Series B and beyond.
Operating model, comp architecture and leadership population, treated as things a future buyer or investor will price.
From Series B onwards, a technology business is on a path to a transaction. It may be a trade sale, a sponsor-led buyout, a further round with a materially more forensic investor, or a listing, and the timing may be five years out. The direction is settled even when the destination is not, and everything built between now and then will be read by someone whose job is to find what it costs.
Founders build the organisation for the next eighteen months, which is the correct horizon for running the business and the wrong one for the three or four decisions that a buyer will still be pricing four years later: the shape of the operating model, the architecture of the comp structure, and who is in the leadership population.
Talk to us about your situation →What this means
The work is operating model design, comp and grade architecture, and leadership population decisions, done at the pace a fast-growing business can absorb. What differs from the standard version of that engagement is the test applied to each decision: not whether it works now, but whether it will still be defensible in a data room. A comp scheme that is generous and undocumented is a retention tool today and a quantified liability later. An engineering organisation restructured twice without a stated rationale is a pattern a buyer will read. The two horizons are usually compatible; they are just rarely considered together.
How the work shows up
Area 1
Operating model at scale
The flat structure that worked at 30 people produces coordination failures at 150: decisions escalating that should not, function boundaries fought over rather than defined, spans of control nobody has the appetite to address. A buyer paying a multiple on forecast revenue is buying the organisation that has to produce it, and an operating model that visibly cannot carry the plan is priced accordingly. The work is analytical before it is structural: what is actually broken, and why, before anything is redrawn.
People VDD & exit readiness →Area 2
Comp and grade architecture
Base, equity, variable, and a talent market that moves faster than most comp cycles. Structures assembled band by band accumulate anomalies: grade compression in engineering, two senior hires on packages inconsistent with everyone around them, side letters nobody has catalogued. Each is a retention problem now and a diligence finding later, because the change-of-control treatment of an equity scheme is one of the first things a buyer's counsel asks for and one of the last things a scaling business has documented.
People VDD & exit readiness →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, the cost of getting it wrong is six to twelve months of the business not working as well as it should, and an investor assessing the team against the plan will reach the same conclusion the founders have been deferring.
How a buyer assesses a team →Area 4
The liabilities that accumulate on the way up
Senior exits, tribunal claims, and a contractor population that was engaged on handshake terms when the business was 40 people and has never been reviewed. The organisation that was flexible and fast at that size now carries employment liabilities it did not have, managers deciding at a scale they were not trained for, and a compliance base that has not been looked at since incorporation. All of it is discoverable, and the seven-area review is the cheapest way to find out what is there.
The HR Audit →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?
- From Series B, and for two reasons that arrive at roughly the same point. The first is that informal coordination stops working somewhere around 120 to 150 people and structure becomes unavoidable. The second is that the business is now close enough to a transaction that the decisions being made about structure, pay and leadership will still be visible when someone comes to price it. Earlier than Series B the organisational questions are too fluid to be worth formalising; considerably later they are entrenched and expensive to unwind.
- 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
Before market
People VDD & Exit Readiness
The full sell-side assessment: operating model, comp architecture, management depth and employment liabilities, surfaced and fixed before a buyer prices them.
Before market
HR Audit
The seven-area review of the employment position, including the contractor population and the equity scheme documentation nobody has looked at.
In diligence
People Due Diligence
For scaling businesses that are themselves acquiring: what you are buying, what it is worth, and what it should cost you.
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