your mission is compelling. Your company should be too.
People advisory, founder coaching + hands on support for scaling startups. Helping you make the right calls on people, structure and culture.
TRUSTED BY
your company has your fingerprints all over it.
Your culture started the day you founded your company.
It didn’t wait for you to define it. People take their cues from you. Over time, your instincts become the culture your team works in.
In the beginning, those instincts do a lot of the heavy lifting. You know what matters, move quickly and work things out as you go. As the team grows, people can’t stay close enough to you to know the plan. Yet the company keeps working as though they can.
Decisions still come back to you. Conversations you thought had settled something keep happening again. You’ve hired talented people who are working hard, but you’re not seeing the progress you’d expect.
I’m Danielle. I run The People Vault, and I help you translate your intent into teams, culture and ways of working that live up to your ambition.
The goal isn’t to build a perfect People function, it’s to build a company that feels energising to lead and great to work in.
Download the TPV services guide.
Download the TPV services guide.
what i believe
Build a company that could only have come from you.
There’s more than one way to build a good company. I want you to recognise yourself in yours, and feel proud of how it works, as well as what it does.
Be as ambitious about the experience of working there as you are about the mission.
A great mission brings people through the door. What they find once they’re inside shapes whether they stay, and how much of themselves they bring to the work. That experience deserves the same care you give your customers.
Build an A-team, not a collection of A-players.
Brilliant people can spend an astonishing amount of energy getting in each other’s way. Hiring well gets you the talent; how people work together decides what that talent is capable of.
Give people room to delight you.
You hired smart people for what they can see that you can’t. If their job is to execute what’s already in your head, you’re missing out on the judgement you hired them for.
Build beyond your own bandwidth.
You should be able to step away without everything waiting for you to come back. That gives you room to focus where your involvement makes the biggest difference.
Wise practice over best practice.
There’s a lot to learn from how other companies have done this, and from the psychology underneath it. Borrow the learning freely. Then ask whether the solution fits your stage, your people and the company you’re trying to build.
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)
what i help with
Build a company that works as it grows
The company has grown, but the way it works has not quite caught up. I help you rethink the structure, roles, decisions and ways of working that once happened naturally and now need more intention.
Clearer ownership and decision-making
Fewer founder bottlenecks
Less organisational drag
A culture people can be proud to be part of
THIS IS FOR YOU IF: things feel slower, messier or more dependent on you than they should.
Build people practices worth having
Hiring, onboarding, performance, pay, growth, progression, talent and the policies you really need, designed to help the company work, rather than create People admin for its own sake.
People know what good looks like
Managers have tools they can use
Good performance is easier to recognise and grow
Less wasted effort on things nobody uses
THIS IS FOR YOU IF: you need to get more grown up about People without turning into Big Company Inc.
Turn good people into a great team
Good people do not automatically add up to a great team. I help teams get clearer about how they work together: trust, conflict, accountability, decisions, expectations and the things everyone can feel but nobody has the courage to name.
People solve more together
Conflict becomes useful rather than corrosive
Expectations and accountability are clearer
The team becomes more than the sum of its parts
THIS IS FOR YOU IF: you have hired strong people, but the team is not yet performing like one.
Grow the people leading it
The business is asking more of you and of the people who lead inside it. I coach founders and leaders through the shifts in judgement, behaviour and identity that come with growth.
Better judgement in unfamiliar situations
Stronger managers and more leadership capacity
Hard conversations handled earlier and better
Less control and firefighting; more trust and leverage
THIS IS FOR YOU IF: you or your managers are good operators, but the next stage needs something different from you.
ways to work with me
people counsel
A senior People + organisation partner in your corner.
An ongoing relationship with someone who knows you, the company and what you’ve already tried. Bring me what’s happening, so we can get to the real issue without starting from scratch each time.
Organisational deep dive
2× 1hr sessions each month
Coaching, advice and feedback between calls
Tools and templates from the Vault
People counsel+
Senior counsel, with practical support to build alongside you.
The ongoing relationship of People Counsel, with dedicated capacity to work on the company together. I get to know the team as well as you, and get hands on building what’s needed.
Everything in People Counsel
Founder assessments and deep company discovery
Dedicated design and build capacity
Quarterly Organisational Snapshot (session + roadmap)
people sprints
When something needs building end to end.
One important piece of work with a clear scope, outcome and timeline.
We agree what you’re trying to achieve, involve the right people and get it built and ready to use.
Organisation and role design
Pay, progression and performance
Manager development
Values and team effectiveness
And so much more!
Download the TPV services guide.
Download the TPV services guide.
not sure what you need?
Some of my favourite work starts with a conversation about something that doesn’t have an obvious shape yet.
You might want coaching, a workshop or an offsite. Or you might know something needs attention without knowing what kind of help to ask for.
My work draws on coaching, organisational psychology and years of building companies from the inside. We can work out together what would be useful, whether that’s part of a bigger engagement or something on its own.
Hey, I’m Danielle
Psychologist | Executive Coach | People Leader
I run The People Vault. I’m part strategist, part coach, and part the person who’ll actually build the thing with you.
I’ve spent 15+ years in People roles, including more than a decade in startups, from bootstrapped businesses to Series C across the UK, Europe and the US. As Head of People at Entrepreneurs First, I watched hundreds of founders build companies from scratch. I’ve also been inside the team, working with the decisions founders make and everything that follows.
I hold an MSc in Organisational Psychology and I’m an ICF certified executive coach. My research explores how founders leave an imprint on their companies over time. I call these organisational ghosts: patterns and assumptions that keep shaping how a company works, often after the circumstances that created them have changed.
I don’t treat culture as separate from the business. Every people decision is a commercial decision.
I want you to feel you have someone truly on your side. Someone you can be honest with, who brings warmth, steadiness and no judgement. I’m not your co-founder, your team or your investor, and that’s sort of the point.
20+ founder-led startups backed
Across sectors, stages and funding models.
95 % + clients stick around
Through repeat or retained work since TPV launched in 2022.
100 % referral-led growth
All partnerships (to date!) have come through recommendations or existing relationships.
“One of the things everyone who works here talks about is the strength of the team,
“
And I don’t think that would have been possible without bringing Danielle on.”
Jack Galilee (CTO, Human Native)
Building something ambitious?
Let’s make sure the company you’re building lives up to it.