HR in a Startups series.
Article 1: From Founder-Led HR to Scalable People Ops: Your First 90 Days of Building the HR Function in a Startup

In the early stages of a startup, HR is often an afterthought — handled by founders who are already stretched thin. Offer letters get drafted late at night, onboarding happens over WhatsApp, and policies are a scattered mix of past experiences and hopeful guesswork.

But as your team grows, this ad-hoc approach becomes a risk, not just for compliance, but for culture, retention, and performance.

If you’re a startup founder — or the first People/HR hire — the smartest thing you can do is make your first 90 days count. That’s your window to lay down the right HR foundation, support your team, and scale people operations without losing agility.

And if you need a partner to do that right — that’s where I come in.

When to Transition from Founder-Led HR. Here are the signs:

✅ You’ve crossed 15–20 employees ✅ You’re hiring people managers, not just individual contributors ✅ People issues (conflicts, leave questions, performance concerns) are eating up your time ✅ You’re starting to feel a disconnect between your team and your culture

At this stage, scaling without structure leads to cracks. Turnover rises. Culture gets diluted. The team feels unsupported. And founders burn out trying to do it all.

What you need is not a bulky HR department — but a lean, strategic People Ops function that grows with your startup.

What to Set Up in the First 90 Days. You don’t need to do everything at once. The key is to prioritize smartly.

Weeks 1–2: Audit & Understand

Meet key stakeholders to learn current pain points
Review employee documentation, contracts, and policies
Map out the hiring pipeline and growth projections

Weeks 3–6: Lock the Basics

Standardize offer letters, NDAs, and contracts
Draft a mini HR handbook (policies, working norms, leave)
Implement a simple onboarding checklist

Weeks 7–9: Build People Experience

Introduce 1:1 check-ins for managers
Define company values collaboratively with the founder
Create feedback and pulse-check systems

Weeks 10–12: Plan for Scale

Set up a simple performance management cycle
Create growth conversation frameworks
Build a basic People Dashboard to track hiring, exits, leave, etc.

All of this can be part of a custom 90-day plan — Book your turnkey HR setup consultation

Why This Matters

Your first 90 days of HR setup — whether done by you or with the help of an expert — sets the foundation for your future team. It affects:

Employee experience
Hiring quality
Legal compliance
Culture alignment
Leadership capacity

Startups that get this right early scale smarter and retain better talent.

🤝 How I Can Help: HR Turnkey Support for Startups

I work with early-stage and growth-stage startups to take HR off your plate and into expert hands. My Turnkey HR Support Turnkey HR Support is designed to give you:

✅ End-to-end HR setup in 90 days ✅ Founder-aligned, culture-sensitive people practices ✅ Light systems that scale, without heavy bureaucracy ✅ In-person and virtual support tailored to your team size and growth stage

Book a discovery call