Firefly saves 10–15 hours a week on research and doubles its RFP opportunities with Starbridge

About Firefly

When an emergency happens at a school or on a campus, clear communication can’t wait. Firefly was built for those moments.

Firefly is a physical AI safety and security platform for K-12, higher education and healthcare. It connects everything from panic buttons and mass alerts to automated response workflows and 911 integration, so teams can detect emergencies, coordinate responses and stay ready every day.

Selling physical safety into education requires a deep level of trust. Safety buyers hold their partners to the highest standard, and they should.

“Trust has become a really important part of the sale. Customers are trusting us not only with their day-to-day operations, but also that we will be there in the most challenging moments.”

The challenge: earning trust without endless research

In a high-trust sale, credibility starts before the first meeting. Firefly needs to know what safety technology a district already runs, what its safety priorities are, and how it buys. Without the right data, that meant combing through board minutes, news and public records by hand, and piecing together each school’s tech stack one account at a time.

Alexis is Firefly’s growth team and runs the whole process herself. She says the manual approach would have meant countless hours of research, “to probably not find anything at all.”

Firefly has used Starbridge since the start of its go-to-market motion, and Alexis says she can’t imagine doing the work without it.

Walking into every first call with the full picture

Every time Firefly books a new prospect, an automated deep-research workflow kicks into motion. It connects Starbridge to Claude, and Alexis doesn’t have to do anything.

It maps the tools the school or district already uses for panic buttons, emergency communication, alarms and access control. It also surfaces relevant incidents and outlines how the institution buys.

Before the first conversation, Alexis knows which Firefly solution fits and which existing systems Firefly can work alongside. That’s the kind of preparation that builds trust in a safety sale.

Turning RFPs into a repeatable sales lever

RFPs have become one of Firefly’s most productive sales channels.

Alexis had worked on RFPs at the federal level before. Doing it at a startup selling into K-12 and higher education brought new barriers: finding the right bids, and having time to respond to them.

“Being able to automatically see what RFPs are relevant to us, how to apply, and even have the first draft already written for us to customize and fine tune has been a huge time saver.”

Doubling opportunities without adding headcount

Starbridge saves Alexis 10 to 15 hours a week in research alone. Firefly also finds roughly twice as many RFP opportunities as it could on its own. For a one-person growth function, that means double the output without added time.

The grant tracker is opening a new path too. Firefly uses it to find schools that wanted a safety solution but lacked the budget, then helps those schools find grant funding to pay for it.

Building a go-to-market motion around trust

Public-sector sales cycles are longer and more involved. Alexis’s advice to other teams is to take the time to understand the people you’re selling to and what they need. Starbridge gives Firefly the context to do that from the first touch.

“Starbridge joined us really early on, and they really did help us shape our go-to-market process around K-12 and higher education in a way I don’t think we would have been able to otherwise.”