Borrow people before you hire them. Use fractional specialists for defined projects, fellows and EIRs for scoped portfolio work, portfolio alumni and operators for expertise on demand, and vendors for repeatable services. Automate the admin first, so every borrowed hour goes to founders instead of to chasing data.
The budget conversation goes the same way at almost every firm. The partner agrees the work matters. The partner agrees the team is stretched. Then the partner says there's no new headcount this year. So the real question for a platform lead isn't "can I hire?" It's "who else can do some of this, and how do I keep it from turning into more work for me?"
There are more answers than people think. The trick is matching each kind of demand to the right kind of help.
Take the admin off the table first
Before you bring in anyone new, look at what your current team spends its week on. If a third of it is chasing metrics, retyping numbers from decks and logging intros, a new person will inherit that same work. Borrowed help is expensive per hour. Don't spend it on things software already does well.
I won't repeat the whole case for automation here. The short version: data collection, follow-ups and meeting notes should run without a person pushing them along. Start with a focused AI adoption sprint if you haven't, and see how AI is changing the platform team for what that shift does to the role. What's left after that is judgment work, and that's where borrowed people help.
Map your demand before you pick a model
Pull every founder request from the last two quarters and sort it by type and shape. You're looking for patterns. Is the demand spiky or steady? Does it need deep expertise or just hands? Is it one company or many?
Then match each pattern to a model:
| Demand pattern | Example | Best fit |
|---|---|---|
| Spiky and specialist | Three companies need senior searches at once | Fractional recruiter |
| Recurring and defined | Monthly finance office hours | Operator advisor or vendor |
| Deep, one company | A company needs six weeks of GTM help after a raise | EIR or an embedded operator |
| Broad and junior | Research, event logistics, newsletter first drafts | Fellow |
| Network reach in a new place | Customer intros in a new region or sector | Scouts or portfolio alumni |
| Repeatable professional service | Legal templates, accounting, background checks | Vendor partners |
The table is illustrative. Your portfolio will skew differently. But the exercise stops you from hiring a generalist fellow for a problem that needs a specialist, which is the most common mismatch I hear about.
The five people models
Fractional specialists
A fractional recruiter, GTM lead or finance operator, a few days a week for a set period. They're good for spikes and for skills nobody on your team has. Scope them by outcome, not hours: "run searches for these three roles" beats "two days a week on talent." Set an end date at the start, even if you extend it later.
Fellows
Fellows are usually early-career people who want to learn venture. They bring energy and hours, and they need direction. Give them work with a clear shape: company research before office hours, event logistics, first drafts of the portfolio newsletter, cleaning up the founder asks backlog. Don't hand a fellow a founder relationship in week one.
EIRs
An EIR is an experienced operator between companies. They're often the best person you'll ever get for deep, hands-on help at one company. In return for a desk and your network, ask for a defined platform contribution: a set number of office hours a month, or one embedded project with a portfolio company. Write that down before they start.
Portfolio alumni and operators
Founders and executives from past portfolio companies know your firm and often want to give back. Use them for expertise on demand: a 30-minute call on pricing, a workshop on a first sales hire, a reference for a vendor. Keep the ask small and specific. A standing "we'd love your help sometime" never turns into anything.
Vendor partners
Law firms, accountants, recruiters and service providers will often give portfolio companies time in exchange for access. That's capacity too, if you scope it: office hours, templates, a named contact who answers founders fast. Treat them as partners with clear expectations, not as a logo on a perks page.
Give borrowed people the context on day one
Here's where most of these arrangements go wrong. A fellow starts on Monday and spends the first two weeks asking "which companies are we focused on, and what do they need?" If the answer lives in your head, every new person costs you a week of your own time before they help at all.
Keep a short onboarding pack ready:
- The portfolio list, with stage, sector and the partner on each company.
- Open founder asks, with status and owner.
- Recent context on each company they'll touch (updates, last metrics, recent news).
- Who to ask before contacting a founder, and how intros work at your firm.
- What they can send on their own and what needs review.
The worst outcome is a borrowed person emailing a founder for something the firm already has. It makes the whole firm look disorganized, and the founder doesn't care whether it was a fellow or a partner. So the context has to live in a shared system, not in anyone's inbox.
Keep founder trust while others do the work
A few rules keep this safe:
- Founders know who they're dealing with. Introduce every borrowed person by name and role, from the platform lead's inbox.
- Drafts first, for a month. New people draft their founder emails and intros. The owner reviews before anything goes out. Loosen it once you trust their judgment.
- Double opt-in, always. Nobody makes an intro on the firm's behalf without both sides agreeing first.
- Log the work where everyone else does. Work done by fellows and EIRs belongs in the same value-add record as the rest of the team's. Otherwise it vanishes when they leave.
That fourth rule also helps you at budget time. A year of documented work by borrowed help ("our fellows ran 40 research briefs, our EIR spent six weeks embedded at one company") is the strongest argument for the full-time hire you couldn't get this year.
When should a platform team use fractional or part-time help?
Use fractional help when the need is real but not full-time: a spike in executive searches, a quarterly event series, a GTM program or an LP reporting push. If the same need fills more than half a week for two quarters in a row, it’s probably time to make the case for a hire.
Fractional also works as a test. If you're not sure the firm needs a full-time talent lead, a six-month fractional engagement shows you the real volume, and it gives partners evidence instead of a guess. Track the requests the fractional person handles, and you'll have the data for the hiring case, or the reasons not to hire.
How do you run EIRs, fellows or scouts as platform capacity?
Give each one a written scope, a single owner on the platform team, a fixed term and a short list of deliverables tied to real founder requests. Share the context they need on day one, and review their work every two weeks. Without that structure, they cost you time instead of adding capacity.
A scope can fit on half a page. For example:
Fellowship scope, fall term
Owner: Head of Platform. Term: 12 weeks, about 15 hours a week.
Deliverables: a research brief before each office hours session, logistics for two founder dinners, and first drafts of the monthly portfolio newsletter.
Review: every other Friday, 30 minutes.
Can send without review after week four: event logistics emails. Always reviewed: anything to a founder or LP.
Scouts are usually thought of as dealflow. As platform capacity, use them for reach: a scout in a city where you have three portfolio companies can host a small dinner or make customer intros there. Give them the same written scope, and log their intros with everyone else's.