People & HR

How to plan headcount as Asset Management Founders

People & HRFor Asset Management Founders3 apps12 steps~24 min to set up

You're managing a $50M–$150M emerging fund with maybe one other person, and headcount planning means a spreadsheet you last updated when you were fundraising. You don't have an HR system — your 'people data' lives in QuickBooks (for payroll expenses), a Google Sheet tracking titles and start dates, and your own memory. Every time an LP asks how you're scaling the team or a portfolio company needs a hiring plan as part of a board update, you're rebuilding the same analysis from scratch. Paylocity or ADP data exists but you've never wired it to anything. The real pain: you don't know what your all-in people cost looks like until your bookkeeper closes the month.

Build this on Starch → See the apps used

People & HRFor Asset Management Founders3 apps12 steps~24 min to set up

Outcome

What you'll set up

A live headcount model that pulls actual payroll spend from Paylocity or ADP through Starch and compares it against your quarterly budget by role and department — no manual exports

A scenario planner that shows you what hiring two more analysts or a COO does to your runway and fee income coverage, grounded in your real Stripe management fees and Plaid expense data

A quarterly LP update draft that includes your team build-out narrative and compensation burn, generated in minutes from the same numbers your headcount model already tracks

The Starch recipe

Apps, data, and prompts

The combination of Starch apps, the data sources they pull from, and the prompts you use to drive them.

Apps used

Budgeting Scenario Analysis Runway Analysis

Data sources & config

Starch syncs your Paylocity or ADP payroll data on a schedule — employees, payroll runs, pay statements — so headcount costs stay current without manual exports. Starch also syncs your Plaid bank feed and Stripe management fee revenue on a schedule to ground every scenario in real numbers. If your fund admin or cap table tool has a web portal but no direct integration, Starch can automate it through your browser — no API needed.

Prompts to copy

Build me a headcount budget tracker that pulls payroll runs from Paylocity, breaks out comp by role — investment professionals, operations, and compliance — and shows me monthly variance against what I budgeted for each category this year

Create a scenario analysis that models what happens to our runway if we hire a COO at $250K all-in versus waiting 12 months. Use our current Stripe management fee revenue and Plaid expense data as the baseline

Show me a runway dashboard with our total people cost as its own expense category, updated daily from bank transactions, so I can see burn with and without the next planned hire

Run these in Starch → or paste them into your favorite agent

Walkthrough

Step-by-step

1 Connect Paylocity or ADP: Starch syncs your payroll runs, employee roster, and pay statements on a schedule — this becomes your source of truth for all-in people cost by employee and role.

2 Connect Plaid so Starch pulls your fund operating account transactions daily, giving you the full expense picture beyond just payroll — admin, legal, travel, software.

3 Connect Stripe so management fee and carried interest distributions show up as your revenue baseline — this is what all your headcount scenarios will run against.

4 Open the Budgeting app and tell Starch: 'Set up a headcount budget with three categories — investment team, operations, and compliance — and populate actuals from my Paylocity payroll runs. Flag any month where a category runs more than 10% over budget.' Starch builds the view and starts tracking variance automatically.

5 Open Scenario Analysis and describe the decision you're actually facing: 'Model three scenarios — current team, adding a COO at $250K all-in this quarter, and adding both a COO and a junior analyst at $120K. Show me how each affects runway and what revenue growth rate makes each scenario break even.' Starch runs all three against your live Stripe and Plaid data.

6 Use the Runway Analysis app to set people cost as its own category in the burn breakdown, so every LP conversation starts with a number you can defend — not a back-of-envelope estimate.

7 For any hiring data that lives in a web-based ATS like Greenhouse or Lever, Starch can pull open headcount and offer pipeline through your browser — no API required — so your plan reflects roles you've already committed to filling, not just current payroll.

8 Set a monthly automation: 'On the first of each month, pull the prior month's payroll run from Paylocity, compare it to my headcount budget by category, and Slack me a summary of any variance over $5,000.' You stop chasing your bookkeeper for a number you could have had on day one.

9 When a portfolio company board asks for your fund's operating expense breakdown as part of a governance review, tell Starch: 'Generate a one-page summary of our fund's headcount cost by role, total comp as a percentage of AUM, and projected people cost through year-end under our current hiring plan.' It draws from the same synced data, not a one-off export.

10 Before your next LP close or re-up conversation, use Scenario Analysis to show your hiring roadmap: what does the team look like at $250M AUM versus $100M, and what does each scenario cost annually? LPs evaluating operational maturity want to see that you've modeled this — not that you'll figure it out after they commit.

11 If you want a slide deck to go with the numbers, describe it to the Presentation Agent (currently in beta — request access): 'Build a 6-slide team and operations section for our Q2 LP update: current headcount by role, comp as % of management fees, planned hires through year-end, and how our team size compares to peer funds at our AUM.' The agent builds slides from the data already in Starch.

12 Revisit your scenario assumptions each quarter as actuals come in — Starch's live sync means your model never drifts from reality for more than a day, so you're always working from current numbers when something changes mid-cycle.

