What’s the one decision you made in the last 12 months that kept you up at night and would you make it again?
Nothing work-related keeps me up at night more than my newborn already does! That said, we at Stellar are making a massive bet on AI predictive models — a move that we believe will reshape our customers’ reality within the next 18 months. Personally, I think it will prove to be the best decision we’ve ever made. Check back with me then, and I’ll give you the update.
What’s a hard truth about your company or sector that you think most of your peers are still avoiding?
Plain and simple: Great connectivity providers start with the use cases and then develop the technology. Space connectivity providers start with the technology and then hope there’s a use case. Spoiler alert: most of the time, there isn’t.
What’s your actual plan if your main supplier, satellite, partner, or market access disappears tomorrow?
A plan comes in steps.
Step 1 – I freak out.
Step 2 – I pull out the backup plan we should have written “yesterday”, I realize it cannot possibly predict everything, and I start making calls to fill those gaps fast.
Which buzzword do you pretend to understand in meetings but secretly don’t or wish would disappear forever?
North Star metric.
Great metaphor, terrible practicality. In reality, we all follow a whole constellation of metrics and we generally pray they go up.
How often do you hear honest feedback from the lowest level of your organization and what was the last thing they told you that stung?
I honestly don’t know. I hope that’s the case all the time, but there’s no chance I can be sure. Here’s something that did sting though: “I appreciate you don’t micromanage, but I get lost when you’re unavailable”. I had to seriously reshuffle my agenda and change some habits after that.
If your main competitor hired away your top three people tomorrow, what’s the first thing that breaks?
On the tech side: within 3 months, literally everything falls apart.
On the commercial side: bye-bye long-term contract deal flow.
It’s a good thing when founders are among those top people—on both the tech and commercial sides—because founders are very difficult to hire away.
What’s one strategic bet you made that hasn’t worked but you’re still publicly defending?
None. I don’t waste time covering yesterday’s errors with today’s bullshit. I’ve made plenty of wrong bets, learned from them, and moved on.
What’s your private prediction about your industry that you haven’t said out loud… yet?
Everyone wants direct-to-device satellite connectivity, but nobody wants to pay for it. In the end, apart from ultra-narrowband use cases, D2D will turn out to be more of a marketing stunt than a meaningful part of the connectivity puzzle.
What’s the one thing you’ve said in interviews or panels that you didn’t actually believe?
I’m not sure I’m the type of person to say things I don’t believe. But I can tell you the statement I’ve heard panelists believe the least: “IRIS² is a great and necessary initiative.” What they’re really thinking is: “Here comes a massive waste of money that won’t lead to anything useful.”
You’ve just been given truth serum and 60 seconds on a live mic. What do you say to your board, your clients, or your rivals? Pick one.
To clients — you often tell us: “Stellar isn’t a decades-old telco, why should we trust you?” My answer is simple: “It’s because we’re not a decades-old telco that you should trust us. The industry giants have had decades to fail you — and they have. And you know it. That’s why you came to talk to us in the first place. Isn’t it time to expect better already?”