaigns like Buen Fin or Hot Sale, employees often show up in Cubbo gear unprompted—like donning uniforms before a battle.
The rituals extend to daily recognition—shout-outs tied explicitly to values, leaders modeling customer-first behavior, and even the office itself reminding people of the customers they serve. These moments may seem small, but together they compound into belonging.
Cubbo powers end-to-end fulfillment across e-commerce, retail, fintech, and direct selling in Latin America, combining multi-node logistics with technology, data, and customer-focused solutions.
Work, Life, and Sprints
Work-life balance at Cubbo is not about daily equilibrium. It is about seasons: intense sprints followed by enforced rest. Founders themselves model the cycle—removing Slack access for team members on vacation, pushing people to truly disconnect. The message: when you work, go all in; when you rest, disconnect fully. People are trusted to manage their own pace—and leaders are measured on how well they set the example.
Why Culture Wins
If financials are the dashboard, culture is the engine. It decides whether transparency builds trust or fear. It guides who is hired, who is celebrated, and who exits. It determines whether a company can scale across borders without losing itself.
At Cubbo, culture is not a slogan but a system—reinforced in rituals, guarded in hiring, clarified in mantras. “Never quit.” “Speed wins.”
Five years from now, the founders say, “Culture at Cubbo will be the reason we win.” Not because it looks good in a deck, but because in the hardest decisions, it lights the way forward.