After spending more than eight years at Amazon as an executive involved in last-mile delivery innovation and Alexa privacy compliance, Trent Gillespie often found himself being approached to share his insights gained at the tech giant.
A seasoned public speaker, Gillespie delivers talks to business leaders on navigating the rapidly evolving landscape of artificial intelligence. However, Gillespie’s new startup, which provides “expert AI advisory,” is not aimed at tech companies.
“Every tech organization thinks they know the best ways to do things, and that’s an uphill battle to try and get them to think differently about it,” said Gillespie, the co-founder and CEO of Seattle-based Stellis AI.
His target is non-tech organizations — nonprofits, government organizations, manufacturing, retail, and more.
“They know that they’re going to be impacted by AI, but they don’t know who to talk to. They don’t know who can help them,” Gillespie said.
His smallest client is a 30-person plumbing parts distributor.
Encountering business leaders who are worried about making the wrong decisions and uncertain about which AI solutions are right for them, Gillespie explained that Stellis aims to offer AI strategy development, provide education and workshops for teams, and build AI solutions with its own in-house development team.
The overarching goal is to create growth opportunities for small companies through the use of AI.
“I learned how to do that at Amazon, the most successful long-term growing company in the world,” Gillespie said. “So giving that to smaller organizations I think is the greatest way to make an impact.”
He also aims to “break through and change the conversation” dominated by major tech consultants such as McKinsey and Deloitte, who he believes are profiting from providing information that isn’t very useful.
Gillespie co-founded the company with Nathan Labenz, who serves as the “AI scout” at Stellis. Labenz, the founder and former CEO of video creation platform Waymark, also hosts “The Cognitive Revolution,” a podcast exploring the impact of AI on society.
Stellis has secured an undisclosed amount of funding, with support from Mudita Venture Partners. Gillespie mentioned it was “enough to get started and hire a dev team,” and noted that the startup is already generating revenue.
Despite dealing with funding, hiring a team, branding, legal issues, and market positioning, Gillespie stated he never intended to launch a startup. It just happened that way.
“It’s no longer just me; I’m building a full organization,” he said. “It’s a totally different style because we’re not trying to be a trillion-dollar unicorn. We’re trying to go out and create a positive impact and help companies.”
Gillespie and Stellis are participating in Seattle AI Week, including Gillespie’s “AI 101 Workshop” and a demo day showcasing various Seattle-area AI startups, both on June 11.
