You raised the money — you don't need to spend the next four months recruiting an HR manager, a payroll specialist, and an IT hire just to keep the company running. Founders Engine is that team already assembled, for one flat monthly rate that doesn't climb every time you add headcount.
Illustrative ranges for one operations, HR, IT, or payroll hire — the math changes with your market and stage, but the shape of it doesn't.
PEOs solve payroll and benefits at scale — but they're priced and built for headcount you already have, not for staying lean while you get there.
Flat pricing, not per-employee. A PEO's bill grows with every person you hire. Ours doesn't — you know what you're paying regardless of headcount size.
We'll help you move, either direction. Already stuck on a PEO's per-employee fees? We help you transition off. Decide a PEO is the right call later? We help you move on.
No lock-in when you outgrow us. When you're ready for an internal team, we help recruit them — then stay on as a resource while they ramp.
Most startups stitch this together piecemeal — an HR consultant here, a payroll platform there, a registered agent billed per state. Every piece works fine on its own. None of them talk to each other, and coordinating them is still your job.
We don't hand you more logins. Every vendor, filing, and compliance signal we manage points to a single dashboard you check on your own schedule — not one that pings you constantly. When something actually needs your call, we've already done the research: you get the context in plain English and a yes-or-no, not a portal to figure out yourself.
We checked your new hire's start date against Texas registration timelines. Filing now avoids a late-registration penalty and keeps their first paycheck on schedule.
Every function on this page can be delivered the way that fits where you are — not a fixed engagement model.
We run it end-to-end. Already on Gusto or Rippling? We operate what you've got, as the in-house hire who'd otherwise manage it. Not set up yet? We stand up the right providers and run those too.
Pick one function — no minimumWe design and build the internal systems and workflows your team needs, then hand them off, fully documented, once you're ready to own them in-house.
We slot into your existing tools and team as an ongoing operational or people-ops function, on a fractional basis — another team member, not another vendor.
Most clients mix all three as they grow: fully managed early on, build-and-handoff once you hire in-house, embedded support in between. Some engagements run indefinitely with no planned end date — others are a focused sprint around a specific event: a raise, a hiring wave, an acquisition, or standing the company up in the first place. Both are exactly what we're built for.
Each stage of a startup breaks a different part of the back office. We scope our involvement to where you actually are — not a one-size playbook.
Entity setup and first bank & payroll accounts, plus SOS filings and registered agent coverage through our filing partners.
Worker classification, offer letters, first handbook, IT provisioning.
Multi-state payroll compliance, benefits admin, a real HRIS.
Foreign qualification, license renewals, IT security hygiene.
Records cleanup, audit-readiness, warm handoff to accounting partners.
Ordered by what actually eats your time first — not by what sounds official. Formation paperwork matters eventually; it's rarely what's on fire this week.
Handbooks and policy, offer letters, worker classification, and new-employee onboarding that actually holds up.
Multi-state payroll and tax registration — run in-house, not just configured in software.
We purchase, configure, and ship employee laptops and hardware, manage SaaS access, and track assets — built on standards we ran for a distributed enterprise team.
Org charts, an HRIS that's actually kept current, and benefits — we connect you to the right broker for your stage and own the ongoing vendor management and comms.
Internal dashboards and self-service tools connecting Slack, email, project, payroll, and spend systems — production tooling we have shipped without an engineering team, so a lean startup runs with a bigger one's visibility.
Business licenses, foreign qualifications, and industry registrations as you expand.
A real mailroom for a distributed company — scan, forward, and registered-agent mail handled, run with enterprise-grade shipping and asset-tracking discipline.
Formation filings and registered agent coverage, handled through our filing partners — plus the state notices and action letters that actually need a response, which we handle directly, corresponding with the agency on your behalf.
Founders Engine isn't consultants who studied startup operations from the outside — it's built around someone who's run every function on this page, inside real companies, across every stage from early hardware ops to a venture-backed acquisition.
Before you hire us for anything, we'll show you where you stand: a discovery call, a score across the compliance areas that matter, and a plain-language list of what to fix first. No cost, no obligation.
Founders Engine is opening a limited early partner group. Tell us where you're at, and we'll follow up with your free Ops Audit and a scope of what your team actually needs.
Thanks — someone from Founders Engine will follow up within two business days with your free Ops Audit.