Our clients
Backed by founders. Trusted by their teams.
A founder-recommended network of fractional People & Talent Leaders. Embedded in your business in days, not months.
We spent time working across VCs, alongside founders from the earliest days, and understood this was a problem early doors: the startups that built strong People & Talent foundations from the beginning have a much healthier growth trajectory and culture.
Trouble was, getting that help was hard. Recruiters charge a fortune per hire and rarely get the early-stage reality. Building it in-house pulls founders off the business they're trying to grow.
So in 2024 we built The Black Book: a hand-picked network of founder-backed People & Talent Leaders who drop into your business, flex up and down as you need, and own the fundamentals around hiring, people foundations and culture. The expertise founders wished they had access to sooner.
Whether you need one embedded fractional leader across both disciplines or a dedicated specialist in each, we'll match the right person to you within days.
| Talent | People | |
|---|---|---|
| What is covered | Recruitment strategy, headhunting & sourcing, screening, interview design, offer management, salary benchmarking and employer branding. | People foundations, onboarding, culture & engagement, performance, learning & development, employee relations, employment law and wellbeing. |
| What is delivered | A repeatable, high-quality hiring engine that consistently attracts and closes the people who move your business forward, at speed. | The structure and culture that turns strong hires into a team that stays, grows and outperforms. |
| Why it matters early | Your earliest hires define the trajectory of the company. Getting those right compounds for years to come. | Org design and where you invest in your people, shaped by leaders who've lived the early-stage decisions first-hand, what works and what to avoid. |
| The cost of waiting | Inconsistent hiring processes, founders' time drained by recruitment, and hires that aren't always aligned to their mission long term. | Culture left to form on its own, avoidable early exits, and structure that doesn't always scale with you. |
We talk through the Black Book Offering and the right profile and moment to bring your People and/or Talent Specialist in.
We pair you with the best-fit Fractional Lead for a 60-minute deep dive.
A clear plan and scope to move forward. Most start-ups opt for 3–6 months as the initial engagement.
Contracts issued to both sides and signed on our platform called Raise, which also processes payment cycles as agreed between you.
We stay well connected with our founders and fractionals gauging feedback throughout each engagement, to make sure everything is on track and to support with relevant expertise where required.
One embedded specialist in the discipline you need most.
One leader across both disciplines, the full remit covered.
Flex up and down longer term to suit volume and type of work. +VAT for UK companies.
Book a kick-off ↗
Nearly two decades in People & Talent, and Katrina has always approached it like a founder: it comes down to relationships and backing the right people, on both sides. She's built teams across Biotech, AI, Healthcare, SaaS, E-Commerce and Tech for Good, from seed to post-IPO, and kept seeing the same gap, the startups that invest in People & Talent early pull ahead, but rarely have that expertise to hand when it matters most. So she co-founded The Black Book to close it, putting trusted People & Talent Leaders in founders' hands from day one.
Peter founded The Black Book, a private network built around a simple idea: exceptional people should find exceptional work through other exceptional people. It brings together a small community of operators, builders and thinkers working at the top of their fields, giving members access to opportunities, collaborations and problems that rarely appear in the open market. Alongside this, he works on talent across major UK AI initiatives including the UK AI Safety Institute, Sovereign AI, and the Incubator for Artificial Intelligence, teams working on some of the most consequential challenges in Britain and aspiring to bring about the best possible future.
Usually within a week of the kick-off. Most leaders can start inside 5 to 7 working days.
No formal minimum. Most clients start with 3 to 6 months and roll on from there, flexing up and down over time.
Only if a fractional leader converts to a permanent hire with you. Then it's 15% of their first-year base. There are never fees on hires they make for you.
Through a platform called Raise, which holds contracts, timesheets and payment in one place. You simply sign and approve timesheets to release payment.
KPIs are set jointly between your leader and the CEO at the start, and we check in against them every month.
We replace them at no extra cost. It's not something that happens often, but the replacement is there if you need it.
You do. Frameworks, processes, pipelines and documentation all stay with you.