Liminal Network - Season 3 Idea Jam 1
- Mar 26
- 9 min read
Updated: Mar 31
Season 3 Idea Jam 1
Season 3 Recaps brought to you by our partner University of St. Thomas - Schulze School of Entrepreneurship
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Spotlight Business for March 2026 - Season 3 - Idea Jam 1
What is Liminal Network all about?
Liminal Network is a B2B supply chain communications company built on a simple premise: the data your customers are asking for already exists — your team just can't get to it fast enough. Founded by Hillary Drake after years of firsthand frustration in supply chain operations, Liminal connects legacy business systems so that delivery information flows automatically to everyone who needs it, without a single phone call or email chain.
Core Offerings
Their two core products do the heavy lifting.
The API Hub links supply chain partners in real time, replacing slow, outdated EDI systems with live data connections that reduce costs and eliminate lag. The moment a delivery is made, the information is there — no waiting, no manual lookup, no phone calls to shipping.
Final Mile Photos gives delivery drivers a simple way to document shipments from any smartphone. Signed paperwork, proof-of-delivery photos, and status updates land directly in a company's existing systems the moment a delivery is made — no specialized hardware, no new software to learn.
Together, they give businesses something their legacy tech was never built to provide: visibility, accountability, and a customer experience that finally matches what people already expect.
Liminal Network
Founder Profile
Connect with Hillary Drake on LinkedIn
Company Mission
"Revolutionizing Supply Chain Communications. Liminal is committed to building tools that solve today's practical problems in supply chain communications, and was founded to find a better way to connect partners and deliver data where it's needed."
Event Pictures
Event Deck
Problem Statement
Most businesses do not realize how much time and money they lose to a problem hiding in plain sight. When a delivery is made, the photos, status updates, and signed paperwork already exist — sitting in carrier websites and third-party systems that no one inside the company can easily access. Customer service chases shipping. Shipping logs into a separate portal. Everyone waits. The process has not changed in decades, and because it has always worked this way, most people do not see it as broken. Liminal Network was built to solve exactly that — connecting legacy B2B systems so that delivery data flows automatically to everyone who needs it, without a single phone call or email chain. The challenge is not the technology. The challenge is getting businesses to recognize the problem before they can be motivated to fix it.
Idea Jam Summary
The Innovate MN community gathered to tackle one of the trickiest challenges in B2B sales: how do you sell a fix for a problem people have stopped noticing? Liminal Network founder Hillary Drake brought a three-year-old company with real technology, two live customers, and a sales puzzle that the room was more than ready to dig into.
The evening was organized around two topics. Jam 1 — "Seeing the Problem" — invited participants to consider how awareness of a solvable process gap is created in the first place. Jam 2 — "Low Risk, High Relevance" — shifted to strategy: once someone is aware, how do you make it easy enough to say yes? Together, the two jams generated well over 150 sticky notes across multiple tables, with ideas ranging from analogies and emotional hooks to pricing structures, trust-building frameworks, and sales channel strategies.
The community brought a wide range of professional lenses — operations, sales, marketing, technology, and small business ownership — and it showed. The ideas were practical, specific, and often surprising in how personal they got. Several participants drew from their own frustrations as consumers and buyers to help reframe Liminal's challenge from the outside in.
Over 150+ ideas generated!
Idea Jam Analysis - Key Themes
Jam 1: Seeing the Problem: Delivery visibility is a multi-industry and multi-systems issue - What are ways to describe to create awareness of solvable process connections?
Make the invisible cost visible
The most consistent theme across tables was that Liminal's biggest sales barrier is not skepticism — it is invisibility. Businesses have absorbed the cost of manual delivery tracking so completely that it no longer registers as a cost at all. Participants pushed hard on the idea of quantifying what people cannot currently see.
"How much is the lack of tech costing you? Outdated tech NLA"
"Can the costs of delay/inefficiency be calculated/shown?"
"Cost of inefficiency (fixed costs)"
"How often am I late? Is my inventory the problem?"
"What would you do with — more hours in your week?"
"In 2 hours you can see its value"
Use consumer experience as the mirror
Multiple tables independently landed on the same idea: B2B buyers are also consumers. They already know what good looks like — Amazon, Dominos, DoorDash — and they feel the frustration when it disappears. Participants suggested using that lived experience as the entry point for the conversation rather than leading with the technology.
