Compensation Strategy
A clear pay philosophy and salary structure aligned to your stage, funding, and hiring plan — so every offer and raise has a reason behind it.
Compensation consulting for startups & growing companies
We help founders and lean HR teams set salaries, bonuses, and equity with real market data — so you can hire, retain, and grow without overpaying or losing people.
What we do
Everything a growing company needs to pay well and pay smart — scoped tightly, priced transparently, and delivered in weeks, not quarters.
A clear pay philosophy and salary structure aligned to your stage, funding, and hiring plan — so every offer and raise has a reason behind it.
Role-by-role market pricing using trusted salary survey sources, translated into simple bands your managers can actually use.
Proactive pay equity reviews and help with pay transparency laws, so you find gaps before an employee, auditor, or regulator does.
Sales commission plans, annual bonus structures, and team incentives that drive the behavior your business needs — and don't blow the budget.
Board-ready guidance on founder salaries, executive packages, and equity refreshes — the kind investors expect to see documented.
On-demand comp expertise for companies without a dedicated HR lead — offer reviews, promotion cases, and off-cycle market checks.
How we work
No 100-page reports that gather dust. You get decisions, bands, and documents your team can put to work immediately.
We interview your leadership, review current pay and org data, and map exactly where the pressure points are.
Every role gets priced against the right market — your industry, your geography, your stage, your size and growth— with sources documented.
We build your salary bands, bonus structure, and pay philosophy, and pressure-test the numbers against your budget.
Manager talking points, employee-facing guides, and a maintenance plan so your structure stays current as you grow.
The work
Benchmarking sessions, leadership workshops, and market reviews — the work looks different at every company, but it always ends in clarity.
About
I spent a decade leading compensation inside fast-growing companies and advising boards on executive pay. I started this practice because founders and small HR teams kept asking the same question: “Am I paying people fairly — and how would I even know?”
Big consulting firms price their answers out of reach for a 40-person company. I built Very Cherry Consulting to give startups and SMBs the same rigor — real survey data, documented methodology, defensible numbers — in a format and at a price that fits.
Client words
“We finally have salary bands we can defend to employees and to our board. Jenna made a genuinely hard topic feel simple.”
“Our pay equity review surfaced two gaps we fixed the same quarter. That alone was worth the engagement.”
“The new commission plan paid for itself in one sales cycle. Clear, fast, and zero fluff.”
Questions
Most projects are fixed-fee, scoped after a free intro call. A full salary structure for a company under 100 employees typically lands in the low five figures; smaller projects (a single pay equity review, for example) cost less. You always approve the scope before any work begins.
That's exactly who we work with most. You bring your org chart and payroll export; we handle the analysis, recommendations, and documentation — and stay available afterward for offer reviews and market checks.
Licensed compensation survey data plus role-appropriate market sources, chosen for your industry and geography. Every number in your structure traces back to a documented source.
Yes. We'll help you pick a location strategy — single national bands, geo tiers, or location-specific pricing — and build it into your structure.
Contact
Tell us a little about your company and what's keeping you up at night — an offer you're unsure about, a raise cycle coming up, a board question. We'll reply within one business day with next steps.
Prefer email? Write to us at jenna@verycherryconsulting.com.