Great companies aren’t built on capital alone. They’re built on experience, shared across teams, and applied where it matters most.

Across PSV Foundry, PSV Tech and PSV Hafnium, we work as one extended team.

Bringing together the capabilities founders need along the way — from early decisions to the structures that support scale. It takes the form of a way of working shaped by years of building alongside founders.

Continuously adapting. Supporting what becomes, every step of the way.

This is where that work lives.

PEOPLE & CULTURE

Founders Build Teams. Teams Build Companies.​

The heartbeat of any successful startup is its people. Great teams accomplish great things, and ultimately, investors invest in people just as much as they invest in ideas.

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In the earliest stages, the people carrying the ideas are the founders. They hold the vision, make the decisions, and set the tone for everything that follows. But over time new talents will join, responsibilities will grow, and what once started as a small founding team will evolve into an organisation.

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And at the end of the day, the team that’s built and the culture that grows around it will be one of the true make-or-break factors for a startup.

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Founders must live and breathe conviction, vision, a strong cultural DNA, and exert the kind of leadership that inspires others to follow.

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This is where PSV's People & Culture team comes in. We support founders in building a clear roadmap for forming and developing a team and culture in parallel with the commercial rollout. From defining early hiring priorities to supporting the evolution of the founder team into a strong leadership team. Ultimately, our goal is to help you assemble a winning team, shape a culture that attracts top-tier talent, and create the foundations that allow both people and companies to grow.

We help founders define a hiring strategy and identify the profiles that complement the strengths and complete the founding puzzle. Through our network and a structured, hands-on approach to search and selection, we support founders in bringing exceptional talent to the table - from the first board to the leaders who will help shape the next chapter. We support the cultivation of leadership, culture, and the people practices that allow strong teams to take root and thrive. In doing so, we help lay the tracks for an organisation that can grow with clarity, resilience, and shared purpose as a company scales.

Even the strongest visions can lose clarity as the pace accelerates and complexity grows. Supporting founders in strengthening their leadership, deepening their self-awareness, and developing the capabilities needed to guide both people and company through change is essential to navigating this journey.

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It starts with a strongly aligned founder team, with clarity around individual and shared motivations, behaviours under pressure, and the dynamics that shape how they work together. Only from this foundation can founders effectively lead others and build a cohesive organisation.

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Through reflection, coaching, diagnostics and founder-to-founder learnings, we help founders strengthen how they lead themselves and others. We support teams in finding their shared footing and navigating the inevitable moments when the path forward becomes less clear, so they remain aligned and can grow alongside their company as the journey unfolds.

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Building a company can be exhilarating, no doubt. But it can also be mentally demanding and deeply personal. When an idea, a vision, and an identity become tightly intertwined with the company, the ups and downs of the journey can feel just as personal as they are professional.

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Founders often thrive on being able to build and shape something based on their vision. They are driven by autonomy, self-realisation, and a deep sense of meaning. At the same time, that same autonomybrings uncertainty, unpredictability, constant pressure, and, at times, a sense of loneliness.

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We support founders in strengthening their mental resilience and building a foundation for well-being across the individual, the team and the organisation. At the heart of this work lies trust, open communication, and the ability to handle disagreements constructively when tensions rise.

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LEGAL

Legal guidance to keep your venture on track

Lawyers can be expensive, but legal mistakes tend to be worse.

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We’ve seen how small oversights in the early days can turn into costly problems later, draining time, focus and runway when it matters most. We prefer to catch those things early.

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That’s why legal is not treated as an afterthought, but as an integrated part of how we support our companies. Our legal team works alongside founders as questions arise offering perspective and practical guidance as the company takes shape.

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We support founders across the legal side of building a company, from early setup and team formation to commercial activity and future fundraising.

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And when more specialised expertise is needed, we connect founders with trusted legal advisors from our extended network. People we, and our portfolio companies, have worked with over time.

