Friends,

Next week will be the culmination of months and months of work, in what will be the first ever Startup People Summit.

I’ve never done anything this big before, and I’d be lying if I didn’t say that, this close, I was a ball of excitement and anxiety 😮‍💨

I’m excited because this is something I wished I had when I was a Head of People. A place to learn how build and scale people practices amidst the dynamics of a startup. And a community of people who, in most cases, are going it alone — now forming relationships with those they can learn from, or even just be understood by.

But most of all, I’m excited to be bringing this to a community that has given me so much throughout my career, in the hopes it gives something back to them.

Often this excitement wins out over the anxiety I have for the incredibly high expectations I set for myself. But then again, that’s an innately ‘Head of People’ thing to do, too, isn’t it?

This time next week, I’ll be relaxing ahead of a Monday wisdom teeth removal surgery. I sure can pick ways to celebrate... If you’ve had your wisdom teeth out before, let me know what I’m in for.

Another thing to be excited about: FNDN Series first ever guest feature!

It’s long been a mission of mine to expand everyones awareness of startup comp, and nothing brings me more joy than to be using this platform to continue spotlighting incredible people.

Enjoy your week ✌️ 

Matt

Final days remaining

This is your last chance to join the first ever Startup People Summit

We’ve built something for you, and it’s big.

• 45+ speakers

• 35 sessions over 5 tracks

• 700+ peers (and counting) from 25+ countries

All on 1 day of the most important content and community for startup people professionals.

500x MVP tickets have already sold out — but luckily for you — Unicorn tickets are where the value is

• Access to every session

• All sessions on-demand

• All speaker resources

• First-access to the upcoming SPS community

Join us.

GUEST EDITION

Don't Let Your Reward Strategy Kill Your Global Expansion

Featuring FinTech Comp Expert, Giac Soliman — Compensation Manager at Monzo.

In my mission to constantly increase the level of discussion about startup compensation for every Head of People, I’m beyond excited to feature our first guest edition. This week, featuring someone I’ve had the pleasure of connecting with and following for some time now, Giac Soliman. I have no doubt you’ll find Giac’s piece deeply informative.

and featuring experts on the challenges startups face is something I’ll continue to do more of. If there’s some one you know who should talking about startup comp on a platform like this, hit reply to this email, I’d love to feature them.

Now, over to Giac.

Hi FNDN friends 👋🏼

I'm Giac, and I've spent my career in the engine room of compensation, from big consulting firms to fast-scaling tech companies like Monzo, Snap, and TikTok. My passion is turning the inevitable comp chaos of a growing business into clarity and confidence.

If you've been following my posts on LinkedIn, you'll know I'm fascinated by how emerging CompTech and AI are giving us new tools to do just that.

Lately, I’ve been helping take a beloved UK brand global. It's a fascinating challenge that has me thinking a lot about the assumptions we make in reward design. What works in London doesn't always land in Barcelona, and what's common in Beijing might not even be legal in France.

Despite all the macroeconomic uncertainty, it feels like every other week another tech company announces its big push into new markets. It’s an exciting, high-stakes moment for any scale-up.

But here’s the hard truth I’ve learned from being in the trenches of this work: A successful launch isn't just about the business plan. It's about getting the people strategy right. And a huge part of that is not making the classic mistake of simply lifting and shifting your home country's compensation model and expecting it to work.

Drawing on my experience, I've distilled a crucial blueprint for anyone on a similar path.

Phase 1: Building a Foundation to Avoid the Breakage

Before your first employee signs a contract, some foundational work is critical. The goal is to design a system with enough structure to create clarity, but not enough to slow you down.

First, you need to forecast your talent needs. Start by identifying the 3-5 critical roles and specific skills essential for geo expansion success in year one. This will give you a solid framework and guardrails to agree in advance with the business when an exception to your comp offer guidelines is warranted, avoiding lengthy discussions that may slow hiring and make the business see you as an opponent rather than a strategic partner for scaling teams.

Next, you need to understand the local landscape. This goes way beyond just pay data. It means doing your homework on cultural norms (e.g., cash vs. equity), Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) and statutory requirements (13th-month salary, overtime pay, severance payments) and who your true talent competitors are in the local market.

Finally, you build your foundation. This means applying your global job architecture from day one to maintain pay equity, while also allowing for a flexible pay mix to adapt to local realities. One of the first signs of strain is "title creep": when titles like Lead, Principal, or Head are handed out to appease, but no one can explain the difference.

Even without a solid number of local peers, apply the same principles of your job architecture to validate job levelling decisions against peers in other countries. Acknowledge that the roles in a new geo in a tech scaleup will be similar to the ones dating back to when your company was a startup: broad-based, both strategic and operational.

You should take that into account in line with your job ranking/levelling guidelines and ensure there’s consensus around decisions from business and people team alike. Even if it's only 70% right, it provides a consistent foundation for hiring, development, and pay decisions.

Phase 2: When You're on the Ground & Scaling

As you start hiring, your strategy needs to be agile and responsive, especially if your brand isn't a household name yet. This is where you need to balance immediate hiring needs with long-term strategy.

You have to honestly assess your offer vs. candidate expectations. Acknowledge that your pre-IPO equity may be a gap in your Employee Value Proposition (EVP). A key symptom of a breaking reward model is when new hires start leapfrogging long-standing employees on pay, pointing that you may need to tailor your offer to lead with what the local market values most and balance that with affordability concerns.