"Pizza tracker"
"Dominos pizza tracking. App is joy."
"Draw parallels w/ B2C models"
"B2B users are also consumers"
"Livelihood (B2C) vs. Disappointment (B2B)"
"Showing positive user experiences, like Domino's pizza"
"Explain AirTag effect"
"#1 call to Expedia was for a COPY of itinerary"
Tell a story that lands emotionally
Participants consistently returned to the idea that data alone will not move people. The emotional framing of the problem matters as much as the numbers. Several notes pushed Liminal toward finding the "inciting incident" — the specific moment of frustration that makes a business owner feel the problem for the first time.
"You're selling a solution to a hidden problem. Reveal the problem."
"Gotta reveal a problem lurking in the status quo."
"We solve your issue you never thought you had!!"
"Need an emotional hook?"
"What's the small B2B's 'inciting incident'?"
"Frustration is expectation unmet"
"The data is invisible"
"Black holes"
"Easing anxiety"
"UPS does the work — Liminal's customer takes the credit!"
Find the people who already feel it
Several notes pointed to audience targeting as a core part of making the problem visible. Not every prospect will feel the pain equally — and spending time with the wrong ones is expensive.
"Are you targeting prospects who actually feel the pain?"
"Spend time w/ the company to find the problem first"
"What's it like to be your customer?"
"Think of the end users — mom & pop shops → who do they sell to?"
"Consider the people behind small, legacy B2B industry businesses"
"Small B2B"
"Choose appropriate size/best businesses who needs it most"
Jam 2: Low Risk, High Relevance: How do you position a new tool as a safe first step for a company that hasn't updated its systems in 20 years?
Lead with trust, not technology
The dominant theme in Jam 2 was trust — and the room had a lot of nuanced things to say about it. Participants noted that trust is not built with a pitch; it is built through process, consistency, and meeting people where they are. The phrase "clarity is kindness" appeared on multiple sticky notes from different tables, suggesting it resonated independently across the room.
"Trust is built in drops and emptied in buckets"
"Clarity is kindness"
"Low risk = trust"
"No techno babble — clarity"
"Process trust: keep it simple. Meet them on their terms."
"To build trust, repair current outdated system until new system is inline"
"Build trust w/ consistent process, SOPs, demo. Pilot program."
"Small risk — additive like negotiations. Clarity is kindness."
"Frustration = unmet expectation"
Make the entry point frictionless
Participants generated a strong cluster of ideas around reducing the activation energy required to say yes. Free trials, pilot programs, parallel testing, pay-per-use pricing, and flexible contracts all appeared across multiple tables — all pointing to the same underlying principle: let the product prove itself before asking for commitment.
"Pilot — test and learn"
"Reduced cost trials/pilot program"
"Free trial"
"Free demo on their own system"
"Short term or flexible contract"
"Pay per tracker, free implementation (cost)"
"Measure new process while still using old process"
"Parallel approach"
"Long testing period — parallel — benchmarking"
"Canary experiments"
"Beta testing for early validation"
"Is there a 'low-risk' entry level want to — try a portion — to build that trust?"
Be additive, not disruptive
A recurring and strongly-worded idea across multiple tables: Liminal should never position itself as a replacement. It sits on top of existing systems. Participants picked up on Hillary's language from the presentation and amplified it — "be additive" and "embrace existing systems" showed up almost verbatim.
"BE ADDITIVE. EMBRACE EXISTING SYSTEMS AS REDUNDANT"
"Can't require modification to the existing systems"
"Pull information + don't push to their systems"
"Very adjacent to existing process. Use same steps"
"Liminal sits on top of your tech API"
"Turn x software into y software"
"You literally can't break this"
Build a referral and community engine
Several tables moved beyond the direct sales conversation into ecosystem thinking — who already has relationships with the businesses Liminal needs to reach, and how does Liminal get into those rooms through trusted channels?
"Warm hand off — referrals from colleagues"
"Refer business to other compatible businesses"
"Co-selling with ERP systems"
"Testimonials"
"Relatable testimonials"
"Demonstration by others"
"Get customers to ask small biz for your solution"
"Make their customers ask for it"
"Seeing the benefits realized by your competition"
"Business Navigator Advisors — Elevate Hennepin — DEED"
"Local business ecosystem relationships"
Innovative Ideas — What Stands Out
A few ideas broke from the expected and deserve Hillary's attention, specifically:
"UPS does the work — Liminal's customer takes the credit." This reframe is a potential tagline. It repositions Liminal not as a tech product but as a reputation tool for suppliers — the company that uses Liminal looks better to its customers without having to do more work.