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BRAND & Communication

Storytelling is a Competitive Advantage

Building a successful company begins with a story worth telling. We help founders uncover the narrative at the heart of their venture and translate it into a story the outside world can understand.

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We support founders in shaping the company’s brand and use the founders' own voices to travel as stories beyond the walls of the company. Stories that capture attention, build credibility, and create the kind of momentum that attracts talent, engages users, and spark the investor FOMO every founder hopes for.

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While products solve problems, brands create meaning. They give people something to connect to, believe in, and rally around. A distinctive brand and a thoughtful PR strategy therefore become essential building blocks for long-term success.

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Founders are good at many things. But shaping the story of their startup is rarely what captures their attention in the earliest days. Turning a story into a recognizable brand requires clarity, structure, and consistency.

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We support startups in translating their narrative into a distinct brand identity and a language the outside world can easily understand and repeat. Having done this many times before, we know that much of the work begins with asking the right questions.

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Founders know their startups better than anyone. Our role is to help that story surface and take shape. Through practical tools, frameworks, and templates, we help bring clarity to the startup’s positioning, audience, and voice — allowing the brand to cut through the noise.

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The result is a brand that feels coherent from the very beginning and a narrative that can travel far beyond the walls of the company.

A strong story deserves to be heard. We support founders and startups in turning their story into media coverage that builds both visibility and credibility.

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By shaping the right story , identifying the media outlets that matter, and timing the narrative carefully, the startup’s story is positioned to reach the right audience.

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Through thoughtful pitching, tailored media lists, and established relationships with journalists, the story finds its way to the outlets most likely to carry it forward with impact.

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The result is coverage that helps investors understand the company faster, builds trust with customers, and positions the startup clearly.

In the earliest stages, one thing matters most — the slightly mad founders who choose to go all-in on a bold idea. It’s a demanding path, in business and in life. We’re here to back them with the perspective, support and community it takes to go the distance.

Finance

Finance That Scales  With You

In the early days, getting the financial setup right is rarely a priority. As the company grows, it tends to catch up.

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We’ve seen how unclear structures, manual processes and limited financial oversight can quietly turn into bottlenecks as a company grows. The ambition is there, but the foundation isn’t always built to support it.

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We support founders in building financial setups that create clarity, structure and sustainability from the start. This spans everything from how processes are designed to how financial insight is generated and used in decision-making.

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This includes sparring on how to structure and optimise financial processes, improving visibility while reducing time spent on operational finance.

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As companies evolve, the need for stronger financial infrastructure follows. We support that transition by helping shape the function over time, ensuring the setup matches the company’s stage and growing complexity.

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Sometimes that means working hands-on alongside the team. Other times it means advising, challenging and helping founders make the right financial decisions as the company scales.

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ESG & Impact

ESG as a Foundation. Impact for Long-term Value Creation.

Building a startup takes almost everything a founder has – and often a little more. Time and resources must be carefully prioritised for the company to grow and succeed. In that reality, environmental, social, and governance (ESG) considerations can sometimes feel like something to address later. Yet how a company impacts the environment, treats people, and is governed is increasingly a fundamental part of building a company designed to last. In an increasingly regulated world startups can gain their competitive advantage by engraining impact into their core mission from day one.

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At PSV, we believe impact and growth should go hand in hand when scaling a startup. ESG approaches and monitoring are therefore not just supporting tools, but a core part of the business model, helping startups build early legitimacy and long-term credibility from the get-go.

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ESG is not just about responsibility, but increasingly about access, as rising disclosure requirements continue to raise the bar for investors, driving a growing number of investors and large players to actively seek companies that can demonstrate credible sustainability practices. This means that startups able to document their ESG approach are often better positioned to work with large companies, attract investment, and build long-term credibility.

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We support startups in integrating ESG & Impact into their processes from an early stage — helping translate sustainability into practical structures, clear communication, and maintainable documentation that investors, partners, and stakeholders increasingly expect.

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