Agency Veterans Team Back Up As Scaled.co.uk Officially Launches
And so it’s official – Scaled is now officially out of Beta – and is opening up its service offering to the global agency community.
The launch comes following a successful six month research phase as part of a plan to help agency leaders to find a smoother path to ‘true scale’.
And as part of that plan the business welcomes Ride Shotgun Chief growth officer Richard Marriott, who takes up the newly created role of Senior Partner in the consultancy.
Together we plan to offer a full suite of agency-focused growth services including everything from mentoring and coaching to hands-on strategic and tactical growth services.
Richard will also be in charge of developing a platform to further help businesses in the digital services and agency space whilst continuing to offer fractional B2B marketing, and commercial services as part of the wider consultancy offering.
The agency veteran explained: “I can’t wait to get stuck into this new initiative. Having recently helped Ride Shotgun revolutionise their sales and marketing strategy, and previously playing a pivotal part in the growth of Zazzle Media and Stickyeyes, it’s exciting to be able to help other agency owners and founders on their growth journeys. Simon and I have a good track record and between us have a lot of experience which we’re looking forward to sharing. We’ve got lots of exciting plans in the pipeline and this is just the beginning.”
Further to Richard’s hire, Scaled plans to make further hires across Partner and back office roles in the coming months.
Scaled founder Simon Penson explained: “With the majority of agencies failing to get past a few million in revenue it was clear to me that the lessons of growing an agency business past 100 people had real value to others. The mistakes we made can help them avoid the same pot holes. And we are actively on-boarding experienced senior leaders now to help us deliver those services.” he enthused.
And having spent the last three years as a partner at a venture capital firm the exited founder explained that the process of helping dozens of venture-backed and fast growth tech businesses scale had validated the learnings and processes he had picked up on that journey.
Simon’s own journey was not without its twists, turns and lessons as he navigated a successful merger with Leeds-based Stickyeyes and a joint Group sale into IPG just 15 months later. The deal value, whilst never fully disclosed, was said to be in the mid eight figures for an agency business that, by that point, had scaled past 250 people.
“It’s been two years now since we exited our earn out period and in that time I’ve spent a lot of time helping start-ups scale through my work as a VC. That time has been super helpful in validating a lot of the lessons hard learned as an agency founder and the reality is nothing quite has the buzz of agency land, and so I had to come back!” he added.
Want to find out how we can help your agency business? Simply drop the team an email at hello@scaled.co.uk. And if you are looking to join the team reach out at careers@scaled.co.uk now.
Senior Partner Richard Marriott has over two decades of experience running sales, marketing and commercial teams. Having worked client and agency side gives him great perspective on what it’s like on both sides of the table.
Richard previously worked alongside Simon growing his digital marketing agency and took the reins after Simons exit. Following this he led the business through a significant period of integration and change management as it amalgamated with the rest of the group to form a multi-million dollar agency with over 450 people in the UK alone.