After he left Amazon following more than eight years as an executive working on such things as last-mile delivery innovation and Alexa privacy compliance, Trent Gillespie would often be approached to share what he learned at the tech giant.
A seasoned public speaker, Gillespie gives talks to business leaders on how they can best navigate the rapidly shifting landscape around artificial intelligence. But Gillespie isn’t targeting tech companies with his new startup that he says offers “expert AI advisory.”
“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 focus is on non-tech organizations — everything from 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.
He said his smallest client is a 30-person plumbing parts distributor.
Running into business leaders who he says are terrified of making the wrong decisions, and confused about what AI solutions are right for them, Gillespie said the goal of Stellis is to offer AI strategy development, provide education and workshops for teams, and build AI solutions with its own in-house dev team.
Creating growth opportunities for small companies through the use of AI is the overall objective.
“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 impact.”
He also wants to “break through and change the conversation” from what he calls the dominating tech consultants such as McKinsey and Deloitte that are controlling information and making millions of dollars for “stuff that is not very useful.”
Gillespie co-founded the company with Nathan Labenz, the “AI scout” at Stellis. Labenz, the founder and former CEO of video creation platform Waymark, is also host of “The Cognitive Revolution,” a podcast that explores the impact of AI on society.
Stellis has raised an undisclosed amount of funding, with backing from Mudita Venture Partners. Gillespie said it was “enough to get started and hire a dev team,” and he said the startup is already generating revenue.
Even as he takes on funding, hires a team, figures out branding, legal issues, and position in the marketplace, Gillespie said he never intended to do a startup. It’s just how things worked out.
“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 featuring a number of Seattle-area AI startups, both on June 11.
