high-care, high-trust teams.

built with founders who give a damn.

Fractional people support and founder coaching for scaling startups. Helping you make the right calls on people, structure, and culture before things get messy.

crack the people puzzle

TRUSTED BY

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Policies don't manage people, people do

Tired of being your own Head of People?

You're a founder, not an HR department. But right now, you're probably carrying things that were never meant to sit with you forever:

  • Performance conversations you're avoiding (or overthinking)

  • Hiring decisions that feel high stakes and slightly guessy

  • Managers doing their best, without clear expectations

  • The same tensions cropping up again and again

  • Needing to answer every "how do we handle this…?"

When it's your company, every people decision feels existential. And without meaning to, you've become the default decision maker for everything.

You don't need policies for the sake of it. You need structure that holds, without killing what makes your startup yours.

We build the scaffolding that lets your team run without you in every decision so you can get back to building the company.

Talk people to me

Commercially minded • People obsessed

Commercially minded • People obsessed

How we work together  

From quick start people support to a full fractional people team, we flex with your startup needs.

Build the base

For founders with 10-20 people building early foundations

Light touch fractional support: compensation + growth frameworks, people processes, org design, and founder coaching. Structure without overkill.

Build your base

Mini People Team

For scaling startups with 20-50+ people

Your fractional People function: operational support, manager development, team coaching, and strategic people planning.

The team you'd hire if you had the time and budget.

Meet your team

TPV Discovery

Not ready for ongoing support yet? Start here.

A psychologist-designed diagnostic that shows where your People foundations are strong, stretched, or slowing growth. You'll leave with a clear People roadmap.

Roadmap

add on projects + one off support.

Already working together? Add extra capacity for bigger builds - manager or leadership development programmes, coaching, or team off-sites.

Not on retainer? We also love to deliver standalone projects.

See project options

who you’ll work with

Business Psychologist | Executive Coach | Head of People

I've spent 15+ years working alongside founders to build high-care, high-trust teams - from bootstrapped startups up to Series C, across the UK, EU, and US.

I've held Head of People roles inside scaling companies. I know what it's like when every decision feels high stakes and you're having to make it up as you go.

That's why I trained as a coach and completed a Master's in Organisational Psychology, because I'm obsessed with how early people decisions stick around.

My research focuses on organisational ghosts: the way founders imprint on their businesses, and how those moments cast long shadows as companies grow.

I don't treat culture as separate from the business. Every people decision is a commercial decision. I'm comfortable with ambiguity, calm under pressure, and focused on helping founders make good calls when things are messy (without losing your values along the way).

15+ founder-led startups backed 

We’ve seen it all.

95 % + clients stick around  

We build real relationships.

100 % referral-led growth 

Built on trust.

truly Exceptional People Person

“

Danielle is truly an exceptional people person. Great people are rare finds at the best of times, but HR folk that can also think commercially and strategically are particularly rare.”

Natasha Guerra (CEO, Runway East)

You've built the product. Now build the team.

The people stuff compounds.

Small wins build trust. Trust builds momentum. And momentum builds teams that can keep up with your ambition.

Let's talk
A magazine cover titled "Haunting or Helping?" explores organizational ghosts in founder-led startups. It features an illustrated yellow cat with a ghostly cape and a background of abstract shapes and clouds.

STARTUPS STAY HAUNTED BY THEIR PAST.

Read my research on organisational ghosts: the invisible patterns, early decisions, and founder imprints that shape your company as it grows.

Drawn from a year of studying how startups scale, and what gets baked in along the way.

If you're the kind of founder who wants to understand the system you're building (not just react to it), this is for you.