Hola from Malaga, Spain!

One of the best parts of writing this newsletter has been the chance to connect with a community that lives around the world.

A few editions ago I mentioned that I’d be visiting Spain. From that, Jaime reached out with travel suggestions and an offer to hang out and grab a beer if I ended up in Malaga.

Well guess what? I did.

Here’s us enjoying that beer.

Enjoy this week’s edition ✌️

Matt

I’ve been where you are now.

Amidst everything, total rewards is a constant pull on your time and attention.

You’re balancing employee expectations and executive demands.

At CandorIQ, they help People and Finance teams manage compensation, headcount planning, and merit cycles in one place — so you can focus on strategy, not spreadsheets.

Interested in sponsoring the FNDN Series?

Know a startup Head of People looking for answers 🙋 why not forward this to them for some instant karma? ✨

Shirley Baumer cut her teeth as the very first product manager at monday.com, joining when the company had ~30 people, helping steer growth into the thousands. During her tenure she led the core work‑management product — at one point managing ~$850M in annual recurring revenue.

Today she’s co‑founding DreamTeam, a “people operating system” designed with AI, zero administration, proactive insights, and customisability built in. Her mission: bring the product mindset to HR, so People teams earn the same strategic respect and influence as product teams.

Shirley draws a direct parallel: product teams ship features, people teams (traditionally) ship processes (onboarding, performance reviews, compensation). But the difference is cultural. Product teams think of “users”, retention, metrics. People teams can often default to templates, one‑size‑fits, or inherited practices. The shift is thinking of your team’s “users” (employees, managers, leaders) and optimising for retention, adoption, impact.

Shirley gave this example of product management practices in-flight. Rather than designing a perfect performance review system in one shot, begin with the outcomes. What change do you need to see? Then talk to “users” (employees, managers, leadership) to uncover what’s blocking impact. Launch a lightweight MVP (e.g. one question in one team) to test ideas. Use that iteration to build trust, refine, and scale.

When discussing how to make space amongst the plethora of things People teams are responsible for to ‘test’ a product-led approach, Shirley gave this advice. Many People teams feel compelled to launch every “best practice” initiative or run multiple programs simultaneously, going a mile wide but an inch deep. That dilutes impact. Shirley discourages that: “Do one thing less. Drop something”. Prioritise fewer initiatives and do them with rigour, evidence and focus to prove the case incrementally.

Leaders speak outcomes, evidence, iteration, ROI. People teams must speak that language. Rather than proposing a “fancy program”, frame your work in terms of business impact (“help each team hit revenue goals,” “reduce churn risk,” etc.). That language already resonates at the leadership level because its how they speak about it. People teams need to align.

While execs often seem the obvious barrier, Shirley observes that resistance more frequently emerges from People teams themselves — pressure, overwhelm, habit, fear of change. She counsels scaling the change slowly, reinvesting time into planning, and using early wins to pull people along, not push them.

For teams facing this change, Shirley recommends equipping your team in three critical capabilities: user interviews (how to talk with employees and managers meaningfully), data storytelling (analytic rigour + narrative), and iterative release / project management (shipping in small increments, not grand big launches).

“Everything around data storytelling … is often what gets in the way of People team credibility”.

Stay tuned for next weeks edition where we’ll dive into episode 2: moving from theory to practice, and embedding product-led practices into your people team.

If you enjoyed this post or know someone who may find it useful, please share it with them and encourage them to subscribe.

When you’re ready, here’s three ways I can help you:

1. Tools & resources
Resources and tools that give you what you need to build your own startup compensation practices.

2. Comp consulting
I run FNDN, a global comp consultancy that builds compensation practices that are clear, fair and competitive for startups.

3. Startup People Summit
I run the Startup People Summit, a one day annual event focused on creating the playbook for startup people practices. Grab recordings from past events, or subscribe to the newsletter to join the next event.