Rachel Sutherland is SVP of People & Operations at Respondology, a 50-person venture-backed SaaS company, and she builds HR functions from the ground up at high-growth startups. In this episode of Built by People Leaders, Rachel Sutherland argues that the hardest part of scaling is forcing the founding executive team to stop making every decision and instead build a trusted middle layer that can act without them—her core lens on the startup-to-scaleup transition.

Rachel Sutherland reached people leadership through an unconventional route: an English literature degree, 10 years in publishing, entrepreneurship running brick-and-mortar businesses, then seven years building people functions in startup incubators. The friction she unpacks is specific to companies where founders can no longer sit in every room. Rachel Sutherland calls this "brain dumping" onto a new leadership layer—aligning them, then trusting them to make decisions that may not match how the executive would have done it.

• Delegating decision authority: Rachel Sutherland describes the angst executives feel when they push decisions to a new leadership layer and must accept choices that are business-aligned but not exactly their own.
• Executive hiring risk: Rachel Sutherland treats executive hires as the highest-stakes decisions in a scaleup, where a wrong hire becomes a six-month mistake that damages a small leadership team.
• Stage-specific ceilings: Rachel Sutherland explains how early employees who excel at "zero to one" often cannot carry the company through "one to two," forcing hard layering or exit conversations.

1. Design incentives before headcount: Rachel Sutherland supports revenue by building compensation and KPI structures that motivate people to hit targets, and by keeping teams lean so capital funds growth instead of avoidable layoffs.
2. Ask every colleague what they do: At Respondology, new hires spend 15 minutes with each person to learn the business. Rachel Sutherland uses this same curiosity to spot gaps and overlaps before making org design decisions.
3. Be an advocate and a truth-teller: Rachel Sutherland builds board and executive trust by fighting for their compensation annually while also delivering hard feedback when leaders get in their own way—never acting as a "yes person."

• How do I get founders to delegate decisions as we scale? Rachel Sutherland recommends aligning a trusted leadership layer with business objectives, then accepting decisions that differ from how the executive would have made them. The executive's job is to reinvent their own value rather than remain the single point of approval.
• How does HR actually support revenue in a venture-backed company? Rachel Sutherland focuses on incentive design, executive compensation, and lean org structures so people work on high-impact tasks, not busy work. This lets revenue fund growth instead of covering an inflated headcount.
• How do I know when an early employee has hit their ceiling? Rachel Sutherland says the ceiling is usually obvious; the hard part is deciding whether to layer someone with a new hire above them or move them on. She frames it as a stage mismatch, not a failure.

Links & Resources Mentioned:

• Connect with Rachel Sutherland on LinkedIn