Get the books cleaned up—No more spreadsheets or shoeboxes of receipts.
Understand their daily expenses—With Pilot, they can see which freelancers they’ve paid, how much, and how often. Every expense is a few clicks away.
Prep for taxes—With categorized books, their accountant has most of what they need so tax season isn’t stressful.
Prepare for growth—When they are ready, they know they can hire an interim Pilot CFO and a whole finance team.
“Pilot helps us find out what we did right and wrong so we can just keep repeating what works. It’s a really great record.”
Working at an ad agency, David always felt his team was missing out on an opportunity to be funnier. The agency’s corporate clients sold soda, chips, or cars, and though the campaigns his team made for them often worked, the productions took months and the ads were rather self-serious. Whereas David would watch his comedian friends beat those brands to the punch with a hilarious iPhone-recorded video.
When that agency started to restructure, David decided this was his moment to leave and build his own agency of comics called Brand Up. He was joined by two co-founders, one of whom owned a historic comedy club in Manhattan. That club used Pilot for bookkeeping. To get organized, Brand Up gave it a try.
David found that Pilot’s calm, steady drumbeat of clear insight and forecasts was exactly what he needed to keep costs low and build a book of business. Now, three years in, they’re suddenly ready to expand.
Comedy is having a moment. David’s corporate clients buy their skits and social posts because the news is a lot right now, and humor is what’s connecting with people. Plus, the faster the world changes, the less comedy has to. “Comedy breaks through precisely because it doesn’t cater to algorithms,” says David. “It doesn’t follow trends. It’s about being right where people are at that time.”
Comedy breaks through precisely because it doesn’t cater to algorithms. It doesn’t follow trends.
Brand Up’s business has shifted a lot since they started out with a roster of just a few dozen comics. The first “product” was basically allowing brands to buy sponsored spots in a real comic’s routine. But that didn’t feel natural. So David and the team did what comedians do: They laughed, sketched, and iterated.
“We run Brand Up like an agency. We work with brands to come up with briefs, then bring in comics as collaborators,” says David. But that process isn’t always fast enough for the news cycle. Companies often have very little time to react. If they wait even a day, the moment passes. So David and the team launched Comcierge, a service that lets brands solicit real-time pitches from comics who upload responses from their phones. “It lets brands react in real time,” explains David. “It’s comics on demand.”
Initially, David and his partners ran the business’ back office by hand. They tracked income and expenses in a spreadsheet. But with so many 1099 contractors and so many experimental new offerings, that got out of hand. It was difficult to do the arithmetic on who’d been paid. That made it hard to conserve cash. They needed to survive long enough to earn the right to pitch big projects.
One of the co-founders had long used Pilot bookkeeping for their comedy club, Stand Up NYC. Brand Up gave it a try, and that was the end of their search.
“As a small business, Pilot does everything we need,” says David. “Before, we were just writing things on paper; basically, the shoebox method. But Pilot is tied to our business bank accounts. It categorizes every business expenditure. It keeps track of who our freelancers are, when they got paid, how many times they got paid. It gives us the numbers so we can ask, ‘Does this person need a 1099?’ Or we can see, ‘Oh, we made more money this year, or we spent a little too much on that last quarter. What can we cut? What should we keep?’”
Then, at the end of the year, David and his co-founders can review how things went, plan, and hand the numbers to their tax preparer. “Pilot helps us find out what we did right and wrong so we can just keep repeating what works,” says David. “It’s really a great record.”
As a small business, Pilot does everything we need. It’s a really great record.
For three years, the co-founders have sustained the venture through ceaseless experimentation. Now, they know what works. Revenue is picking up. They’re signing more and bigger clients and getting to entertain all sorts of exciting ideas. They’re thinking about creating a physical location in New York City for comics to gather. Comedians tend to stay up late, explains David. What if they all had a place to gather and work on ideas? A think tank of sorts?
David and team can run those numbers because they have Pilot. “It’s such a time saver. We just get an email with questions once every while, and know we can just trust the books are always done,” he says. “And I love that Pilot is a whole team so we’re set up for when we ultimately scale. They know the business already and it’s super easy to pull in an interim CFO from Pilot, if, say, we wanted to spin off another business. They’re flexible, just like us.”
