FOUNDATION - BY ZED ESS
Your product will pivot.
Your strategy Will change.
Your people decisions will determine whether you make it.
Most founders, MDs, and leaders don't burn out from working hard. They burn out working hard on things their company shouldn't need them for anymore.
Foundation takes those things off their plate, so they can focus on the work only they can do: joining the dots, making the calls, leading the company.
19+
Years in digital & tech
40+
Founders & Leadership teams
SOUND FAMILIAR?
You scale product and revenue faster than your ability to scale people.
It's not a failure of leadership. It's a structural gap. And it shows up the same way, every time.
• Hiring is reactive
Post-fundraise or growth push, hiring turns into a trolley dash. Everything feels urgent. You're bringing people in without a clear sequence or plan.
• A hire isn't working
Someone isn't performing. You're not sure why. Is it the hire, the onboarding, the role scoping, or the feedback. Probably all four.
• Ownership is unclear
Everything escalates to you. Decisions, standards, problems all climb back up because there's no clear "how we do things here."
• Managers are struggling
Your best people became managers. Now they're improvising. They were great at the work - leading is a different skill entirely.
"That's people debt. Common in companies. Expensive if you leave it to grow."
THE PROGRAMME
Foundation
A structured people and management system. Five stages, one coherent arc, from reactive and noisy to clear, confident, and ready to scale.
Most engagements start with a single acute pain point: a bad hire, a chaotic headcount push, a manager who isn't landing it. Foundation starts there, then builds the infrastructure that stops it coming back.
Each stage is a discrete project with its own scope, timeline, and outcome. You don't have to do all five - the People Clinic tells us where you actually need to start.
01. Stabilise. Stop the pain. £3,000. 1-4 weeks
You've got a people problem causing real stress and you're not sure how to solve it.
A hire that's not working. A conversation you've avoided too long. A team situation eating your week. Stabilise is a 90-minute diagnostic, a written diagnosis, and a clear action plan.
We work backwards through the chain that produced the crisis (scoping, assessment, onboarding, one-to-ones, performance) so you don't just solve this one, you understand why it happened. Otherwise, the pattern repeats, compounds, and costs you repeatedly. You share. I diagnose and give you the remedy.
03. Build. Connect your business plan to a hiring plan. £10,000. 4-6 weeks
Almost no founder actually does this. Most go "I need a software engineer" and start writing a job description.
Build does the work upstream. We start from what the business is trying to achieve in the next quarter, six months, and year, then map the work, the capacity, and the capability you have today. What's missing becomes the hiring plan. Robust enough to share with your leadership team, your team, your recruiters, and your investors.
It gives the team visibility of potential development and promotion opportunities, which avoids the quiet resentment that builds when decisions feel pre-made. And it's repeatable, so when things pivot (they will), you run the same system again. Without it, you hire the role you imagine, not the role the business needs. With it, every hire is a deliberate decision tied to a milestone.
02.Define. Establish the culture that becomes the glue. £12,000. 6-8 weeks
When something feels off in a growing team, the culture is usually the thing that hasn't been made explicit.
It's about turning culture into the operating layer for hiring, onboarding, performance, working together and decisions. People are joining who weren't interviewed against the standard, because no one wrote the standard down. Your team is making different calls because they're each guessing at what "good" looks like.
Define fixes that. We run a structured process with the team (survey, two workshops, synthesis) to make your vision, mission, values and behaviours explicit, observable and usable. Not hollow slogans. Done well, it's your competitive advantage because most companies haven't done it. Or the thing that quietly erodes once you scale.
04. Embed. Build the operating system that runs without you in the room. £60,000. 6-9 months
If everything still goes through you at 25 people, this is the stage that gives you your headspace back.
We build three things in parallel over six to nine months. An onboarding system that brings new hires up to speed without you in every conversation. A levelling and progression framework so people know what good looks like, how to get promoted, what's available to them, and what they're being paid against. And a manager development programme for the people you've promoted from individual contributor into management who were never taught how to manage.
Without it, the founder stays the bottleneck, your best people leave because they can't see a path, and the managers you bet on quietly fail. Done well, your values become operational, your team can grow, and the company runs without you in every decision.
05. Sustain. Stay supported as your team grows into the infrastructure. £3,000/month. Ongoing
The foundation is built. This keeps it solid.
After Embed, you have a choice. Either we hand over to a full-time People Lead (which I scope and help you hire, so you're not betting on the wrong person), or you stay with me on a structured fractional basis until you're ready. Two clinics a month, every two weeks, with async support in between.