See this running on Starch

Connect your tools, describe what you want, and the agent builds it. Closed beta is free.

Try it on Starch →

Worked example

Q2 2026 Headcount Review — $85M Fund

Sample numbers from a real run

Investment Team Comp (2 GPs + 1 Associate)	487,000
Operations (CFO / part-time)	96,000
Compliance (outsourced CCO)	48,000
Benefits & Payroll Taxes	71,000
Planned Hire: COO (H2 2026, prorated)	125,000

You're running an $85M fund — two GPs, one associate, a part-time outsourced CFO, and a compliance consultant. Starch syncs your Paylocity payroll runs on a schedule and Plaid bank transactions daily. Your Q2 actual people cost came in at $702K annualized — $18K over the budget you set in January because the associate's benefits election changed. Starch flagged the variance in the first week of April. You're now modeling whether to bring in a full-time COO before your Q3 LP advisory meeting. Scenario Analysis shows that adding a $250K all-in COO reduces runway by 4.1 months at current management fee revenue of $1.7M annually, but if AUM grows to $120M on your next close — which would push fees to $2.4M — the hire is cash-flow neutral within 14 months. You take that output directly into a board update: your headcount plan is no longer a narrative, it's a quantified decision with real numbers attached.

Measurement

How you'll know it's working

People cost as a percentage of management fee revenue (target: under 60% for an emerging fund)

All-in cost per investment professional (comp + benefits + overhead allocation)

Runway impact of next planned hire, in months

Headcount budget variance by category (investment team vs. ops vs. compliance), month over month

Projected team size at next AUM milestone ($100M, $250M) and associated comp burden

Comparison

What this replaces

The other ways teams handle this today, and how the Starch version compares.

Spreadsheet (Google Sheets or Excel) + manual Paylocity export

Works but requires a manual export every payroll cycle, drifts from actuals within days, and breaks the moment someone's comp changes or you add a new role mid-quarter.

Juniper Square or Addepar

Built for fund admin and LP reporting at scale — $50K+ per year, assumes you have an ops team to run it, and doesn't cover fund-level headcount planning or scenario modeling in a way a one-person back office can actually use.

QuickBooks (payroll module) as the planning layer

Good for payroll processing and actuals; not built for forward-looking headcount scenarios or the kind of runway-vs-hiring analysis you need to show LPs and make confident timing decisions.

Rippling or Gusto standalone

Strong payroll and HR systems, but neither connects to your Stripe management fees or Plaid bank data, so you still can't answer 'what does this hire do to our runway' without building something outside them.

On Starch RECOMMENDED

One platform — quarterly budgeting, scenario planning, runway analysis all running on connected data. Setup in plain English; numbers stay current via scheduled syncs and live agent queries.

Try it on Starch →

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Does Starch actually sync payroll data from Paylocity or ADP, or is it just reading exports?

Starch connects directly to Paylocity and ADP and syncs payroll runs, employee records, pay statements, and benefits data on a schedule — it's not reading exports. The data lives in Starch's database and updates automatically, so your headcount model reflects the most recent payroll cycle without you touching anything.

What if our fund uses a payroll provider that isn't Paylocity or ADP?

If your payroll provider has a web portal you can log into, Starch can automate it through your browser — no API needed. Alternatively, if it's one of the 3,000+ apps in Starch's integration catalog, the agent can query it live when your headcount app runs. Describe your setup and Starch will tell you what's reachable.

We don't have a formal HR system — our headcount data is mostly in a spreadsheet. Can Starch still help?

Yes. Connect Google Sheets from Starch's integration catalog and the agent queries it live. Tell Starch: 'Build a headcount tracker using this Google Sheet as the roster, Paylocity as the comp source, and Plaid as the expense baseline.' It wires all three together into a single view without you needing a formal HRIS first.

Is Starch SOC 2 certified? Our LPs sometimes ask about data security when we mention new tools.

Not yet — Starch is not SOC 2 Type II certified today. That's worth knowing before connecting payroll data. There's no on-premises option either. If your LP agreements or fund documents have specific data handling requirements, check those before connecting compensation data.

Can Starch help me build the actual headcount section of an LP update, not just the model behind it?

Yes. Once your headcount model is running in Starch, you can describe a presentation to the Presentation Agent: 'Build the team and operations section of our Q2 LP update — current roster by role, total comp as a percentage of management fees, and planned hires through year-end.' The Presentation Agent is currently in beta; request access to get notified when it's available. In the meantime, you can export the numbers from your Scenario Analysis and Runway Analysis apps and use them directly in your existing LP deck.

How is this different from just using QuickBooks to track payroll costs?

QuickBooks tells you what you spent. Starch answers the question you're actually asking: 'If I hire a COO in Q3, what does that do to my runway given current management fee revenue?' That requires connecting Stripe for revenue, Plaid for full cash position, and Paylocity for payroll — and running scenarios against all three at once. QuickBooks doesn't do that; it closes the books, it doesn't model the future.