Illustration by Alvaro Dominguez

The Los Angeles–based startup Stell was borne of a pain point almost as old as recorded history itself: paperwork. One of Stell’s cofounders, Malory McLemore (MBA 2022), had landed a job as an engineer at Airbus after earning a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering. There she helped suppliers design and certify their systems for flight: new seats for an aircraft, for example, or a Wi-Fi system for the new Delta Air Lines plane. She was surprised to find that engineers relied on outdated tools to manage these complex workflows—an issue McLemore also encountered at a subsequent role in Raytheon’s missile defense program. Highly technical specifications were often tracked in low-tech Excel spreadsheets, which meant engineers lost considerable time to paperwork. That was frustrating, but even more alarming was the potential for manufacturing mistakes that could cost a company several months of time, hundreds of millions of dollars, or both.

Later, working as a product manager for a robotics and automation startup after HBS, McLemore realized that the problem wasn’t unique to the behemoths of the aerospace and defense industry. In a machine shop that was building precision components destined for SpaceX rockets, again she found an inefficient process that relied on legacy systems. Seeing the same old problem from a new angle, she called Anne Wen (MBA 2022), her HBS space club co-president, to say she was leaving her job. Did Wen want to join her in building a solution?

They founded Stell in 2022. Its initial product is a software platform designed to help engineers track technical specifications from the initial concept through engineering, execution, manufacturing, and deployment. Wen, who is COO, says the tool offers the most value for enterprise-sized businesses, where multiple teams (of 50 to 1,000 people) are collaborating on a single program to build hardware. Companies fitting that description tend to be in aerospace and defense, Wen says, so Stell focused on cybersecurity more than a typical MVP product might, and their go-to-market process has been a tad complicated. But by this point Stell has a solid foundation, having secured initial funding and landed a few customers. With their robust feedback, those customers have helped Stell hone its ideal customer profile. Now Stell needs to get the word out.

The cofounders know that a marketing campaign would help accelerate their efforts, but with a team of six people (all engineers), they want to be thoughtful about how they might handle the influx of interest that a marketing effort could conceivably introduce, as well as the outflow of cash. There’s also the question of the messaging itself: Because they’re selling to medium-sized organizations, Wen and McLemore debate whether to target the engineer who would use the platform or the buyer who’s more likely to be an executive. Different messages resonate for each group. High-level leadership gets excited about the potential for machine learning, LLM (large language model), and AI, Wen says. Systems engineers, on the other hand, want to hear about solving the day-to-day pain point; they’re not at all interested in AI.

McLemore, who serves as CEO, adds that many of the company’s ideal customers live in aerospace hubs—places like Huntsville, Alabama; Melbourne, Florida; and Colorado Springs, Colorado—and, as engineers who haven’t likely changed jobs in a long time, they don’t frequent places like LinkedIn. Digital marketing campaigns could miss them entirely. The cofounders are considering the value of physical billboards in these micro aerospace communities as an alternative way to reach their ideal customer. Their question: When is the right time for Stell to experiment with marketing, and how should they approach both digital and physical media marketing campaigns to gain brand awareness with users and buyers?

For a large enterprise build with distributed users, it will take too long to get a senior executive to purchase and mandate use, and there will likely be resistance from users. Buying billboards is not targeted enough and is still a one-to-many voice. There is also a network effect at work in that everyone on a project needs to use the tool for it to generate the most value to any one user or to the system. I would study what Slack did and get the tool into the hands of groups of users, for no charge to start. Engineers like to discover things, then share with others on their teams. While they may not use LinkedIn, find out what they do use on their laptops and mobile devices during the day and get your product into the technical chat communities. If enough users start adopting it, then you can sell into the company so all employees have access.

—Lara Hodgson (MBA 1998), is the coauthor of Level Up and the CEO of Now, where she helps small businesses grow with the payment system, NowAccount.

Stell faces a classic challenge for enterprise software startups: finding a way to convey distinct but complementary messages to the different people who make up the overall decision-making unit. Malory and Anne won’t be able to choose between focusing on systems engineers or high-level leadership; they need the former to become enthusiastic advocates for Stell’s product and the latter to see Stell as a golden opportunity to improve business metrics. Stell’s extremely specific market is a blessing and a curse.

The long-serving engineers might not frequent LinkedIn, but they certainly find other ways to connect. These may be trade shows or even ancient mailing lists and forums. The founders should ask their initial customers for pointers to these potential channels. Every customer meeting should include the question, “Where else do you connect with peers and collaborators outside your company?” Meanwhile, the high-level leaders are probably more reachable by conventional marketing. This might include thought leadership (on LinkedIn and in trade publications) and speaking at industry events about the very real challenges Stell is trying to solve for its customers. Stell should launch these efforts right away but budget for marketing in a way that allows for continued investing. In a close-knit industry, marketing efforts need time to compound and spread, and the greatest impact may appear only after an extended effort.

—Chris Yeh (MBA 2000), is coauthor of Blitzscaling: The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies and general partner of Blitzscaling Ventures.

Post a Comment