VP People at Fleek

Can you help us fix the world's most broken supply chain? The fashion industry produces over 100 billion garments a year. 60% end up in landfill, not because people don't want these clothes, but because the supply chain for getting secondhand fashion from donation to resale is completely offline, manual, and broken. Fleek is fixing this. Our mission is to make secondhand the first choice. We're building the infrastructure powering the global secondhand clothing trade, through a B2B marketplace and the AI systems digitising the supply chain behind it. Through Fleek, vintage stores, online resellers, and retail buyers source graded secondhand inventory directly from wholesalers and rag houses across multiple countries. Our key enabler is FleekSort, an AI model fine-tuned on secondhand fashion, that can grade, price, and categorise items with just a photo, turning what has historically been an opaque and manual trade into a structured, searchable, and tradable global inventory layer. Since 2022, we've saved 9 million items from landfill and tripled in size year-on-year. We've raised ~$50M from a16z, Y Combinator, Burda Principal Investments, HV Capital, and others, and have recently closed our Series B. Our advisors and private investors include operators behind Depop, Shopify, and Postmates. Today, we serve thousands of resellers and retailers across the UK, Europe, and the US. With the secondhand fashion market projected to reach $350B by 2027, Fleek is building the AI-native operational and financial backbone for secondhand commerce globally. We're looking for people who want to build something that matters, and move fast doing it. Sound good? Keep reading. About the Role At Fleek, People is a growth function. The companies that win over the next decade will be the ones that figure out what it means to build, develop, and retain exceptional teams in an era where every employee is AI-enabled, where a single person can do what used to take five, and where the relationship between a company and its people is being fundamentally rewritten. We don't think the old playbooks apply. Compensation, performance management, ways of working, career development, org design: versions of all of these exist, but they were built for a different era. At Fleek, they need to be reconceptualised from scratch for an AI-native company operating across three countries at speed. You'll be building a globally connected People function from a standing start: the operating system that connects London, Karachi, and Bangalore, the frameworks that make every person at Fleek the best version of themselves, and the thinking that defines what a people function even looks like when AI changes everything about how we work. This role reports directly to Abhi Arora, Co-Founder and CEO, and sits on the senior leadership team. What You'll Own - Design and implement Fleek's operating system: ways of working, communication architecture, and decision-making frameworks across London, Karachi, Bangalore and beyond - Build the people function: org design, levelling, compensation philosophy, performance management, and the full employee lifecycle - Own talent density: set the hiring bar, invest in development, and build performance standards that make every person at Fleek a 10x version of themselves - Drive cultural coherence across three geographies with different working norms, expectations, and communication styles - Coach the founding team on people decisions, organisational design, and leadership development - Build an AI-native people function: use AI to create leverage across every people process rather than scaling headcount - Close compliance and risk gaps across multiple jurisdictions that currently create founder exposure (supported by HR specialists in region) - Set the company's operating cadence: the rituals, rhythms, and communication patterns that keep a fast-moving distributed team aligned Who We're Looking For - 10+ years of operating experience (Ops, Commercial, Product, Strategy etc) with a minimum of 2-3 years in a people function - Non-traditional people background: strategy, operations, consulting, or general management with a deliberate pivot into people leadership - Has built something from genuine zero, not improved an inherited function or optimised an existing team - Experience operating across multiple geographies and cultures - Has stayed at companies long enough to see the consequences of their people decisions - Can hold their own with founders: a coach and thought partner, not a service provider - Deeply analytical: data-driven decision making is second nature - Insatiably curious: you're constantly learning about new tools, approaches, and ways of building organisations - Hungry and ambitious: you're driven to build something exceptional, not maintain something adequate - Change agent: you've driven transformation in previous organisations - Hands-on and scrappy: you're not afraid to roll up your sleeves and build it yourself How We Work Fleek is an in-office company. We believe the best work happens when people are together, the quick decisions, the cross-functional energy, the ability to solve problems in real time. Most of the team works from our London HQ 3-4 days a week. We're not prescriptive about it. Performance and trust matter more than attendance. We hire adults and treat them accordingly. The Practicalities - Location: London HQ, Shoreditch - Work model: In-office, typically 3-4 days per week. - Stage: Post-Series B, hyper-growth - Team: 100+ across London, India, and Pakistan (~20 in London office) Our Values Five values shape how we work at Fleek: - Dream Big and Disrupt Yourself: Push the most ambitious version of what you're building. Step out of your comfort zone. Nothing is out of reach. - Absolute Ownership: The buck stops with you. Drive initiatives to completion. Experiment, learn, persevere. The job isn't done until the job is done. - Curiosity Leads the Way: Don't accept anything at face value. Ask questions you don't know the answer to. That's how you innovate. - Talk to the Customer: Deeply understand their challenges, motivations, and ambitions. Every decision starts with the customer at the centre. - Embrace Diversity: A global team building for a global supply chain. Bring your authentic self and embrace the diversity of everyone you encounter.