Continuum is a venture-backed bet on fractional work, and, better yet, that founders want to show humanity during moments of crisis. The company, launched by CEO Nolan Church in August 2020, started as a play to connect startups to part-time executive help. Now, it has expand to help struggling tech companies cut staff in a more humane, thoughtful way.

“If you really think about where these have gone wrong, all you have to do is look at Better.com,” said Church during an interview with TechCrunch. “The CEO talks about himself, does the mass firing on Zoom, no individual communication…a total disaster.” (No kidding).

Instead Church thinks conducting layoffs is “really not that hard to get right” if a founder is focused on the right things. He’s talking from experience: The founder was the chief people officer at Carta when the company laid off 13% of the company in April 2020. During that cut, Carta CEO Henry Ward took ultimate ownership of the layoffs, a key messaging move that Church pointed out.

To take that lesson and scale it, Church is launching a new product, available today, that will connect leadership teams to an HR executive who will help craft a company communications plan, a diversity and impact analysis, and day-of support in conducting the layoffs.

Alongside layoff support, Continuum offers executive help on a variety of use cases, from compensation strategy to talent acquisitions. Think of it as a two-sided marketplace: Continuum brings together executives with experience from VC-backed companies, including leaders from Tesla, Plaid, Intercom, Snap, Carta and Twitch, and connects them with companies that need help with a specific challenge or pivot.

The company claims that within 48 hours, a customer will be matched with an executive who has previously solved that exact problem. All payments are handled by Continuum, including contracts, invoices, payouts and taxes of the part-time executive.