People & Culture systems
for startups, scale-ups, and VCs.
I work with founders, and the VCs and accelerators backing them, so teams get the hiring, compensation, and culture foundations they need to scale without breaking.
20+ years in People & Culture | 30+ teams coached | 75+ startups supported (as of 2026)
First coach accredited by Innosuisse (2024) for HR in the scale-up context | LP and angel investor in early-stage tech
Zurich-based, working globally
- Trusted by founders, accelerators and VCs -
Your portfolio companies have a people problem. Most just don’t know it yet.
Founders are brilliant at product. But when the team grows from 5 to 15, things start to break: no role clarity, no hiring system, no culture by design, no compensation logic. You end up with pay inequities from negotiating every hire individually, no answer when someone asks what their colleagues earn, and a founder who’s become the bottleneck for every people decision.
By the time it shows up in attrition numbers, the company has already lost 6 to 12 months of execution. Wrong hires. Early departures. Founder burnout. Slower execution.
The fix isn’t an HR hire at Series A. It’s people systems from day one.
6–12 months
of execution lost before People risk shows up in attrition
From chaos to clarity: in systems, not theory.
Step 1: Diagnose
Structured assessment across 5 dimensions. Clear score. Prioritised action plan.
Step 2: Build
Work through the priorities together: hands-on sessions, not slide decks.
Step 3: Scale
The systems run without me. That’s the goal.
Step 4: Cross-portfolio pattern reports
Which issues repeat across your companies? Where should your platform support go? Structured, data-backed visibility on the layer that predicts the next 12 months.
Data first. Hands-on where it matters.
The diagnostic shows you where to look.
When a company needs more than a plan, I step in directly through The ppl.Kickstarter: 1:1 founder advisory, culture workshops, comp design, and role clarity work.
Same pattern recognition, delivered hands-on.
And for challenges beyond People & Culture, I connect founders with vetted specialists from my partner network in legal, finance, recruiting, and tech, for example:
Built on real teams, not theory.
22
Teams
30+ Engagements
75+
Startups
20+
Years
20+ teams run through ppl.intelligence, with a custom action plan per company
30+ coaching engagements delivered, 75+ startups supported across mentoring, coaching, speaking, 1:1 and group formats
First coach accredited by Innosuisse (2024) for HR in the scaleup context, a category I helped define
LP and angel investor in early-stage tech, so I know portfolio reporting from the investor side too
20+ years across HR, org development, compensation, M&A, and culture
Who I work with
VCs & Accelerators
You manage a portfolio and want visibility into team health, structured founder support, and a partner who builds systems, not decks. You’ve been asking how to offer platform support without a full platform team. This is your answer.
Founders
You’re scaling, and things are starting to break: decisions are slow, culture is getting fuzzy, and you’re wondering whether it’s time for a fractional Head of People or a first HR hire. You don’t need a 200-slide HR audit or to add HR headcount just yet. You need systems.
One partner. Fixing the people layer end-to-end.
For VCs & Accelerators:
ppl.intelligence: AI portfolio diagnostics on the People layer. One 20-minute founder diagnostic per company, a maturity heat map across your portfolio, an action plan for every team, and pattern reports that show where risk is building. Start with a pilot.
→ See how ppl.intelligence works
For Founders:
From first hire to fiftieth: culture, hiring, onboarding, compensation, performance - end-to-end. Start free, grab a kit, or work with me directly.
In their words
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"Our goal was a comprehensive compensation framework tailored to our small but growing organization, and we achieved it. We now have a long-term, sustainable model that guides hiring decisions and internal discussions about pay and career levels. Carolin was well prepared for every session, brought practical tools, and truly listened to our needs. She had answers to all our questions. I can only recommend working with Carolin!"
Maria Ufnal, HR Generalist @Exnaton
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"We always had a strong team culture at KEMARO, but we struggled with articulating it. The culture work with Carolin gave us a language and a system that makes our values visible and actionable."
Armin Koller, CEO @KEMARO
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"We invited Carolin to help with a strategic challenge: how to reach and activate our middle managers. Through a focused workshop series she helped us dive in fast, surface blind spots, and co-create concrete initiatives. We didn't get handed standard solutions, we built them together."
Roxana Achermann, Diversity & Talent Management @Swisscom
See it in action.
The ppl.Kickstarter x KEMARO built a clearly articulated and operationalized culture system.
What leadership initially considered a "side project" alongside the compensation model turned out to be one of the most impactful outcomes of the entire collaboration.
As the CFO noted, the culture work was a major added value, important at the time and highly relevant today.
Hi, I’m Carolin.
20+ years in People & Culture. Startups, scaleups, corporates. End-to-end HR management, org design, compensation, recruiting, hiring, culture, M&A.
I started The ppl.Kickstarter because founders were building incredible products while their teams fell apart behind the scenes. Not because they didn’t care, but because nobody gave them the systems.
Today I work with VCs and accelerators to give their portfolio companies a real unfair advantage: people systems that scale.
First coach accredited by Innosuisse (2024) for “HR in the scale-up context”.
Based in Zurich, working globally.
Let’s talk about your people layer
Whether your team is growing faster than your structure, or you want a clear view of people risk across your portfolio, let’s find out where to start: