For early-stage teams The structure your future self will thank you for. At 8 people you knew everyone’s goals by heart. At 30 you cannot. The choice is rebuild your performance practice from scratch every year, or set up the structure once and let it scale with you. Org Brain reads everything from day one, so the picture stays sharp as the team grows.
Setup checklist
Free plan · 8 employees
- Import team via CSV 3 min
- Pick competency framework template 2 min
- Set Q1 goals for each person 14 min
- Schedule first 1:1s 4 min
- Org Brain reads context, suggests dev plans auto
- Launch first review cycle Friday
- Connect Claude Desktop via MCP 5 min · optional
23 minutes total · you are 4 days ahead of average
The 30-person wall
The startup phase that breaks every system you have.
Hire 11
"We will write down the bar later."
At 10 people you knew the bar because you set it on every interview. At 25 the bar is whatever each manager remembers from a Slack thread. Your standards are quietly drifting, and you will only notice in a hiring miss six months from now.
First review cycle
Three Google Sheets. Two formats. Zero structure.
You build it from scratch. Three weeks later you have a spreadsheet that mostly works. Six months later, it is corrupted, three managers have forked their own version, and you start over again. The performance practice is the thing you keep rebuilding.
First resignation
"I did not see a path forward."
Your strongest engineer leaves because they could not see the next level. The framework was in your head, not in their eyes. By the time you write it down, you are hiring the replacement.
The pattern is universal. Every startup hits the wall between 25 and 50 employees where the founder’s memory stops scaling. The teams that scale through it are the ones who put the structure in place at 15.
Org Brain at startup speed
The chief of staff you cannot afford yet.
At 30 people you do not have HR. You do not have a data team. You do not have a chief of staff. What you do have is data, scattered across five tools nobody is watching together. Org Brain reads it for you, drafts the work that used to eat your week, and answers the questions you would otherwise spend an afternoon investigating.
"Where is the team off track?"
Answers grounded in your real data, in a sentence. The investigation that used to be an afternoon is a 30-second read.
See AI IntelligenceThe whole picture in one screen.
No data team required. Performance, goals, engagement, retention rolled into a live dashboard you can scan in 30 seconds.
See People AnalyticsPlans, summaries, 1:1 prep.
The 45-minute task takes two. You finally have the bandwidth to do reviews properly because the AI did the first draft.
See the workflowsChallenge 01
Set the bar before you forget what it was.
The first 10 hires figured out the bar. The next 30 have to learn it. Without writing it down, you end up with three versions of "good," none of them yours.
Frameworks let you write down what good looks like, by role and level, in an afternoon. New hires hit the bar faster. The bar stays consistent as you grow. The standards you set at 15 people compound for the next 200.
Challenge 02
Goals that keep the team aligned without micromanagement.
Founders default to two extremes: standups three times a day, or no visibility at all. Both burn the team. The middle ground is goals everyone can see, with progress visible without you having to ask.
Cascading OKRs from company to team to individual. Progress visible to everyone. Goals you can pull up in any 1:1 without context-switching. The picture stays sharp without you being in every meeting.
Challenge 03
Run reviews without making it a quarter-long project.
The first review cycle at most startups eats two months of founder time. Building templates, chasing managers, reformatting Sheets, calibrating after the fact. The cycle becomes the work, not the byproduct of the work.
Harmny ships starter templates. Managers get a structured flow. AI drafts review summaries from notes and ratings. The cycle finishes in a week, not a quarter, and the picture is consistent across everyone.
Challenge 04
Build retention into the culture before you need to.
Most startup retention work happens after the resignation. By then the question is "how did we miss it." Recognition, development plans, and growth conversations are the leading indicators. Most teams skip them because they feel like overhead at 30 people.
Org Brain catches the leading signals (1:1 frequency dropping, recognition flat, goals stalled) 60 to 90 days before they become attrition. Recognition and development plans become low-overhead because the AI drafts the first version. You build the culture you wanted at 100 people while you are still 30.
"We set up Harmny at 30 and grew to 120 without changing anything. The framework we wrote at 30 still holds. The data carries forward. We never had the rebuild moment most startups dread."
Tomas Reyes
Co-founder, Beacon
Why startups pick Harmny
Free up to 10 users
Set up the structure before you can afford a tool. Plans scale by seat as you grow, with no separate AI or analytics SKUs.
Structure that scales
Same platform from 10 to 1,000. No re-platforming, no migration, no spreadsheet rebuilds at every size milestone.
AI that fills the headcount gaps
No HR yet. No chief of staff yet. No data team yet. Org Brain drafts the work and answers the questions in their place.
OKRs without ceremony
Cascading goals, visible to everyone, that keep the team aligned without three-times-a-day standups. The middle ground between micromanagement and chaos.
Catch attrition before it lands
Leading signals (1:1 cadence, recognition activity, goal stagnation) surface 60 to 90 days early. Retention work moves from reactive to preventive.
Setup under a day
CSV import, starter templates, first cycle live within a week. The performance practice that used to be a quarter-long project.
Common questions from founders and early-stage teams
Clarity. Motivation. Growth. For your whole team.
Free forever for up to 10 users. No credit card required. Full access from day one.
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