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Brand Up is a comedy writer’s room that helps brands to break through with humor. They have a roster of over 500 comedians and produce experiential events, videos, and social media reactions for dozens of major companies.
Working at an ad agency, David always felt his team was missing out on an opportunity to be funnier. The agency’s corporate clients sold soda, chips, or cars, and though the campaigns his team made for them often worked, the productions took months and the ads were rather self-serious. Whereas David would watch his comedian friends beat those brands to the punch with a hilarious iPhone-recorded video.
When that agency started to restructure, David decided this was his moment to leave and build his own agency of comics called Brand Up. He was joined by two co-founders, one of whom owned a historic comedy club in Manhattan. That club used Pilot for bookkeeping. To get organized, Brand Up gave it a try.
David found that Pilot’s calm, steady drumbeat of clear insight and forecasts was exactly what he needed to keep costs low and build a book of business. Now, three years in, they’re suddenly ready to expand.
Comedy is having a moment. David’s corporate clients buy their skits and social posts because the news is a lot right now, and humor is what’s connecting with people. Plus, the faster the world changes, the less comedy has to. “Comedy breaks through precisely because it doesn’t cater to algorithms,” says David. “It doesn’t follow trends. It’s about being right where people are at that time.”
Comedy breaks through precisely because it doesn’t cater to algorithms. It doesn’t follow trends.
Brand Up’s business has shifted a lot since they started out with a roster of just a few dozen comics. The first “product” was basically allowing brands to buy sponsored spots in a real comic’s routine. But that didn’t feel natural. So David and the team did what comedians do: They laughed, sketched, and iterated.
“We run Brand Up like an agency. We work with brands to come up with briefs, then bring in comics as collaborators,” says David. But that process isn’t always fast enough for the news cycle. Companies often have very little time to react. If they wait even a day, the moment passes. So David and the team launched Comcierge, a service that lets brands solicit real-time pitches from comics who upload responses from their phones. “It lets brands react in real time,” explains David. “It’s comics on demand.”
Initially, David and his partners ran the business’ back office by hand. They tracked income and expenses in a spreadsheet. But with so many 1099 contractors and so many experimental new offerings, that got out of hand. It was difficult to do the arithmetic on who’d been paid. That made it hard to conserve cash. They needed to survive long enough to earn the right to pitch big projects.
One of the co-founders had long used Pilot bookkeeping for their comedy club, Stand Up NYC. Brand Up gave it a try, and that was the end of their search.
“As a small business, Pilot does everything we need,” says David. “Before, we were just writing things on paper; basically, the shoebox method. But Pilot is tied to our business bank accounts. It categorizes every business expenditure. It keeps track of who our freelancers are, when they got paid, how many times they got paid. It gives us the numbers so we can ask, ‘Does this person need a 1099?’ Or we can see, ‘Oh, we made more money this year, or we spent a little too much on that last quarter. What can we cut? What should we keep?’”
Then, at the end of the year, David and his co-founders can review how things went, plan, and hand the numbers to their tax preparer. “Pilot helps us find out what we did right and wrong so we can just keep repeating what works,” says David. “It’s really a great record.”
As a small business, Pilot does everything we need. It’s a really great record.
For three years, the co-founders have sustained the venture through ceaseless experimentation. Now, they know what works. Revenue is picking up. They’re signing more and bigger clients and getting to entertain all sorts of exciting ideas. They’re thinking about creating a physical location in New York City for comics to gather. Comedians tend to stay up late, explains David. What if they all had a place to gather and work on ideas? A think tank of sorts?
David and team can run those numbers because they have Pilot. “It’s such a time saver. We just get an email with questions once every while, and know we can just trust the books are always done,” he says. “And I love that Pilot is a whole team so we’re set up for when we ultimately scale. They know the business already and it’s super easy to pull in an interim CFO from Pilot, if, say, we wanted to spin off another business. They’re flexible, just like us.”
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