HR and organisational advisory for scaling technology and fintech businesses.
The operating model and people questions that arise between Series B and scale — when structure, capability, and culture are the constraint on growth.
Technology businesses between Series B and scale face a specific and predictable set of organisational challenges. Headcount doubles in 18 months. Functions that worked at 50 people stop working at 200. The leadership team that built the product is no longer the right team to run a commercial organisation. Comp structures designed for a seed-stage startup have not scaled with the business. The HR function, if one exists, is transaction-oriented rather than advisory.
Esbee works with scaling technology and fintech businesses at the moments when the organisational questions are the constraint on growth — not the product, not the market, and not the funding.
Talk to us about your situation →What this means
HR and organisational advisory for scaling tech businesses is the work of building the people infrastructure that growth requires, at the pace the business can absorb it without losing what made it successful. Operating model design, comp and grade architecture, leadership population decisions, and the complex HR situations that arise when a business is growing faster than its management maturity. The work is senior and advisory, not transactional. It sits at the level of the CEO and CFO conversation, not the HR inbox.
How the work shows up
Area 1
Operating model at scale
When the flat structure that worked at 30 people creates coordination failures at 150. Spans of control, function boundaries, decision rights, and the operating model design that gets the business through the next growth phase without the dysfunction that comes from structure that has been outgrown. The work is analytical before it is structural: understanding what is actually broken and why, before designing what should replace it.
Operating Model Design →Area 2
Comp and grade architecture
Tech and fintech comp is structurally complex: base, equity, variable, and a talent market that moves faster than most comp cycles. When the pay structure stops working — because the business has over-promoted, because equity has diluted, because the market has moved, or because the informal arrangements of the early stage have created anomalies that are now a retention problem — the intervention is structural, not a series of one-off fixes.
Advisory →Area 3
Leadership population and capability
The Series B team is rarely the right team at Series D. Getting the leadership population right at each stage — knowing when to promote from within, when to hire externally, and when a restructure is necessary rather than another hire — is the most consequential people question a scaling business faces. The answer is almost never obvious, and the cost of getting it wrong is usually six to twelve months of the business not working as well as it should.
Advisory →Area 4
Complex HR as the business matures
Employment tribunal claims, senior exits, and the complex HR situations that arise as headcount grows and the informal cultural norms that governed the early stage no longer apply. The business that was flexible and fast-moving at 40 people now has employment liabilities it did not have before, managers making decisions at a scale they were not trained for, and a workforce that has changed considerably since the founding team set the culture.
Complex & High-Stakes HR →Facing an organisational question that has outgrown your current HR capability?
Talk to us →From the casebook
Representative work with scaling technology and fintech businesses. Identifying details changed.
Comp and grade architecture rebuild — Series C fintech
A Series C fintech with 180 employees whose compensation architecture had been built band by band as the business grew, rather than designed as a coherent framework. The result was grade compression in the engineering function, two senior hires whose packages were inconsistent with the broader structure, and a retention problem that was beginning to surface in exit interviews. Esbee rebuilt the grade and pay architecture from the ground up, designed an equity refresh policy that worked for the business's cap table constraints, and resolved the senior comp anomalies without triggering departures or creating new internal equity problems.
Operating model design at scale: restructuring the functional boundaries and decision rights of a SaaS business post-Series D. Content to be provided by Sam.
Leadership restructuring ahead of a funding round: management capability assessment and leadership population decisions for a scaling technology business. Content to be provided by Sam.
How we engage
Technology and fintech businesses need a specific kind of input: senior enough to engage with the CEO and CFO on the commercial dimensions of the people question, advisory rather than operational, and with a background that includes the inside of these businesses not just the outside of them. The organisational questions in a scaling tech business are real business problems, and they require an adviser who understands the investor relationship, the talent market dynamics, and the pace at which decisions need to be made.
Sam Bramhall has spent significant time working inside PE-backed technology businesses at board level, across hold periods and at different stages of organisational maturity. The practical difference that makes to this work is that the pressure environment — investor timelines, the expectation of rapid execution, the cost of delay — is familiar rather than theoretical. The people plan and the commercial plan are treated as the same document, because in a scaling business they are.