The structure is deliberate. It's not a hotline. It makes you and your team more thoughtful, more mindful, because you collect the things that matter and we work through them together. You know someone is there, without the creep that ad-hoc retainers create. Without it, the systems drift, the founder gets sucked back in, or you hire a People Lead too early into a role that hasn't been properly scoped. With it, the foundation stays operational and the next move is deliberate.
Can you afford to not build on solid foundations?
You're going to spend six figures on your people problems one way or another. The question is whether you end up with a salary on your books, or an operating system built for your company.
A People Lead at your stage is expensive, hard to hire, and almost certainly learning on the job. They'll be managing day-to-day fires, compliance, building a people roadmap, and executing against it simultaneously, whilst your company keeps moving. Most can't do all of it at once without help. It's a significant bet.
Foundation is the opposite of a bet. It's a proven programme, built from 19+ years of experience across 40+ companies. The infrastructure gets built. It works. And when it's done, it's yours, with no headcount, no equity, and no recruitment risk.
Most founders, MDs, and leaders don't start at Stage 1 and run all the way through. The People Clinic tells you exactly where to begin, and what it's already costing you to wait.
Founders stop scrapping around trying to be a People team - and get back to building the company you dreamt of creating.
FOR MANAGERS
Scaling Smart: The Startup Manager Programme
Most growing companies promote their best people into management and leave them to figure it out. It's not negligence. There's just no playbook for leading in a high-growth environment, and the skills that made them great at the work don't automatically transfer.
Scaling Smart is a cohort programme for managers in growing companies. Six sessions, six people from different companies, built around the real challenges of leading when the company is moving fast.
It covers self-leadership, running effective one-to-ones, giving feedback, setting goals that connect to something real, and coaching your team rather than just managing them.
Cohorts run quarterly. Open to individuals. Most participants expense it through their company.
£1,750 + VAT per person
START HERE
The People Clinic
Every Foundation engagement starts with a free 30-minute diagnostic conversation. Sharp, focused, and practical - we identify the root cause of what's going wrong and agree the right next step.
You share what's going on. I ask the questions nobody else has asked.
We identify the root cause - not just the symptom you came in with
You leave with clarity on the real problem and a clear recommendation for what to do next.
An honest conversation about what's happening and what would actually help.
People Clinic
Free • 30 minutes • Video call
For founders, MDs, and leaders of growing companies with a people, hiring, or management challenge. 5 to 50 people. Come with your most pressing problem.
Limited slots available each week. No commitment required.
"Before working with ZeShaan, we faced significant challenges as a growing company. We wanted a formal review process but didn't know where to start. ZeShaan partnered with our leadership team to build custom competencies for our career framework that aligned perfectly with our company's identity. Employees now understand exactly what is required to progress. The impact was tremendous."
Bruno Lecoq, CEO & Sylwia Chmielewska, Director of People
BEMO
WHAT FOUNDERS SAY
Real results, real founders.
"ZeShaan stepped in at a critical moment. He brought clarity, structure, and real pace - scoping the role, designing an interview process, and guiding us from first conversation to signed offer in under 25 days. His approach was highly strategic, but also deeply practical."
Sam Moorhouse, Founder & CEO
turntabl
"ZeShaan was one of our most trusted advisors - whether working with Series A companies on building high-performing teams or individual coaching with executives. We would never have been able to support so many amazing companies without him."
Liam Ward, Head of Programmes
Tech Nation
"He gets to the big problems instantly and will help you find solutions that will work. He’s personable and I'd recommend him to anyone with people, talent or culture problems."
Barry Cranford, Founder
RecWorks
Some companies I’ve helped
ABOUT ZESHAAN
I'm not a recruiter,
a coach, or an HR consultant.
I'm a systems thinker for people. I diagnose the root cause, solve the immediate problem, and build the infrastructure that stops it coming back.
19+ years across digital, tech, and startups. 40+ founders and leadership teams. The full arc - from crisis to scale.
Agency - learned to assess and close talent in fast-moving markets
Startups to scale-ups - built hiring and people systems as companies scaled
Consultancy - 40+ startups and scale-ups across funding stages and leadership styles
Tech Nation & Plugged Founders advisor - supported early-stage to Series A companies on high-performing teams
WHY FOUNDATION EXISTS
Too many leaders get trapped in operational firefighting instead of focusing on the work only they can do. They become the accidental People team, solving the same problems over and over, burning time and energy that should be going into the mission.
Foundation exists to change that. To give leaders the infrastructure that lets their team perform, without the leader needing to be in the middle of every people problem.
The goal is simple: get you back to joining the dots, making the calls, leading the company.
READY TO START?
Your next hire,
your next manager challenge,
your next people decision -
it doesn't have to derail you.
30 minutes. A clear diagnosis of what's actually going wrong - and what to do about it.