Scaling with purpose: How Great Yellow is keeping “Muddy Boots” values alive

At Great Yellow, nature is more than a metaphor - it’s the mission. When their team went from a startup to 26 people in two years, their hiring process needed to catch up. Homerun became the structure beneath their growth: making it easier to hire, stay aligned, and preserve the team culture that sets Great Yellow apart.

From mission to momentum

Great Yellow began with a mission that is as ambitious as it is precise. Co-founder and CEO, Ed Dick, who came from a background in business analytics and law, was working on investing in nature restoration projects with Grosvenor, an international estate and asset management company founded in the 1600s. He quickly realized that while businesses were increasingly encouraged - or even required - to address their impact  on the environment, there was no clear, financeable process for doing so.

Kat Ma, VP of Operations at Great Yellow, explains:

“Ed found that there was a gap in the heavy lifting - the finance planning, negotiations, go-to-market expertise - all the things it takes to make nature investable.”

The team initially explored being a matchmaking service, an app for investment selection, or a platform for managing nature investments. Ultimately, they decided their mission was to guide both sides of the market: land stewards and buyers or investors, helping them navigate the full cycle of nature and landscape recovery projects, with tools, models, and eventually a tech platform.

The first year was about learning and research. By the end of year one, Great Yellow had about six or seven people. By the second anniversary, the team had grown to 26, a scale-up fueled by clarity of their mission and focus on sustainable growth.

“Muddy boots” values and thoughtful culture

At the heart of Great Yellow is a culture of ownership, transparency, and passion for the mission. Every team member is empowered to take initiative, expand their role, and bring their ideas to life. Kat describes their core philosophy:

“You see through our language and behavior that we value being kind and collaborative. There’s a lot of good intent and passion. People aren’t just doing one job, they roll up their sleeves wherever they see a need.”

Even as the company scales, staying connected to the work in the field remains crucial. The team frequently visits restoration projects, working alongside farmers, ecologists, and local stewards to maintain what they call their “muddy boots” approach.

“We go on site, literally wearing muddy boots, hearing from the experts who know their land intimately, and understanding what our work is actually enabling on the ground,” - Kat adds.

Flexibility and well-being are also core. Great Yellow introduced initiatives like a “fallow week,” where the office closes for a full week each summer, allowing the team to rest and recharge - reflecting the regenerative approach they champion on the land, and an understanding that productivity is about more than just constant output.

As growth accelerated: the chaos of initial hiring

Early hiring was manageable, just a few roles at a time, tracked with scorecards and comments in Notion and Slack channels. But as the company scaled, the system started to crack.

“In Notion… every now and then someone would stumble across old notes from a role we’d wrapped months before,” Kat recalls. “Nothing dramatic - it just showed us we needed something more structured.”

The volume of data became overwhelming: 30, 40 scorecards scattered across different pages, making comparison and decision-making difficult. As the team grew, the need for a more structured, collaborative, and secure system became clear.

Great Yellow had tried Homerun a year and a half earlier but hadn’t been hiring consistently. By early 2025, with multiple roles open and their Notion process stretched to its limits, Homerun finally became the central tool for recruitment and HR.

Katie, the new Talent Manager, was immediately impressed:

“It didn’t take long to find my feet. It’s really intuitive, really user-friendly compared to many systems I’ve used previously. It’s also so much faster to do your go-to functions, not a clunky system at all!”

Homerun standardized scorecards across stages and competencies, captured debriefs and hiring decisions, and allowed everyone to see who had done what. The platform also became the central hub for the talent pool, making it easy to field inbound interest and proactively source for future roles.

“And now, people involved in a hiring panel will share folks from their network like, ‘Hey, let me know what you think of this CV in Homerun?’ And it’s so simple to use that people do it quickly and it works as a source of truth.” — Kat

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HR made simple

Homerun isn’t just a hiring tool: for Great Yellow, it’s also the perfect HR companion for managing a growing team.

Kat explains how it solved one surprisingly tricky problem: keeping track of time off.

“That was really helpful because we didn’t have a proper system before. We have a very flexible setup - unlimited holiday, with a minimum of 25 days -so we don’t mind if you take more, as long as the work gets done. But we still needed to track days taken off, in case anybody leaves the company so we have to pay out and to stay compliant.”

Before Homerun, that meant manually checking calendars and counting days by hand. “Whenever someone asked about their balance, I’d have a look through their calendar to count their days,” Kat says, laughing. “Which obviously isn’t ideal.”

Now, holidays are synced automatically with Google Calendar. “People know they have to put their holiday in Homerun because that’s the only way it shows up on the team calendar,” she adds. “It kind of forces the process, which is great - and everyone can see who else is off, in the same view as key deadlines and team events.”

Beyond holidays, the HR system helps the team stay on top of anniversaries, probation reminders, and important dates. Katie notes how this kind of visibility has quietly become invaluable.

Onboarding and the path ahead

As the team grows, onboarding has become more structured as well. Now, each new hire is assigned a buddy, has monthly check-ins during their first quarter with Katie, and receives a comprehensive orientation pack. While some processes still start off manually, the team is exploring ways to integrate more into Homerun’s HR workflows.

Looking ahead, Great Yellow plans to maintain 3–5 open roles at a time while strategically expanding across project advisory, investor relations, product and tech, and operations. With a round of fundraising closing soon, the next wave of growth promises new hires, and new challenges, but Homerun ensures that structure, transparency, and culture scale alongside the team.

“We could push ourselves to grow even faster, but we choose to grow intentionally and stay nimble,” Kat reflects.

“Homerun lets us focus on people and impact, rather than spend time juggling chaos.”

For Great Yellow, the mission remains clear: grow with purpose, hire thoughtfully, and keep those muddy boots on the ground!

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Ready to scale your team, without losing your values? Hire with heart, clarity, and ease with Homerun 🌱

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