Elizabeth McCalley, founder and CEO of StartStak.ai, has been in emerging tech her whole career, much of it spent at IBM bringing cloud and cognitive solutions like IBM Watson, into the healthcare industry. 

But she also loved baking. So much so that in 2023, she was going to start a ghost bakery out of her house; the week of launch her oven broke. 

“I mean, is there a bigger sign?” McCalley said, laughing. 

But she still felt the entrepreneurial tug and decided to launch her own firm—tackling a problem she couldn’t ignore.

“There’s a whole different way to start up”

Working with a caregiving startup, McCalley tested how far AI could accelerate building a business. 

“Three months into a ‘strategy sprint,’ we had done about a year’s worth of work with only two people and 20 bespoke AIs supporting our process,” she said.

They had created an end-to-end business strategy, product requirements, pricing, packaging and financials that without AI, McCalley estimates, would have taken many more experts and at least a half-million dollars.

The experience sparked StartStak.ai, a non-dilutive “startup operating system” that helps founders from $0 to $3 million.

“Everyone’s been working with the Lean Startup method for 13 years. But that’s largely a product-oriented methodology—it’s not meant for what we’re experts in, which is core business strategy and go-to-market execution,” McCalley said. “As a company, we believe that there’s a whole different way to start up, because now, AI can be part of this process, giving founders the 30 knowledge experts they cannot afford to hire.”

Proving the need 

True to its mission, StartStak is using its own AI-powered methodology to build itself.

McCalley has been monetizing AI-native digital and content marketing services to fund StartStak.ai. The team employs AI to do deep research and creates thought leadership pieces about topics of interest to an audience of entrepreneurs: having a company vision, the butterfly effect in startups, gen AI and product-market fit. 

She says Notebook LM, LLMs, and bespoke AIs are used in their processes as a core part of their work. 

“We build a notebook with all of the information necessary—articles, white papers, even recordings—and from there we can source and fetch ideas for content,” McCalley said.

Their work is AI-informed and human-produced by expert writers.

“When I hear ‘humans in the loop’ I disagree,” she added. “I believe that people do the work and AI is a tool—it’s part of their expert process. People are accountable, responsible, and in control of the work they do.” 

What’s next

On Sept. 18, StartStak Academy launched—streaming education content, led by AI avatars designed for idea-stage founders and people considering entrepreneurship. 

“We’re so excited about this. StartStak Academy is MBA-level entrepreneurship content, designed to be consumed in short sessions, meeting founders where they are in their knowledge and consumed at their convenience,” McCalley said. “Over time, this will allow them to make consistent progress in acquiring the knowledge they need without paying thousands in tuition nor trading precious company equity in the earliest company stages.”

Later this year, the company plans to roll out The Lighthouse Experience, a cognitive AI-native application supporting detailed business planning.

While McCalley’s dreams of a ghost bakery may have gone up in smoke, she believes StartStak’s recipe to take innovators from idea to execution can change the way entrepreneurs everywhere go to market.

Voices contributor Nicole Ward is a data journalist for the Dallas Regional Chamber.

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