Spacely AI ran a go-to-market workshop with University of Texas, Austin McCombs Professional MBA. Here's what an open brainstorm taught us about US market entry. During the collaboration session, we shared a mini-workshop, a brainstorming session, and an open Q&A built around a single theme: go-to-market strategy.
We've sat through plenty of conversations about expansion. This one was different — and not because of the slides. It was different because we walked in with a real, unfinished question instead of a clean success story. What we walked out with was a note full of perspectives we didn't have that morning.
Here's how it went, and what we took away.
Spacely AI is a spatial design company built in Bangkok, Thailand. We make a generative AI workspace for interior designers, architects, and real estate professionals — a place to render, edit, and prepare client-ready visuals without the long bottlenecks that used to define that work.
For a company like ours, the United States is one of the important markets to reach out. So when McCombs offered the room, we made a deliberate choice: we'd put the actual challenge on the table. A genuine go-to-market strategy problem, framed with real context from inside the company, and we'd ask the class to think it through with us.
It's a slightly vulnerable way to run a session. You're handing strangers your open questions instead of your highlight reel. But it's also the most honest version of the conversation and as it turned out, the most productive one.
One question led to a follow-up. The follow-up sparked a counter-idea from across the room. Someone challenged an assumption; someone else built on the challenge. Within minutes the session had reorganized itself into a live, collective brainstorm — the kind where people forget they're "participating" and just start thinking out loud together.
That energy is the whole reason a session like this is worth doing. The students weren't carefully phrasing safe questions. They were stress-testing the problem from angles we hadn't fully explored:
None of it came wrapped in jargon. It came from people approaching the problem with fresh eyes and no attachment to how Spacely AI has always operated which is exactly the input you can't generate from inside your own team.
The strongest theme of the day was almost philosophical: a tool made by designers, for designers, earns its way through trust and word of mouth far more than through paid noise. The room kept returning to the idea that the most credible growth comes from one professional recommending Spacely AI to another. That points us toward things like referral mechanics and a much simpler, more honest way of showing the value; how much time and money a studio actually saves on a real project, framed plainly rather than dressed up.
Maybe the most useful reframe was about differentiation. The features that separate Spacely AI from general-purpose AI tools — Point & Edit chief among them — are exactly where we should be leaning in. Controlled, precise editing and design feasibility aren't just nice-to-haves; they're the competitive advantage a designer can carry to their own client. Several people independently noted how clunky existing AR-style visualization tools feel, which only sharpened the case for keeping the workflow simple and in the designer's control.
Our thanks to the McCombs Professional MBA community for the sharp questions, the willingness to disagree productively, and the generosity of the brainstorm that followed. Sessions like this are a reminder that good strategy isn't built in isolation, it's pressure-tested in conversation.
If you were in the room and want to keep the conversation going, we'd love to hear the one move you'd make first.
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