Who We Serve — HR for Tech Startups
You scaled the product.
Now scale the people function.
HR for tech startups is its own discipline. Building Force Solutions delivers fractional HR leadership for venture-backed and bootstrapped tech companies with 10 to 150 employees, remote or hybrid, that have outgrown a founder doing HR between customer calls and haven’t made the first HR hire yet.
Multi-state and distributed teams. Remote-first by default.
Employees. Past the “everyone wears every hat” stage, not yet at the size that justifies a VP of People.
Remote-first hiring means your employment law exposure follows every employee’s home address, not your HQ.
A senior HR professional who owns the function end to end, not a portal, not a Slack channel with HR software.
The Problem
Hypergrowth outran your people infrastructure
The pattern is consistent: hiring moved fast, the people function didn’t. By the time it becomes a problem, it’s usually already expensive.
No one owns compliance
Your Head of Ops or your CEO is handling HR as a side project. Multi-state hiring means multi-state exposure, and nobody is tracking which states you’re actually compliant in.
Diligence will find the gaps
Fundraising and M&A diligence both pull the same thread: offer letters, classification, handbook, termination files. Gaps here slow a raise or move the purchase price.
Performance management by vibes
Without a documented process, a bad hire either lingers for a year or gets terminated in a way that creates real legal exposure. Both outcomes are expensive.
Culture risk scales with headcount
What worked informally at 15 people breaks at 60. Harassment complaints, manager escalations, and RIFs all need a process before you need it urgently.
What You Get
HR for tech startups, built for how you actually move
The same four pillars as our core Fractional HR Leadership engagement, applied to venture-backed speed and remote-first realities.
Multi-state compliance
Every state you hire in gets its own wage, leave, and termination rules tracked and current, so a remote hire in a new state never becomes a surprise liability.
Diligence-ready documentation
Offer letters, handbook, classification records, and termination files built the way an investor’s or acquirer’s counsel expects to find them.
Hiring & performance systems
Interview structure, leveling, and a performance review cadence your managers can actually run, so growth doesn’t outpace your ability to manage it.
The hard conversations
Terminations, layoffs, harassment complaints, and founder-employee conflicts, handled correctly and documented properly by someone who has done this before.
Where We Fit
Startups and tech companies we work with
HR for tech startups looks different at seed than it does at Series B. These are the profiles we most often work with.
Seed & Series A
First HR hire hasn’t happened. The founder or a generalist ops hire is doing HR on the side while trying to also do their actual job.
Series B+ scale-ups
Headcount doubled in a year. Policies and processes that worked at 20 people are actively breaking at 80.
Remote-first & distributed teams
Employees across a dozen states with no one tracking the patchwork of employment law that comes with that footprint.
Dev shops & digital agencies
Project-based, contractor-heavy staffing models that carry real 1099-versus-W-2 classification exposure.
Fit Check
Built for some companies. Not for all.
HR for tech startups is not a fit for every company. Here is where we work best, and where we do not.
Strong fit
- 10 to 150 employees, no HR leader in place yet
- Remote, hybrid, or multi-state hiring
- Preparing for a raise, an audit, or an acquisition
- Growing fast enough that informal processes are starting to break
Probably not a fit
- Already has a VP of People or HR team in place
- Wants payroll or benefits administration only
- Needs a recruiter to source candidates
- Pre-seed, pre-hire, no employees yet
Common Questions
HR for tech startups: straight answers
Does a 40-person startup actually need HR?
Yes. Most federal anti-discrimination laws apply at 15 employees, ADEA and COBRA at 20, and FMLA and ACA at 50. A venture-backed company with 40 people and no HR leader is carrying real legal exposure with nobody accountable for it, and that exposure shows up in diligence.
How is fractional HR different from a fractional recruiter or an HRIS tool?
A recruiter fills seats. An HRIS stores data. Fractional HR leadership sets policy, owns compliance across every state you have employees in, coaches your managers, runs performance and termination processes correctly, and sits in the room when the board or an acquirer asks about people risk.
Can fractional HR support a distributed, multi-state team?
Yes, that is one of the more common situations we step into. Remote-first hiring means every state you have an employee in has its own wage, leave, and termination rules. We track the patchwork so a hiring decision in a new state does not become a compliance surprise.
Who You Work With
One named HR leader, not a ticket queue
HR for tech startups breaks when the answer arrives three days late. Trevor Burns leads every engagement personally, so founders and heads of operations get a direct line instead of a support desk.
That matters most on multi-state hiring, where state labor requirements change the moment you hire across a line, and the answer has to be right the first time.
Ready to find out where your risk sits?
One call. We’ll tell you where the exposure is and whether HR for tech startups is best run fractionally before your next raise, hire, or exit conversation.