Business Alumni Eric Howe 鈥�14, 鈥�17 and Matthew Pehl 鈥�14, 鈥�15 Launch Software Company PierAhead
Image by Ed Brennen
Manning School of Business alumni Eric Howe, left, and Matthew Pehl recently launched PierAhead, a tool that helps brands monitor their share of voice on Amazon.
07/06/2023
By Ed Brennen
Picture it: Amid a throng of wide-eyed new River Hawks, Howe, from Lowell, and Pehl, from Methuen, Massachusetts, strike up a conversation and make an immediate connection. Both commuters, they start hanging out in the student lounge at Southwick Hall, dreaming up business ideas.
After a montage of classes, intramural sports and internships (Howe at Disney and Pehl at Dassault Syst猫mes), they walk across the Tsongas Center stage to receive their bachelor鈥檚 degrees in business administration, then again for their MBAs. They start their respective sales and marketing careers (Howe at iRobot and Pehl at medical technology company Smith+Nephew) and remain good friends; Howe is a groomsman in Pehl鈥檚 wedding.
Cut to March 2022, when they decide to take all the data analytics and business strategy skills they鈥檝e been building and start their own company on the side.
鈥淲e鈥檙e big data people,鈥� says Howe, now a business intelligence manager at iRobot. 鈥淲hat type of data can we harvest from the web and create insights? What鈥檚 important to businesses?鈥�
鈥淲e鈥檙e analyzing tons of data, and UML did a great job in helping me learn how to get insights from data and build dashboards.鈥� -PierAhead co-founder Eric Howe 鈥�14, 鈥�17
Advertising is the answer.
For 16 months, they spent their nights and weekends developing PierAhead, a software-as-a-service company that can help businesses selling on Amazon maximize their advertising spending 鈥� and see their competitors鈥� ad strategy 鈥� by providing detailed data on a marketing metric called 鈥渟hare of voice.鈥�
Say you鈥檙e searching for dorm bedding on Amazon. The first few results are usually 鈥渟ponsored鈥� products 鈥� highly visible digital real estate for which companies bid against each other, based on search keywords. Companies use share of voice to measure how visible their brand is on the search results page compared with the competition.
While other advertising analytics software services can show a company鈥檚 share of voice once per hour or once per day, Howe and Pehl say their big data capabilities enable them to provide a snapshot of it every 15 minutes 鈥� making their data up to 96 times more accurate.
鈥淥ur system can process huge amounts of data and serve it up in a dashboard that can easily be accessed in near real-time,鈥� Howe says. 鈥淲e like to call it our secret sauce.鈥�
The PierAhead co-founders say the data analytics and business development lessons they learned at UML provided an important base for that secret sauce.
鈥淲e鈥檙e analyzing tons of data, and UML did a great job in helping me learn how to get insights from data and build dashboards,鈥� says Howe, who also credits a New Product Development course he took with Marketing, Entrepreneurship and Innovation Dept. Chair and Prof.听Berk Talay.
鈥淲e had to come up with an idea for a product and bring it to market. And here we are, 13 years later, doing the same thing with PierAhead,鈥� he says.听听
Howe, who started his own landscaping business while attending Lowell Catholic High School, says one reason he chose UML was so he could continue landscaping to help pay his way through college.
Coming from a family of River Hawks was another factor. His dad Peter 鈥�84 (civil engineering), mom Roseanne 鈥�85 (business) and brother Peter Jr. 鈥�11 (civil engineering) are all alumni, and his sister Rachel is a rising senior mechanical engineering major.
Image by Ed Brennen
PierAhead co-founders Eric Howe, left, and Matthew Pehl met during first-year student orientation at UML in 2010.
Pehl also has strong UML ties. His dad John 鈥�78, 鈥�86 earned a bachelor鈥檚 degree in mechanical engineering and a master鈥檚 degree in mathematics and computer science, and his twin brother James 鈥�14, 鈥�15 earned bachelor鈥檚 and master鈥檚 degrees in mechanical engineering.
Pehl concentrated in finance at UML but he 鈥渇ell into鈥� coding and system development at Smith+Nephew when he was asked to take on a commission tracking and management project. He is currently the commercial strategy and insights manager at medical equipment manufacturer Convatec.
While neither Howe nor Pehl plan to quit their day jobs any time soon (鈥淲e don鈥檛 want to get too far ahead of ourselves,鈥� Howe says), they do look forward to building their client list and seeing how far they can take PierAhead. For starters, they see an opportunity to diversify the service to other online retailers such as Walmart, Target and Best Buy. And they are looking at broadening the metrics that they measure.
鈥淲e鈥檙e not stopping at share of voice. We have other products in the pipeline,鈥� Howe says.听
After beta testing PierAhead (they chose the name because they originally thought they鈥檇 analyze shipping logistics) with several 鈥渇airly large鈥� companies for nearly three months, Howe and Pehl hit their goal of going live in late June 鈥� ahead of Amazon Prime Day on July 11-12.听
鈥淵ou see all these YouTube videos of people saying starting a business isn鈥檛 easy, and it鈥檚 not,鈥� Howe says. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a little scary, because you never know how people are going to react.鈥�
鈥淓ric and I were both in a good place with our skill sets to come together and build something,鈥� Pehl adds. 鈥淲e鈥檝e invested a lot of time and energy, and I think we鈥檙e about to see it finally take off. I鈥檓 very excited about what it could lead to.鈥�
Maybe they鈥檒l even make a movie about it someday.