A VP of People is the senior leader responsible for human resources, talent acquisition, compensation, culture, and employee experience at a growth-stage company. At Series A and B companies (20–150 employees), the VP of People is typically the most senior people leader, reporting to the CEO and building the HR infrastructure, recruiting process, and people programmes that the company needs to scale. They are distinct from a Chief People Officer (CPO), which is a more senior and strategic C-suite role.
What a VP of People Builds
At a Series A or B company, the VP of People typically starts with a nearly blank slate: no documented HR processes, informal or inconsistent compensation bands, recruiting driven by founders or hiring managers without a consistent process, and culture that exists but has not been codified or designed intentionally.
The first 90 days for a VP of People usually focus on: establishing a hiring process that works at scale, building compensation bands and levelling frameworks, creating onboarding programmes, implementing a performance management system, and diagnosing the current culture and identifying the gaps between what exists and what the company needs.
VP of People — Role at a Glance
When to Hire a VP of People
The right time to hire a VP of People is when the company has grown past 25–40 employees and recruiting and HR are clearly consuming too much of the CEO's or operations leader's time. The signal is not just headcount — it is when hiring mistakes start being expensive, culture drift becomes noticeable, or the company is losing recruiting competitions it should win.
Most Series A companies hire their first VP of People with the round capital. This is the right timing: the company is about to hire aggressively, and doing it without professional people infrastructure is expensive in both money and cultural damage.
“The VP of People hire is one of the highest-leverage hires a Series A company can make — and one of the most commonly delayed. Every month without professional people infrastructure is a month of unstructured hiring, inconsistent compensation, and cultural drift that is expensive to fix later.”
VP of People vs VP of HR
'VP of People' and 'VP of HR' are used interchangeably at many companies, but they reflect different organisational philosophies. 'VP of HR' often implies a compliance-and-administration orientation; 'VP of People' implies a talent-and-culture orientation. At modern tech companies, the 'VP of People' title signals an expectation that the leader drives talent strategy and culture rather than primarily managing compliance and benefits administration.
In practice, the best candidates for either title combine both: operationally rigorous on HR compliance and administration, and strategically effective on talent, culture, and organisational health.