How Matt Bertulli built Pela from zero to mid-eight figures

Executive overview

Scaling a physical goods company is fundamentally different from software: capital, people, and systems all break simultaneously, and growth must be managed in steps rather than spikes. Matt Bertulli, co-founder and CEO of Pela Case, built a decade-long e-commerce agency before pivoting to lead one of Canada's fastest-growing consumer brands.

The conversation covers how Pela reached a mid-eight-figure run rate in four years, the mechanics of high-volume paid acquisition, and the creative process behind campaigns that routinely go viral.

The edge in paid media is not technical precision — it's the willingness to spend into uncertainty and the creative instinct to know when the signal is real before the platform confirms it.

Scaling a physical goods company

• Physical goods break differently from software: capital structure, people, and systems all fracture at the same time during rapid growth
• Pela went from zero to eight figures in four years, including a period of doubling every 30-60 days between 2017 and 2019
• Teams predictably break at threes and tens: 3, 10, 30, 100 — natural inflection points requiring infrastructure rebuild each time
• Cash is consumed ahead of revenue in physical goods because raw materials must be bought before product ships — there is no drop-shipping buffer
• Every 90 days during the growth phase, the team ran a post-mortem: what broke — capital structure, team, or systems?
• Building ahead of the next break point is expensive and feels like over-hiring; not building ahead is more expensive

From agency to operator: the DMACC years

• Bertulli founded DMACC Media in 2007 after leaving NetSuite, spotting that Canadian e-commerce penetration was 1% vs. 7-8% in the US
• Early model: build online stores for brick-and-mortar retailers in exchange for a revenue share over five years — no upfront cost to the client
• At scale, the performance model felt like a tax to clients; the business eventually transitioned to retainers and project billing
• The agency reached ~200 clients over a decade, covering categories from baby products to firearms — Bertulli calls it "the circle of life"
• Watching 200 different business models taught him how to read data and find the overlap between tech and creative — that intersection became his edge
• Cash flow nearly collapsed multiple times on project-based billing before retainers stabilised the business

Founding Pela and the venture studio idea

• Bertulli met Pela's inventor Jeremy through a mutual contact at a mastermind event; at the time there was a product but no business
• Original plan: invest and incubate 10 companies in a venture studio model — Pela was the first and turned out to be a potential rocket ship, so the portfolio idea was dropped
• His wife's intervention was the forcing function: she told him he couldn't run two companies simultaneously and had to choose
• Within a month or two of deciding to focus on Pela, a private equity buyer for DMACC appeared by chance
• Pela's product thesis: everyday objects with a graceful end of life designed in from day one — compostable materials that degrade in 3-6 months in a backyard compost
• Product expansion logic mirrors Tesla's ladder: start high-margin (phone cases), move into adjacent categories (eyewear, personal care, pet) as materials and economics improve

Paid acquisition at scale

• Bertulli runs all ad activity off a P&L framework: invest $1 for every $3 of revenue, and keep investing as long as it scales — campaign-level ROAS is not the primary signal
• Attribution is the trap most brands fall into: they cut spend when a platform doesn't immediately confirm return, ignoring organic lift and residual carry-through
• Facebook rewards small spend; at six figures per month the signal becomes murky — that is where most brands stop and where Pela leans in
• Decision-making at scale requires intuition layered on top of data: cost per click, CPM, social engagement, and order velocity are all read together before the platform catches up
• Spend is not uniform — it is batched and layered, sometimes in three-hour bursts (e.g., dumping an extra $30,000 into a campaign mid-day when KPIs signal a live event is working)
• At their run rate, a single creative can burn out in under 24 hours; the fast feedback loop is the advantage

Creative process and team structure

• Bertulli reads customer reviews obsessively and runs word-density analysis to find the language customers actually use — many winning ads are verbatim customer copy
• Ideation process: take an idea to the most absurd, offensive, or ridiculous extreme, then work backwards to something that stops the scroll without embarrassing the brand
• Example: noticing customers described the material as "soft," then riffing through absurd soft comparisons (cats, puppies, the furry wall) until landing on winning copy
• The "wear one, wash one" campaign originated from a customer's Instagram post — a nurse washing her phone case during COVID; Pela responded within an hour with a BOGO framed around hygiene
• Brand guidelines are suspended for advertising: meet customers where they are on TikTok and Instagram, not where the brand book says they should be
• In-house creative team (photography, videography, design) is essential at scale — outsourcing creative fails when cycles are daily or shorter
• Team structure: one head of paid on staff, channel- or brand-specific freelance media buyers, weekly syncs covering what's working and what to test next
• Media buyers are part of creative ideation, not just execution — candid, ego-free problem-solving is the operating norm
• Story blocks are pre-built: multiple 3-5 second intros are produced in advance so that when a video performs, twelve alternate intros are ready to iterate without re-shooting

Marketing calendar and step-up events

• Growth is mapped to "step-up" events: moments (product drops, Black Friday, Earth Day) that can permanently lift the baseline audience and revenue
• Earth Day is Pela's biggest annual step: environmental media coverage creates a cultural tailwind that amplifies every channel simultaneously
• Monthly design drops are used as smaller, repeatable step attempts — when one lands in the top five best sellers within days, that is a successful step
• Seasonality is respected: spend is lower in February, accelerates into April, and peaks around major retail and cultural events

Identity and mission as competitive advantage

• Pela describes its through-line as "mission market fit" rather than product market fit — every product must fit the mission of removing waste, not just a market opportunity
• The mission ("stop a billion pounds of waste per year") provides intrinsic motivation that the agency work never did; Bertulli credits it with sustaining high-drive without burnout
• Using aggressive digital marketing tactics feels sustainable because the product outcome is genuinely positive — "I get to use all the dirty tricks and sleep well at night"
• Development philosophy: beat yesterday's self rather than projecting forward into an ideal future identity; carve out unscheduled hours daily just to think and write