Fixed internet service provider Starry announced that Alex Moulle-Berteaux, the company’s COO, has been named CEO, replacing Chet Kanojia, effective immediately.
Kanojia, who was CEO the past eight years, will serve on the company’s new Board of Directors. The transition comes as Starry prepares to exit from its voluntary reorganization under Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Moulle-Berteaux also will be on the board of the new holding company.
In a statement, Kanojia said the leadership transition has been more than a year in the making and he’s confident in Moulle-Berteaux’s ability to move the company forward.
Kanojia said he will remain engaged with the company as a board member as “I turn my energies and focus on my family. I’m deeply humbled and grateful to the Starry team - for their hard work over these last eight years and deep commitment to the company's mission and work.”
Boston-based Starry made a splash when it debuted on the New York Stock Exchange in March of 2022, only to spiral downward most of the rest of the year. Starry had an ambitious buildout course but burned through cash and by the end of 2022, it laid off about half of its staff and halted expansion plans.
Moulle-Berteaux is a co-founder of Starry and served as COO since November 2018. Prior to Starry, he was chief commercial officer at Aereo, a company that also was led by Kanojia. Aereo tried to upend the broadcast industry but ended up losing at the U.S. Supreme Court and filed for bankruptcy in 2014.
Focus on profitability
Starry will emerge from the bankruptcy process and go back to being a privately held company. The process of going public last year was done via a combination with FirstMark Horizon Acquisition Corp., a publicly traded special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC.
The U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware confirmed the company’s reorganization plan on May 26, which sets Starry on the path to exit the Chapter 11 proceedings in late July or early August, Moulle-Berteaux said. The company is continuing to serve customers in Boston, New York City, Los Angeles, Denver and Washington, D.C., metro areas.
The intent always was to make it a short reorganization process; dragging on the bankruptcy proceeding requires more capital so the sooner they can get through it, the better. Starry filed for bankruptcy protection in late February.
“The process we’ve been going through is obviously not easy,” Moulle-Berteaux told Fierce. “But there’s a lot of excitement and enthusiasm for the mission that we’re on… We continue to see a huge need for competition and continue to see a huge opportunity to provide choice.” Starry's primary competition are cable and wired incumbents.
Today, Starry has about 300 employees, or less than half what it had a year ago, and it doesn’t expect more layoffs. The company has been on a mission to stabilize the business and set itself up for growth, he said.
Starry is now squarely focused on profitability. “Everything that we’re doing is about driving an efficient path to profitability and going from there,” he said. “That’s going to drive the changes.”
Focus on MDUs
As of the end of the third quarter 2022, Starry had 91,297 customers, which was a 66% increase over the prior year. Starry Connect, a program that targets families in public and affordable housing communities, reached more than 87,000 units of public and affordable housing as of the end of September.
Starry continues to focus on apartment and multi-dwelling units (MDUs) with 10 or more units. With the company’s radio deployed on a structure, it’s able to serve multiple units in a building.
In Columbus, Ohio, it also targeted single family homes but earlier this year announced plans to exit that market. “I do think in the future we will go back to addressing single family homes,” Moulle-Berteaux said. “We have a technology path and a cost path to get there, but right now, it’s 10 and up.”
Starry uses 37 GHz, which is available to Starry in about 22 major cities in the U.S., and it purchased 104 licenses at 24 GHz in the FCC's 2019 auction. Its equipment is capable of leveraging both frequencies, Moulle-Berteaux said.
Some cities in the U.S. clearly are not competitive in the broadband space and Starry wants to continue serving under-served communities, which is why it continues to grow the Starry Connect program. “The hardest part is behind us,” he said. “We’re putting the pieces together to regrow the business.”