Presto Media: Scaling a content agency from Google Sheets to an enterprise platform
A Google Sheet got us started. It also almost stopped us from scaling. So we built our way past it.
The challenge
Presto Media ran on a master Google Sheet and a stack of Google Docs, one setup per client, tracking statuses, headlines, and briefs by hand. Assignments went out manually. Writer payouts were calculated and paid by hand through PayPal. It worked at a small scale. It broke down completely as clients scaled into hundreds of articles a month, since the only way to handle more volume in Sheets was to hire someone whose full-time job was managing the sheet.
The solution
Raised investment to build the Presto Content Platform, an enterprise-grade workflow engine, with development led by Patrick Fitzsimmons, a founding CMS engineer at HubSpot. Built real client onboarding with custom style guides, a pitch-to-assignment pipeline with fully customized requirements per article type, and system-enforced quality control that wouldn't let a writer submit work that didn't meet spec. Integrated fair-use image libraries to cut sourcing time, built a WordPress plugin for one-click publishing straight into client sites, and added production, writer activity, and payout reporting so every part of the business had real visibility instead of manual tracking.
The outcome
Presto scaled from a spreadsheet operation to a platform handling close to a thousand articles a month. Every friction point in the old process, assignment, quality control, image sourcing, publishing, payouts, revisions, got replaced with a faster system for every person touching it. The result was better deadlines, higher-quality content, fewer revision cycles, and an agency that could actually grow instead of hiring more people just to manage a spreadsheet.
At a glance
Company: Presto Media, content agency I founded in 2016
My role: Founder, product visionary and architect. Directed development alongside Patrick Fitzsimmons, a founding CMS engineer at HubSpot
Timeline: Started manual in 2016, platform built after raising investment as volume outgrew Sheets and Docs
Stack: Java backend, MySQL, Vue.js frontend, Buefy component framework
What I built: The Presto Content Platform, an end-to-end workflow engine connecting publishers, editors, writers, and clients
Who they are
Presto Media started as a content agency serving online digital publications that needed a high volume of articles written and published. I hired quality writers and managed the relationship between publishers and writers by hand. It worked, until it didn't.
What was broken
Everything ran on a master Google Sheet per client, linked out to Google Docs for the actual articles.
Statuses, headline titles, and article brief details lived in a spreadsheet I updated manually.
I assigned every article to a writer by hand.
I calculated what I owed each writer by hand, then paid them manually through PayPal.
As clients scaled into hundreds of articles a month, the system couldn't keep up. The only way to handle more volume in Sheets was to hire someone whose entire job was managing the sheet, which doesn't scale, it just moves the bottleneck to a person.
We raised investment specifically to fix this. That investment built the Presto Content Platform.
What I did
Rebuilt onboarding and account management
New clients got a real account, invited their own team as users, and got a custom editorial style guide detailing every publisher-specific requirement, all without a spreadsheet in sight.
Built a real pitch-to-assignment pipeline
We could pitch clients on topics directly in the platform. Approved pitches became live assignments automatically, either claimable by writers or requestable by the client with fully customized specs per article type, listicle, SEO blog post, slideshow, each with its own requirement fields.
Enforced quality control at the system level
Writers couldn't submit an article that didn't meet the requirements, word count, formatting, whatever the client or article type demanded. Every rule was configurable per client or per article from the admin side. Quality stopped depending on a writer remembering the rules and started being enforced by the system itself.
Cut the biggest hidden time-sink in content production
Built an integrated image library connecting Flickr, Unsplash, Pixabay, Wikimedia, and Giphy, so sourcing fair-use images, one of the slowest parts of producing an article, stopped being a separate manual task.
Closed the last-mile gap into client systems
Built a WordPress plugin that pushed a finished article, SEO details, featured image, tags, and all, straight into a client's site with one click. No more manual copy-paste into someone else's CMS.
Gave every part of the business its own visibility
Production dashboards flagged late or at-risk content. Writer management reports tracked output against quotas. Financial reports auto-calculated writer payouts, turning what used to be manual math into something accounting could run in minutes.
Built revision handling directly into the content itself
Clients could annotate revisions straight onto the article instead of sending notes over email, cutting back-and-forth and reducing the revision cycles that used to eat up everyone's time.
The result
Presto went from a spreadsheet-and-PayPal operation that topped out under its own weight to a platform handling close to a thousand articles a month. Every bottleneck in the old workflow, assignment, quality control, image sourcing, publishing, payouts, revisions, got closed with a system that made that step faster for whoever touched it: client, admin, writer, or accounting. Less friction at every step meant better deadlines, higher quality, fewer revision cycles, and a business that could actually take on volume instead of drowning in it.
The honest note
Presto is proof that most agencies don't hit a growth ceiling because the work gets harder. They hit it because the tools they started with were never built for the volume they're doing now. The fix usually isn't working harder inside the old system. It's building a new one.