How Fello Agency staffs deep-tech creative work in days
Overview
Fello Agency is a Toronto-based marketing and branding agency built exclusively for deep-tech companies. Their client roster spans quantum computing, defense technology, publicly traded medical device companies, autonomous systems, and some of the largest enterprise technology companies in the world.
The agency runs lean: a small partner-led team producing enterprise-scale campaign work. That model only works if they can extend the team with elite specialist talent on demand, and that is exactly what they use Contra for.
The Challenge
You cannot staff a quantum computing campaign with a generalist
Fello's problem was never finding freelancers. It was finding the roughly one percent of freelancers who can execute deep-tech work.
"The go-to example I always give is animators who can visualize a quantum computer," says Zach Ronski, Co-Founder at Fello. "That is genuinely hard to find. Most creative talent has never touched this kind of subject matter. You need someone you can bet on before you even brief them."
Frame from a Fello quantum computing production. Finding animators who can accurately visualize this subject matter is the staffing problem Contra solves.
Before Contra, staffing a specialist role meant posting on LinkedIn, interviewing fifteen candidates, shortlisting for the partners, and hoping the pick held up under a technical brief. The process took around three weeks per role. On generalist marketplaces, the problem inverted: instead of too few candidates, they got flooded with bids from people who had no understanding of the industry.
And in Fello's world, a bad hire is not an inconvenience. It is an existential risk.
"It takes years to build a reputation in this business and seconds to destroy it," Ronski explains. "Early in my career, I hired the wrong people for jobs that should have been done by better people, and I paid for it. A staffing mistake can cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost business. In our industry, you are only as good as your last project."
The Solution with Contra
Vetting elite talent from the profile, not the interview
Contra changed the mechanics of Fello's talent evaluation. Instead of three rounds of calls, Ronski assesses independents directly from their Contra profiles: portfolio, reviews, earnings history, and track record, all visible before the first conversation.
"I can see talent, and I can see when someone's talent will transfer into our space even if they have never worked in it," he says. "I have hired people who had never touched deep tech because their profile told me they could handle it. I made that call myself from their Contra profile instead of talking to them three times."
The workflow now runs through the whole partnership. Ronski builds a shortlist from Contra, sends it to his Creative Director partner, and the partners come back with who they want to speak to. What took three weeks now takes four business days.
"The best people in the creative industry are freelancers," Ronski adds. "The truly elite ones do not want to work at companies. They want freedom. So you have to go find them, and Contra is where they are. When I think Contra, I think top-tier creative talent from all over the world."
Campaign visuals executed with Contra-sourced motion and design specialists working alongside Fello's partners.
A platform that does not get in the way of real business
Because Fello works with some of the largest enterprise technology companies in the world, most engagements require NDAs with every contractor who touches the work. On other platforms, that kind of direct relationship felt like a violation waiting to happen.
"Other platforms felt predatory. Do not talk outside the platform, do not do this, do not do that. I always felt like our account was one step from getting flagged," Ronski says. "Contra does not try to control the relationship. I send an NDA, get it signed, and move the project forward. That is how real agencies have to operate."
Payments closed the loop. "Accounting is one of the hardest parts of running an agency because you are always focused on the work. Being able to pay a contractor instantly on our American Express makes the whole business run cleaner."
Outcomes
From three weeks to four days
Time-to-hire for specialist roles dropped from roughly three weeks to four business days. In one case, a brief that landed on a Tuesday was staffed with signed top-tier talent by Friday.
A bench that changes what the agency can sell
The deeper outcome is commercial confidence. "I bid on work differently now because I know I always have an incredible list of contractors to pull from, just by being on the platform," Ronski says. Flexible staffing has directly let Fello say yes to engagements it would previously have declined.
100% retention, and relationships that outlast projects
Every independent Fello has hired through Contra is still working with the agency today, including a Webflow and Framer developer trusted with the agency's most technically advanced builds. "Everything in this business is trust. These are long-term relationships now. One of these contractors became a genuine friend. We took them out for lunch just to celebrate a project."
The output: deep-tech creative shipped by a lean partner-led team extended with Contra talent.
Advice for other agencies
Ronski's advice to agency founders is blunt: your bench is your ceiling.
"You can only close what you can staff. Contra came along at exactly the right moment for us, and it is honestly software that helped us level up. I wish it had existed in our earlier days."
His ask for the Contra team? "Keep going. Keep building the network, keep expanding it, keep shipping good features. The talent pool is the product, and it is already ten times better than anything else I have used."
