Why Do Agencies Stall When They Start to Scale?

Most agencies don’t stall because they’re doing something wrong. They stall because they’re solving the wrong problem for the stage they’re at.

Simon Penson, founder of Scaled, spends his time inside a wide range of growing agencies and B2B businesses, watching where momentum builds… and where it quietly breaks. 

“I see lots of problems at different scales of growth,” Simon says. “There’s a glass ceiling at £1-1.5m… and a different one at probably £8m and above.”

From that vantage point, a clear pattern shows up: agencies don’t hit one growth wall. They hit a series of predictable stall points as they scale, each caused by a different mismatch between how the business is run and what the next stage demands.

Early on, growth is driven by doing. Founders sell, deliver, decide, and fix. That intensity creates momentum — then slowly becomes the constraint. 

“People are very focused on the here and now,” Simon says. “And that works… until it doesn’t.”

Later, leadership structure lags behind headcount. Decision-making bottlenecks form. The business grows, but value doesn’t. 

At later stages still, control, incentives, and senior capability start to matter more than effort ever did.

“People aren’t prepared for that,” Simon says. “And then they rush it when it hurts them.”

This session is about understanding why agencies stall at different stages of scale — and how the challenges change as the business grows.