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Supporting ServiceTitan’s Bellwether IPO

Company Type:

Public

Audience:

B2B

01: The Challenge

02: The Approach

03: The Results

ServiceTitan is a vertical SAAS company that helps skilled trades workers — the hard-working men and women in HVAC services, plumbing, roofing, landscaping and construction — run their businesses better. It’s the “operating systems for the trades,” providing critical software for an industry big tech has largely overlooked.

Beloved by its customers, gifted with an incredibly compelling origin story, and backed by high-profile investors like Battery Ventures, Bessemer, Iconiq, and Index Ventures, ServiceTitan’s co-founders have preferred to keep a low profile with the media, mainly focusing on the trades that reach the trades.

With the tech and business worlds hoping for the IPO window to re-open after three quiet years, ServiceTitan’s long-rumored entry into public markets created a singular moment in time to tell its story and reach public-market investors while lifting up an entire sector of the economy.

At Inkhouse, in addition to ServiceTitan, we’ve led several tech companies — Amplitude, CarbonBlack (later acquired by VMWare), Okta, and Remitly, as well as the fast-growing, fast-casual restaurant chain CAVA — through the IPO process. Each company had a different journey because no two IPOs, companies, or legal, finance, and executive teams are the same. Yet for each, there were three commonalities while navigating the quiet periods: building a great story, training executives, and educating key reporters before listing day. 

Besides a Forbes profile in 2021, ServiceTitan’s executives rarely spoke to business and tech media, even as a regular on the Forbes Cloud 100, climbing as high as #6 in 2024

We used the intrigue about this long-rumored IPO to our advantage. Working with ServiceTitan’s comms, legal, finance, and executive teams, we developed a game plan focused on message development and executive preparedness. At the same time, we continued to tell product and customer-focused stories to relevant trade publications to ensure a steady stream of on-message coverage.

Co-founders Ara Mahdessian and Vahe Kuzoyan grew up as the sons of plumbing and contractor small business owners; seeing their families’ struggles to do their work and grow their businesses inspired ServiceTitan’s founding. We worked with ServiceTitan to inject that message and their devotion to the men and women of the skilled trades into corporate storytelling. 

Thorough media training ensured they would be prepared for tough questions about everything from the intricacies of the company’s funding and finances to the effects of a new administration’s immigration policies on its customers. We also selectively briefed a handful of business reporters off the record to form relationships with them in advance of the listing day so media coverage would be more about the company, its promise, and relevance and less about stock performance. We also ensured ServiceTitan’s key investors were aligned with key messaging when they served as proxy spokespeople about the news.

ServiceTitan’s media results started strong on its IPO morning, with its co-founders featured on a live CNBC “Squawk Box” interview at 6 a.m. ET. Like the stock itself (at trading’s close ServiceTitan had a valuation of $8.9b), media coverage built steadily throughout the day. ServiceTitan’s IPO received nearly 70 pieces of media coverage in its first 24 hours, built off of three broadcast interviews and five print interviews held for its co-founders in rapid succession that Thursday. Headlines suggested ServiceTitan was “breaking the IPO drought,” the offering was “kicking the IPO door wide open” and, ultimately, “quieted the doubters.” Media coverage balanced the stock’s meteoric rise with narratives that honored the company’s founding story and its reverence for its customer base. 

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