And you need to empower your recruiters with a menu of strategic levers. It’s likely you will attract accomplished candidates that are the least risk-averse and the more financial gain driven. A rigid framework will lose you candidates. Instead, provide your TA team with tactical, short-term options, while being transparent about the trade-offs:

Use Sign-On Bonuses Surgically: A temporary increase to sign-on bonus limits can be the simplest short-term fix. The Trade-Off: An over-reliance on sign-ons can create a "two-tiered" system, leading to potential pay disparities, cliff events, and retention risks for tenured employees down the line.

Introduce a Temporary "% Above Band" Threshold: For critical roles, pre-approve a specific percentage (e.g., up to 10%) above the current salary band that hiring managers can use without a lengthy exception process. The Trade-Off: This provides flexibility but must be managed with clear governance to avoid it becoming the new de facto standard. Not every hiring manager thinks the same about preserving pay equity in the team and balancing that with getting someone in ASAP.

Formalize a Flexible Pay Mix: Empower recruiters (within set guardrails) to offer a higher cash component in exchange for less equity. The Trade-Off: This is a powerful tool but requires a structured, level-based methodology to maintain internal parity and avoid a free-for-all on individual deals. It also requires buy-in from teams like Stock Admin and People Tech to ensure the solution to implement is viable with the current resources they have.

Let's be honest, making a permanent, 10-15% lift to your official salary bands because of a short-term hiring crunch is a blunt instrument. And it's one you can't easily take back. If the above flexible options aren’t enough, you have a few more impermanent options to consider as last resort:

Establish "Shadow Bands." Think of them as temporary, tactical pay ranges for a few specific, high-demand roles. It allows you to compete for the talent you need right now in a hot market, without blowing up your entire country-wide structure for a problem that might be isolated to one or two job families. It's a way to stay agile without creating a mess you'll have to clean up later.

Another thing to consider is being intentional with your market positioning. This means asking the hard question: Is our standard 'pay at the 50th percentile' philosophy really going to help us win in a brand new, highly competitive market?" Maybe not.

It might be a deliberate, strategic choice to target the 75th percentile for your foundational tech hires in a new hub. It's an investment, for sure. But it's about deciding whether you want to just participate in the market, or if you're there to win it.

As you begin hiring, your strategy must be agile enough to respond to the market, but disciplined enough to avoid creating long-term problems. This is where the trade-offs between speed and scalability become very real.

And finally, what happens when you’re flying totally blind? You're hiring in a new market and there’s just… no good salary data. Nada.

You get creative, but you stay structured.

First, anchor yourself. Pick a Benchmark Country where you do have solid data (say, the ‘US’). That's your starting point on the global salary spectrum.

Let me share something that's been a real lifesaver a couple of times. It's a lesson that comes directly from my Economics background

When comp data is thin, I've built my own geo differentials using high-quality, reliable data from sources like Eurostat (the official statistics agency for the EU) and other agencies. It’s free and effective, if you know how to use it!

Is it going to be as perfect as a granular market range for a Data Engineer in Krakow? No.

But is it a robust, data-backed, and defensible starting point when you have nothing else? Absolutely. It gives you a solid foundation to build from.

Phase 3: Staying Agile Post-Launch

Once you've got a team on the ground, the real work begins. It's easy to think the job is done, but this is where you need to stay agile.

First, you need to have your ear to the ground. This means setting up a real feedback loop with your local managers and the hiring team. They're your early warning system. If offers are falling flat or your benefits package isn't landing, you need to know about it now, not in six months.

Second, don't be a slave to the annual cycle. For a company with double-digit growth, waiting 12 months to fix a pay issue is an eternity. You have to be ready to make agile, off-cycle adjustments when the market shifts or when you see a flight risk for critical talent.

Finally, and this is the big one, you can't treat your new market entry like it's happening in a vacuum. As you're making these decisions, you have to ask yourself: how does this connect to everything else we're doing? Are you in the middle of a global job leveling project? Are you rethinking your equity eligibility rules? Are you trying to make your variable pay plans more performance-driven?

All these things are interconnected. Making sure your new market strategy is a seamless part of your global evolution, and not just another siloed exception, is one of the toughest but most important parts of getting this right.

The Takeaway: Structure Enables Speed

Many founders fear that structure will kill their agile culture. But the irony is that good structure actually helps you move faster. When people understand how decisions are made and what growth looks like, the noise drops, managers stop improvising, and your best people stick around.

To achieve this, you must balance a consistent global philosophy (your core values, job architecture, and commitment to pay equity) with a flexible, locally-relevant approach to pay, benefits, and incentives that is grounded in a deep understanding of the new market's unique cultural and competitive landscape.

What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned when taking a company into a new market? I’d love to hear it. Feel free to DM me on LinkedIn!

Here’s three things that may also be of interest to you:

1. FNDN: Helping startups build compensation practices that are clear, fair and competitive. We can build your compensation philosophy, job level framework and compensation bands. Speak to us here.

2. Compensation Tools and Resources: Resources and tools for giving you what you need to build your own startup compensation practices.

3. Startup People Summit: A 1-day, virtual event & community giving you everything you need to build and scale your people practices. 31 July - 9am-4pm AEST.