Startup Spotlight: Plyable
Martin Oughton, CEO and Co-founder, of Plyable shares more about their recent visit to the Boeing Everett site in Seattle, the story of how three former classmates came together to build a startup and what their next steps are to scale the business.
Explain your product in one simple sentence
Our product makes composite manufacturing easier.
Tell us about the problem you’re solving in aerospace
To be efficient aircraft need to use lightweight materials, particularly Carbon Fibre Composites. We supply the tools that manufacturers need to work with this material faster and with less waste than traditional methods.
We are removing inefficiencies and in turn giving aerospace teams more time to be creative and push the innovation boundaries.
You recently attended Pacific Northwest Aerospace Alliance (PNAA) and visited the Boeing Everett site. How was that?
It was a really great experience and I would recommend the PNAA annual aerospace conference for any startup working or trying to move into the industry.
We all know that Boeing is a big behemoth but when you see it in person, it’s a whole other level of scale and it’s so impressive. When we visited the site, we could see where our value proposition fit, and after going around the Boeing factory, we could see where the other startups from the ABA cohort fit in too. We were able to get a tour of their composites centre, where they actually make composite components. It was also a fantastic opportunity to build personal relationships with stakeholders in their U.S. team.
What is the key challenge you need to solve to move forward as a business?
Our key challenge is how to continue our current rate of growth. When you have one customer, you only need to find another customer to have doubled. When you have 20 customers, you need to find 20 more — it’s actually a nonlinear problem because as revenue grows so do operating costs. The strategy is now around revenue so we’re focusing on having relentless sales drive and also raising further investment for increased marketing and product development.
“There’s no substitute for hard work. Money doesn’t solve problems but hard work does.”
Tell us the story of how your team came together and how you launched the business
Adam Lofts, Adam England and I went to school together but we went to different universities and did very different things. Adam L. studied Mathematics, Adam E. went into music and I completed a degree in Mechanical Engineering.
After university, I lived in Spain for two years before moving back to the UK, Adam E. made his move from music to engineering and started a job in Formula 1 and Adam L. was doing sustainability consulting and later launched his own startup. Similar to what we do at Plyable, Adam L. worked with enterprise customers and created software but for supply chain traceability in this case.
We spent many years apart but when I returned to the UK in 2017, we happened to be in Oxford at the same time. I knew I didn’t want to pursue design consulting long-term and we focused on one pain-point in the industry: procurement and supply chain inefficiency. That’s when Adam E. and I came up with the idea of Plyable and approached Adam L., who we knew was interested in solving applied problems. He said “What do I need to do?” and that’s how we came together.
Three months later, we attended our first tradeshow with an early prototype of our product that we showed on our phone to lots of trade people. We identified success as getting 4 leads over 4 months but we got 20 leads within a week after the event and our first revenue.
What’s the greatest learning from your startup journey so far?
There’s no substitute for hard work. Money doesn’t solve problems but hard work does.
What are you looking forward to most in the programme?
We would like to get 2 new customers in GKN and Boeing. If we can say at the end of 12 weeks that we have 2 new customers that would be great — in reality, we know it might take longer because of how the industry moves.
The main thing is having enough connections to make sure that 6 months after the programme ends, we have 2 new customers for the long-term.
“We focused on the problem that we were solving in the industry, not on our product.”
How do you make the most of mentoring? Any takeaways?
I’m a big fan of getting input from other brains and getting that concentrated period of external input with people who have limited knowledge of the business can be a great thing.
They can bring fresh ideas, fresh input and I can take that away, let the dust settle and move forward. So far in the programme, we’ve been able to sit down with mentors and clarify issues and strengths as well as hear points that keep getting raised over and over again. These challenges are now clearer and we’ll either be addressing or promoting them. It’s been good from a sales pitch perspective in terms of the clarity of our message — pitching our work 20 times a day has made us more efficient.
We’re launching Cohort 2 applications next month. Any tips for filling out the accelerator application form?
To start off: be aerospace specific, that should be an obvious point. We focused on the problem that we were solving in the industry, not on our product. We also came in with references so this wasn’t a moonshot pitch but instead were able to provide real evidence that we were capable of solving problems in the industry. I would say put effort into your application and highlight why this is important to you strategically.
Follow Plyable on Twitter to stay up to date with the team as they continue to grow and scale the business from their HQ in Oxford
Sign up to our mailing list to hear the latest news from our cohort and about the application launch.
For more information about the programme, please contact the ATI Boeing Accelerator team:
Gabi Matic — gm@atiboeingaccelerator.com | linkedin.com/in/gabrielamatic
Wil Benton — wb@atiboeingaccelerator.com | linkedin.com/in/fatkidonfire
Ksenia Kurileva — kk@atiboeingaccelerator.com | linkedin.com/in/kseniakurileva
