people and operations for early-stage teams
SWIM is an advisory and consulting practice that helps tech founders and CEOs build the people and operations foundations to scale, with AI built in from day one.
meet lindsay and james
Two operators. One team.
You’ll work directly with one or both of us, never handed off to a junior team.
meet lindsay
Head of People at Unstructured, where she scaled the team from ~40 to 120+ while earning a 99% Great Place to Work score and building AI-enabled People systems. 17+ years building teams from zero, 3x founding team member, 2x employee #1. Systems-driven and people-first.
Off the clock: spent a year at sea, swam with humpback whales, retrofitted a bus across the US.
meet james
25+ years leading operations at tech and AI companies, including Unstructured and Primer AI, across facilities, IT, finance, recruiting, and real estate. Former founder and advisor to entrepreneurs at Berkeley Research Group and Kiwi Landing Pad.
Off the clock: swims Lake Wakatipu year-round without a wetsuit, rowed for New Zealand Universities, and teases Lindsay about this website’s colors.
what we focus on
People
Org design and hiring plans: the right roles in the right order, leveling, and a recruiting plan you can actually run.
Performance and compensation: review cycles, pay bands, equity, and benefits that are competitive and sustainable.
AI-enabled People Ops: handbooks, policies, onboarding, and a knowledge base that answers employee questions so you don’t have to.
Operations
Operating systems and cadence: tools, workflows, and the meetings and metrics that keep a growing team aligned.
Finance, legal, and vendor operations: we bring in and manage vetted partners for accounting, legal, and insurance, and negotiate the contracts.
Workplace, IT, and security: offices, equipment, access, and compliance basics, done once and done right.
two ways to work together
Advisory
An ongoing partner for founders and CEOs. Regular working sessions, on-call guidance for the hard calls (first exec hire, a reorg, a difficult termination), and a second set of eyes on your people and ops decisions.
For founders who want a thought partner, not another hire.
Fractional
Your part-time Head of People or Operations, embedded in your team. We run the function week to week: building comp and performance programs, setting up benefits and policies, standing up AI-enabled People Ops and operating systems, and handling what comes up along the way.
For: teams that need senior leadership in the seat, without a full-time hire yet.
Teams we’ve built have scaled from 5 to 120+, earned 99% Great Place to Work scores, saved 20%+ a year on benefits, and achieved 100% AI adoption in 6 months.