Many of the situations we handle involve information that cannot be known to the wider team until decisions are ready to be communicated. We operate with the information discipline the situation requires as a standard condition, not an exception.
The practice is led by Sam Bramhall.
Sam Bramhall is the Principal Consultant at Esbee, with two decades of board-level strategic HR and organisational advisory across telecoms, fintech, professional services, technology, and PE-backed businesses. Engagements are principal-led: you work directly with Sam throughout, not with a junior team managing upward.
About Sam and the firm →Frequently asked questions
- At what stage of growth are you most useful?
- The situations where this work has most leverage tend to cluster at two points: when the business reaches a headcount where informal coordination stops working and structure is needed, and when the leadership team that built the product is being asked to run a commercial organisation at scale and the capability gap is becoming visible. Both typically arrive between Series B and Series D. Earlier than that, the organisational questions are usually too fluid; later, they are often more entrenched. That said, the right timing depends on what is actually happening in the business, not on the funding stage.
- Can you design a comp and grade architecture for a tech business?
- Yes. Comp architecture for tech and fintech businesses is structurally more complex than corporate comp design: the equity component, the pace of market movement, and the engineering premium relative to other functions all require specific handling. We design grade and pay structures that are defensible to employees and to investors, manage the transition from the informal comp arrangements of the early stage, and resolve the anomalies that accumulate when a business has been hiring fast without a coherent framework.
- How do you handle the tension between building properly and moving fast?
- By being precise about what needs to be built and what can wait. Not every organisational problem that exists in a scaling business needs to be solved now. The work is to distinguish between the structural issues that are actively constraining growth and the ones that are untidy but manageable. We design for the next 18 months, not for the theoretical organisation at steady state, and we are deliberate about sequencing so that the people infrastructure builds without slowing the business down.
- Do you work with engineering leadership or only with HR?
- We work with whoever is closest to the problem. For comp and operating model work, that is usually the CEO, CFO, and the relevant function heads, which often includes the CTO or VPE. For complex HR situations, it is typically the CEO and the relevant manager, sometimes without HR involvement if the business does not have a senior HR function. The level of the conversation follows the level of the problem, not a fixed engagement model.
- What is your experience with regulated industries and fintech employment requirements?
- We have worked with fintech businesses operating under FCA regulation and with the employment dimensions of regulatory approval processes, Senior Managers and Certification Regime requirements, and the HR implications of regulatory change. The employment questions in a regulated business interact with the regulatory framework in ways that require both employment law literacy and regulatory context. We bring the former and work with the business's regulatory advisers on the latter.
- How does engagement pricing work for a scaling business?
- Project-based for defined-scope work: a comp and grade architecture redesign, an operating model review, a specific leadership assessment. Day-rate or short retainer for ongoing advisory during a period of rapid change where the questions are not predictable in advance. For businesses that are between HR hires or where the CHRO role does not yet exist, we can also provide interim senior HR input on a structured basis. We agree the commercial structure upfront and do not move it once work is underway.
Where this work sits in the practice
Advisory
Operating Model Design
Structure, spans and layers, decision rights, and capability mapping for businesses where the operating model needs to change.
What we do
Complex & High-Stakes HR
Senior exits, tribunal support, and interim HR leadership for situations where the stakes extend beyond the immediate employment matter.
What we do
Advisory
Strategic HR and organisational advisory across the full scope of the practice.
Who we work with
Private Equity
PE firms and portfolio companies across the deal cycle, the hold period, and exit preparation — including PE-backed technology businesses.
Who we work with
Founders & Owner-Managed
Senior independent advisory for founders and owner-managed businesses on the people decisions that require external support.
Last reviewed: May 2026
Talk to us about your organisational challenge
Whether it is a comp architecture question, an operating model problem, or a complex HR situation that has outgrown your current capability, we are happy to have an initial conversation.
Get in touch