How Pylon Scales Fast Without a Traditional Talent Function

When Pylon closed its $17M Series A led by a16z in summer 2024, they were already powering customer support for breakout companies like Anyscale, Hightouch, and Lumos. Their platform is built for a clear gap in the market: B2B companies need a customer support system designed around accounts, not transactions.

Pylon is launching modern workflows for channels like Slack and Microsoft Teams, tightly integrating AI, and replacing the outdated B2C-era playbooks of Zendesk and Intercom.

Their challenge? Scaling fast without compromising bar, and without overbuilding a bloated hiring machine.

So they brought in Beluga.

“Hiring was our biggest problem. We needed a system that could move fast, get the right people in, and not bog us down.” - Advith Chelikani, Co-Founder

Beluga embedded into the team, scaling sourcing and screening while helping Pylon double their headcount. All without adding internal recruiting overhead.

Beluga works with you. Sometimes contingency makes sense, sometimes embedded. We shape our approach around your team. Learn more.

Beluga’s Embedded Advantage

Beluga isn’t another vendor lobbing resumes. We operate as part of Pylon’s team; plugging in immediately and aligning to their culture, pace, and expectations.

1. Embedded Like a Team Member, Not a Vendor

• Match voice and tone to pitch like a founder

• Own RecOps to eliminate back-and-forth and quickly drive next steps

• Integrate directly into daily workflows, not perched on the edge

“Beluga raised the bar for our recruiting. We'd be stuck trying to scale the team now if not for them” - Advith Chelikani, CTO

2. Networked and Data-Driven Sourcing

• Map the Total Obtainable Market (TOM): candidates who can actually thrive at a startup like Pylon. Mission-aligned, fast-moving, founder-caliber

• Activate campaigns via LinkedIn + Ashby to source and track high-signal prospects

• Leverage Pylon’s 21K+ extended Bay Area network to target trusted referrals

“We didn’t just need volume. To scale, we needed to consistently replace ourselves across core functions, not just find employees. That kind of recruiting is hard.” - Robert Eng, Co-Founder

3. Right-Sized Systems That Scale

Beluga doesn’t introduce unnecessary complexity; we build lightweight, repeatable hiring infrastructure that scales with the team, not ahead of it.

• 4-stage interview loops tailored for speed and clarity

• Express-lane fast-tracking for exceptional talent

• Structured, practical exercises - time-boxed, not bloated

• Compensation benchmarks and playbooks to help founders close quickly

“Hiring isn’t just sourcing and interviews. It’s about building a system that fits your pace. Beluga manages the pipeline and the details so our team can focus on making the right decisions” - Advith Chelikani, Co-Founder

4. Mining and Activating Internal Networks

• Acquired LinkedIn exports from opt-in employees to surface warm leads

• Tagged, organized, and tracked connections in Ashby

• Identified degrees of separation to avoid cold outreach

“Beluga helped us unlock warm intros we didn’t even know we had. That’s a superpower.” - Robert Eng, Co-Founder

Precision Over Spray-and-Pray: TOM > TAM

Early-stage teams often focus on the TAM, the Total Addressable Market of candidates who look good on paper. We help Pylon think in terms of TOM: the Total Obtainable Market.

That means:

• People excited by Pylon’s mission

• Comfortable with the pace, ambiguity, and ownership

• Realistic about comp, scope, and trajectory

To get there, we go beyond basic filters:

• Sifting through fellowship programs like KP and Neo, and mining the universe of previous YC founders

• Enriching outreach lists with top-tier design portfolios prior to contact, personalizing our messaging

• Using softer touch points, like inviting candidates to have coffee or attend casual team events like Pie-lon (Pylon) Day before funnelling them into a formal process

Some conversations take six months to mature. That’s fine. We don’t just chase interest, we nurture it.

3 ways Pylon’s founders help drive hiring success

Great hiring is always led by founders. And the best recruiting teams work as an extension of and force multiplier to these founders. With Advith, Robert, and Marty, three things stand out:

1. They treat speed as a competitive edge, always pushing for faster, smarter ways to find and close the right people

2. They intentionally invest in LinkedIn and their employer brand, boosting cold outreach response rates and candidate enthusiasm

3. They foster a culture where employees are eager to refer top talent from their networks

Results That Matter

Over the past 6 months:

• 23 hires across Engineering, Design, Success, Support, and Solutions

• Sources: Outbound → 40% / Direct referral → 26% / Network mining → 17% / Inbound → 13%

• Team size doubled from 17 → 40

• 186 founder interview hours saved

• Built a full recruiting engine while staying nimble and founder-led

The competition for talent is only getting more intense. Having a scalable team like Beluga in our corner, tapped into the candidate market and seeing firsthand what is working across startups, makes partnering with them a no-brainer. - Advith Chelikani, Co-Founder

A Lightweight Recruiting Engine

Beluga’s goal is to shape a foundation that fits your needs and provide you with a scaleable talent arm from Seed > Growth Stage.

At Pylon, we:

• Implement lightweight hiring workflows and scorecards

• Document key stages to support new interviewers

• Streamline sourcing, scheduling, and communication through Ashby

• Create a system that founders can scale or hand off as the team grows

Startups don’t need process-heavy systems. They need the right system for their specific stage and culture. One that enables speed without sacrificing bar. That’s what we build.

“We lived in our office. We capped our salaries. Everything about our company was built for efficiency. Hiring needed to match that. Beluga got it.” – Marty Kausas, Co-Founder

Join the waitlist for more info