What your team knows
Your team sees things outsiders don’t, from shifts in customer behavior to where a product has room to grow. We treat that knowledge as the starting point.
GROWTH FOR ESTABLISHED CONSUMER BRANDS
Act on opportunities for growth before the market sees them.
NovaStella works in close orbit with leadership teams at established consumer brands. We add the capacity to act on the opportunities already on your list, and bring outside perspective on growth opportunities and technologies that may not be on your radar yet.
01
Your Gravity
Your brand has gravity, built over decades of customers choosing you.
That pull is what makes a new move possible. It is also the thing you cannot afford to risk.
02
Two Sources of Opportunity
Two Sources
of Opportunity
What we bring
Twenty years across R&D, premium CPG, and forward-looking work from NASA to Nike is where our judgment comes from. We bring an outside view of technologies becoming practical, audiences and channels opening up, and revenue models emerging in neighboring categories.
Together, identify a shortlist to pursue now.
03
Capacity Beside Your Team
Your leadership team is already carrying strategy on top of operations. That is usually why good ideas stall.
We build the runway beside them. Our network of subject matter experts and interim executives gives promising work the capacity and momentum to move, without adding to the load already carried by your leadership team.
04
What We Offer
What We
Offer
R&D Labs: Revenue Growth & Technology Adoption Pilots
When an opportunity looks promising, we test it at small scale. A new technology, an audience you suspect is there, a product, a process, or a revenue stream gets tested with evidence before anything load-bearing moves.
The goal isn’t experimentation for its own sake. It’s enough evidence to decide whether to advance, adapt, or stop before making the larger commitment.
A Strategic Seat Beside Your Team
A standing outside perspective to help you decide where scarce time, attention, and capital are best placed. We weigh what your team is seeing alongside what we’re seeing in the market, then stay involved as the opportunities that prove themselves move from pilot to implementation and growth.
As customers respond, competitors move, and new evidence comes in, we help your team learn, adapt, and make the next decision.
We work within the operating rhythms your team already has, introducing faster cycles of testing, customer feedback, and iteration where they’re useful. Along the way, we work beside your people so the methods, learning, and capability stay inside the organization.
Interim Executive Leadership
An experienced executive joins your team for a defined term to lead growth, innovation, or strategy work, then hands it to your people with the work built and running.
05
WHY NOVASTELLA
Built from experience on both sides of the decision
NovaStella was founded by Briea O'Duinn after more than twenty years working where technology, growth, innovation, and established businesses meet. Her perspective comes from spending much of that career on both sides of these decisions: helping organizations explore what’s next and sitting inside leadership teams responsible for making it work.
Briea co-founded and led custom software agency A•VIBE for fourteen years, including a ten-year client relationship with Nike and leading A•VIBE’s collaboration with NASA on the Earth Observatory. Since then, she has worked as a fractional CTO and CRO, board member, and trusted advisor with established and growing businesses.
That experience shapes NovaStella’s approach: respect what the organization already knows, add an outside field of view, test before making the larger commitment, and keep the learning and capability inside the company.
Briea also serves as Portland Chapter Chair for the Women Presidents Organization and believes ambitious growth should create more room for what matters, not less.
06
Adventures & Insights
When we travel, stories follow.
When Briea and her colleagues set out — on the road, in stores, in the middle of an adventure — stories tend to flow.
Consumer experience — a story by Briea O'Duinn
What Powell’s Books at PDX Taught Me About Designing Consumer Experiences That Convert
A lesson in curation, trust and making it easier for a time-constrained shopper to say yes.
AI & analog — a story by Briea O'Duinn
As AI Becomes More Widespread, What Else Becomes More Valuable?
A question about AI, analog experiences and what premium consumer brands may want to protect as technology removes friction.
Bring us something you’re considering.
Tell us about your brand and an opportunity that’s on your list. Thirty minutes is enough to see whether NovaStella can help you test it.