Team Feedback Without Drama: My Real Review of Using Oscillian as a Startup Founder

Why I Was Looking for Something Different

I am the co-founder of a B2B software startup. We are 12 people. Every quarter, we do some version of team feedback, and every quarter, it is painful.

We have tried:

• Google Forms with anonymous comments (brutal, unhelpful)
• 15Five (too structured, felt like performance reviews)
• Just talking about it (nobody says the real stuff)

The problem is always the same: people either say nothing useful or say things that create drama without resolution.

A founder friend mentioned Oscillian. She said it was different because people do not write comments, they just tap qualities. Less room for personal attacks, more pattern recognition.

I was skeptical but desperate. Here is what happened when we tried it.

The Experiment: Team Culture Feedback

I picked the Team Dynamics topic. The idea was to understand how people experience our team culture, not to evaluate individuals.

First, I did the Self-Reflection myself. What qualities do I think describe our team? I tapped:

• Fast-moving
• Collaborative
• Sometimes chaotic
• Mission-driven
• Open communication

Then I sent the link to the whole team with this message:

> Trying a new tool for team feedback. Not about individuals, just about how we experience working together. Takes 2 minutes, tap some words that fit. Be honest.

10 out of 12 responded within a day.

The Results Were Uncomfortable

When I opened the Four Corners view, here is what I saw:

Aligned: Fast-moving, mission-driven, hardworking

Good. We agree on that.

Revealed: Stressful. Unclear priorities. Siloed.

This was the hard part. I did not select any of those. I thought we had clear priorities. I thought we were collaborative, not siloed.

Hidden: I had tapped open communication. Almost nobody else did.

That one stung. I genuinely believed people felt comfortable speaking up. Apparently not.

Untapped: Things like sustainable pace and psychologically safe were in the untapped corner. Neither I nor the team selected them. That was telling.

What Almost Backfired

Here is where I almost messed up.

My first instinct was to share the results in our all-hands and ask what do you mean we are siloed?

My co-founder stopped me. She pointed out that if I got defensive in front of everyone, it would prove the not psychologically safe point.

Instead, we did this:

1. Shared the results without commentary first. Just here is what came back.
2. Asked clarifying questions, not defensive ones. When you think about silos, what comes to mind? not Why do you think we are siloed?
3. Picked one thing to actually change. We chose unclear priorities because it felt actionable.

What We Actually Changed

Based on the feedback, we made two concrete changes:

1. Weekly priority alignment. Every Monday, we now have a 15-minute standup where I explicitly state the top 3 priorities for the week. Not a task list. Just these are the three things that matter most.

1. Cross-team lunch pairs. To address the siloed feedback, we started random lunch pairings between teams. Low-stakes, but people started talking to people they did not usually work with.

Did it fix everything? No. But it gave us specific hooks.

The Friction Points

I want to be honest about what did not work perfectly:

1. Some people wanted to explain their answers. The format is intentionally comment-free, but a few team members said they wished they could add context. I get it, but I also think comments would have made it messier.

1. It does not tell you what to do. Oscillian shows you gaps. It does not give you a playbook. You have to figure out the now what yourself.

1. Running it for a team requires buy-in. Two people did not respond, and I do not know if that was disengagement or just busy. The tool cannot make people participate.

1. The anonymous-ish thing is tricky. With a 12-person team, people might guess who said what based on word choices. Full anonymity is hard in small groups.

Would I Use It Again?

We have done three rounds now. Each time, different topic, different results.

The second round was about leadership (how the team experiences me and my co-founder). That was even more uncomfortable but probably more useful.

The third round we let team leads run their own sessions for their pods. That worked well because it was more specific.

Who This Works For

Good fit:

• Small teams (under 30) where you want culture feedback, not performance data
• Founders who genuinely want to know what is not working
• Teams that have trust issues with traditional surveys

Probably not:

• Large organizations needing formal 360 programs
• Teams looking for quantitative benchmarks
• Situations where you need written documentation for HR

The Honest Summary

Oscillian did not fix our team culture. But it showed us specifically where the gaps were between what leadership believed and what the team experienced.

That was worth more than the vague things are stressful comments we used to get.

If you are a founder or team lead who can handle seeing the difference between your intentions and your impact, it is worth trying. Just be ready to actually do something with what you learn.