When I first connected with Kevin Buerger, I knew this wouldn’t be another “grew by referrals, plateaued, then hired more SDRs” story. Kevin built Jellyfish’s U.S. business from one person to hundreds and helped drive it past $100M in revenue, not by luck, but by installing a growth operating system that blended culture, sales discipline, and global reach.

This isn’t a tale about a single pitch win. It’s a blueprint for founders who want repeatable client acquisition, durable partnerships, and a team that can scale without them.

From “Accidental” Hire to a Repeatable Growth Machine

Kevin didn’t plan on agency life. A startup gig selling search tools led him to a tiny U.K. firm: Jellyfish. They gave him six months to make the U.S. work.
Month two: he closed GameStop.
The lesson that stuck: set a standard, then make it teachable.

He ran Jellyfish U.S. like an enterprise from day one: responsiveness as a promise, strategy-led pitching, and radical transparency with partners and clients. Over a decade, Jellyfish expanded into 15–20 countries, with the U.S. driving the momentum.

“I never wanted to enter a pitch without an unfair advantage. If it’s 1 in 10 odds, pass.”

Systems Before Scale: Sales as a Company Sport

Kevin treats sales as a system, not a personality.

• Strategy leads the room. Decks tell a story; “stuff” doesn’t win.
• Everyone generates activity. Two new relationship meetings per week company-wide.
• Player–coach model. Calendar open, join calls, watch reps in the wild.
• Make clients the hero. If your counterpart gets promoted, you become unbreakable.

He also weaponized partnerships, especially as a global Google Marketing Platform reseller, to earn warm introductions and expand accounts. Sell tech → use performance to win media and strategy → grow multi-year relationships.

Bring Your Clients With You (How Global Expansion Really Works)

Jellyfish didn’t “open offices” and hope. They exported relationships.

• Walden University → Australia: a launch client that seeded a new market.
• Deckers (UGG, HOKA): U.S. success → handed the keys to EMEA/APAC pursuits.

Result: a global footprint clients could trust, and investors valued.

The Cultural Delta: U.K. Process × U.S. Tenacity

Same language, different operating systems. Kevin bridged them: British craft with American urgency. The hard parts: time zones, expectation gaps, decision speed, became advantages once codified.

When to Start M&A (Earlier Than You Think)

Jellyfish waited on acquisitions; Kevin is blunt about the missed time. Capabilities like Salesforce, analytics, and data products could have been pulled forward via targeted buys.

Later, Jellyfish did acquire and was ultimately acquired by Fimalac on the strength of three levers:

• Global client reach (not just headcount abroad)
• Strategic Google partnership (VAR status)
• Consistent ~40% growth

The Breaking Point: Committees Kill Accountability

Scale introduced committees, blurred ownership, and slowed decisions. Kevin walked when accountability disappeared. He took the same playbook to new ventures, this time with full control of resourcing and delivery.

“If no one owns the number, no one hits the number.”

AI Isn’t a Threat—Commodity Work Is

Kevin now advises early-stage AI companies. His stance:

• If your value is execution-only, AI will replace you.
• If your value is judgment, orchestration, and outcomes, AI becomes force-multiplying.
• Be radically transparent with clients about how you’re using AI—then help them look like heroes internally.

Why This Works (When It Often Doesn’t)

• Repeatable sales motion. Strategy-first, partner-fueled, unfair-advantage mindset.
• Exportable success. Bring clients into new markets; don’t cold-start geography.
• Teach what you do. Player–coach culture scales faster than slide decks.
• Self-awareness at the top. Know your edge; hire for your blind spots.

Playbooks for Founders

If you’re sub $15M and want to scale:

• Make strategy the owner of your pitch narrative.
• Institutionalize two net-new relationship meetings per person, per week.
• Design a partner-led pipeline (platforms, ecosystems) for warm starts.
• Say no to pitches where you don’t have an edge.
• Start capability M&A earlier: buy time, not just revenue.

If you’re going global:

• Take clients with you. Build new markets on proven relationships.
• Seed culture by rotating top operators into new offices early.
• Localize delivery; centralize standards.

What Kevin’s Doing Now

Advising AI-first and high-growth companies on go-to-market, partnerships, and category narrative. Sometimes the CEO, often the de facto Chief Growth Officer, always the player–coach.

“Bring energy. Bring curiosity. If you do, we can build something repeatable.”

Listen to the full episode to hear how Kevin turned a six-month trial into a global growth engine, why he refuses 1-in-10 pitches, and how agencies can use AI to expand margins without losing their edge.

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