How Pilothouse Scaled to 170+ Employees in Under 3 Years
Key Takeaways
- Rapid growth requires hiring systems that can keep up with demand without sacrificing quality
- Culture must be built intentionally from the start - it does not happen by accident at scale
- Specialization across service lines allows teams to go deeper and deliver better results
- Remote-first operations gave Pilothouse access to a broader talent pool and faster hiring
- Investing in middle management early prevents leadership bottlenecks during hypergrowth
- Data-driven decision making across media buying translated into how they ran the business
Andrew Stern, Co-Founder of Pilothouse, joins the Agency Journey podcast to break down how the performance marketing agency scaled from a small team to over 170 employees in under three years. Pilothouse has become one of the fastest-growing DTC performance agencies in North America, and Andrew shares the operational playbook that made it possible.
Building for Rapid Growth from Day One
Pilothouse was founded with a clear niche - performance marketing for direct-to-consumer ecommerce brands. That focus gave the team a significant advantage when it came to hiring, positioning, and delivering results. Rather than trying to be everything to everyone, they doubled down on paid media across platforms like Meta, Google, TikTok, and Amazon.
Andrew explains that one of the most important decisions was building a remote-first culture from the beginning. With their headquarters in Victoria, BC, Canada, going remote was not just a pandemic response - it was a strategic choice. This opened up the talent pool beyond their local market and allowed them to hire the best people regardless of geography.
The early investment in hiring systems was critical. As demand grew, Pilothouse needed a repeatable process for sourcing, vetting, and onboarding new team members quickly without letting quality slip. Andrew describes how they built structured interview processes, skills assessments, and onboarding programs that could scale alongside the business.
Specialization and Team Structure
One of the keys to Pilothouse’s growth was their approach to team specialization. Rather than having generalist account managers handling everything, they built dedicated teams around specific platforms and services. This allowed each team to develop deep expertise and deliver stronger results for clients.
Andrew talks about the importance of creating a leadership layer early. When you are growing fast, the founders cannot be the bottleneck for every decision. Pilothouse invested in middle management and team leads who could own outcomes within their areas. This freed up the founding team to focus on strategy, business development, and culture.
The agency also maintained a strong emphasis on data. Coming from a performance marketing background, the team applied the same analytical rigor to internal operations that they used for client campaigns. Metrics around team utilization, client retention, and delivery quality helped them spot issues early and course-correct before problems compounded.
Culture at Scale
Scaling a team from a handful of people to 170+ in under three years creates enormous cultural pressure. Andrew shares how Pilothouse approached culture building intentionally, rather than hoping it would develop organically. Regular all-hands meetings, transparent communication about company goals and financials, and investment in team events all played a role.
One of the biggest challenges was maintaining the startup energy and sense of ownership as the team grew. Andrew describes creating clear career paths and growth opportunities so that early employees did not feel lost as the company expanded. Empowering team leads to make decisions and run their groups like small businesses within the larger organization helped maintain that entrepreneurial spirit.
The combination of a clear niche, remote-first operations, structured hiring, and intentional culture building gave Pilothouse the foundation to grow at an extraordinary pace without the wheels falling off. Andrew’s candid take on what worked - and what they would do differently - makes this a valuable conversation for any agency leader thinking about scaling fast.