Growing from Pilot to Market Leader: A Satellite Software Journey

Project overview

An early revenue satellite software company approached First Principles with a challenge—despite having innovative technology and strong industry connections, they struggled to convert potential customers into buyers and to acquire users. With just one pilot customer that was not particularly engaged, a small team of 6-7 people, and no dedicated product expertise, they needed to transform their approach to achieve market success.

First Principles partnered with the founding team to systematically build product thinking capacity, evolve their go-to-market strategy, adapt product value propositions, positioning, and organizational capabilities. Starting with fundamental improvements to customer conversations and expanding to a comprehensive realignment of market segments and product features, First Principles helped guide their journey from promising technology to market leadership.

Client

Space Tech

Year

Services

Platform

Execution

First Principles took a multi-layered approach to this transformation that included 1on1 coaching, 2on1 coaching, team workshops, and customer engagement shadowing. Through that support, the team learned to adapt in the following ways:

Customer Understanding & Sales Approach
- Shifted from feature-focused pitches to customer-centric conversations
- Developed frameworks for understanding and addressing customer pain points
- Created tailored messaging for different stages of customer maturity
Strategic Market Alignment
- Identified disconnects between target market segments and the product vision
- Redefined target market segments to align with core capabilities
- Adjusted feature prioritization to serve high-value market segments
Product Leadership Development
- Led technical founders through a curriculum of product topics to evolve from engineering to product leadership
- Built frameworks for product strategy and decision-making
- Established processes for customer feedback and product iteration
Organizational Evolution
- Guided team structure and scaling decisions
- Developed frameworks for engineering velocity and team topology
- Created processes for Forward Deployed Engineering and customer success

Project results

The company achieved transformative growth across multiple dimensions:

Expanded from one pilot to 13 entities relying on their software for critical missions across commercial and government customers
Secured a strong multi-million dollar investment round on the basis of their results
Grew the team from founders-only to over 20 employees, including help to shape core functions in product, sales, marketing, and customer success
Established their position as the market leader in their space
Launched multiple new product offerings to support an aggressive product vision
Built robust daily active user base across marquee enterprise customers
Successfully integrated AI capabilities into their platform

Most importantly, the company developed the internal capabilities needed to sustain and accelerate their growth, graduating from needing external product coaching to having strong in-house product leadership expertise.

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