"The #1 call to Expedia was for a copy of the itinerary." This is a ready-made B2C analogy for the B2B problem. Expedia automated away its most common customer service call. Liminal does the same thing for shipping inquiries. It is concrete, relatable, and requires no supply chain knowledge to understand.
"If you break your leg, your nervous system tells you immediately." This note proposed framing Liminal as a nervous system for the supply chain — the thing that sends a signal the moment something goes wrong, rather than waiting for a human to notice. A powerful metaphor for proactive communication.
"Frustration is expectation unmet." One of the cleanest articulations of Liminal's value proposition to surface all night. When a customer expects Amazon-level visibility and gets silence, the frustration is not random — it is predictable. Liminal makes the expectation meetable.
"Canary experiments." A software deployment concept applied to legacy business adoption — run the new system quietly alongside the old one until confidence builds. Low stakes, real data, no big announcement required.
Implementation Ideas
Near-term (30 days):
Build one tight consumer-to-B2B analogy (pizza tracker, AirTag, Expedia itinerary) and test it consistently in every sales conversation to see which one opens the door fastest.
Develop a "cost of invisibility" calculator — a simple tool that helps a prospect estimate how many hours per week their team spends chasing delivery information, then converts that to a dollar figure.
Draft a one-page pilot proposal with a clearly defined 30-day test, success criteria, and a no-modification-required setup promise.
Medium-term (3–6 months):
Identify and formally recruit three to five early adopter customers willing to share their experience publicly — testimonials, case studies, or referrals to peers in similar industries.
Explore co-selling relationships with ERP vendors, 3PL providers, or supply chain consultants who already have relationships inside the legacy businesses Liminal is targeting.
Create a "progression of rollout" framework — a visible roadmap that shows a prospect exactly what the first 30, 60, and 90 days look like, removing ambiguity from the commitment.
Long-term (6+ months):
Build toward a marketplace or network effect: as more suppliers adopt Liminal, their customers begin to expect it — creating demand that flows upstream without a cold call.
Investigate a logistics API standard positioning — if Liminal can define the middleware layer that others connect to, the long-term moat becomes the network, not just the product.
Develop a "Liminal certified" or partnership track with complementary supply chain software to create warm referral pipelines and reduce customer acquisition cost.
Cost of Invisibility Calculator
Key Challenges and Considerations
The awareness gap is structural, not just educational. Even a perfect pitch will not move a prospect who does not feel the pain. Liminal needs a way to create the felt sense of the problem — not just describe it — before the sales conversation can advance.
"Risk" is an objection that carries a deeper meaning. As one sticky note put it: "'Risk' is an objection/euphemism for 'I don't want.'" The real barrier for many legacy businesses is not cost or complexity — it is the fear of disrupting something that technically works. Liminal's framing needs to address that emotional reality directly, not just the practical one.
The silo problem is real. Multiple sticky notes indicated that this problem touches customer service, shipping, IT, finance, and leadership — but no single person owns it. Liminal needs to identify who within a company is most likely to feel the pain and champion the change, rather than trying to sell the change across the whole organization at once.
Scalability of the personal touch. Several ideas depended on high-touch, relationship-driven sales — spending time with a company, doing a free consult, bringing in a techie alongside a sales rep. That approach works for two customers. It needs a system before it can scale.
Time is the honest obstacle. As one note simply read: "It takes TIME." Legacy businesses do not move fast. Liminal's pipeline and runway need to account for long sales cycles and patient relationship-building, especially in a macro environment where purchasing decisions are on hold.
DISCLAIMER
The ideas, suggestions, and recommendations in this recap resulted from a collaborative brainstorming session conducted by Innovate MN community members. These concepts are based on limited information about the business operations, financial situation, market conditions, and customer base.
Recommendation: Before implementing suggested strategies or programs, the Spotlight Business should conduct thorough due diligence, including market research, financial analysis, and consultation with relevant professionals.
This recap is intended to provide creative inspiration and potential directions for further exploration, not definitive business guidance.
Whew. You made it!
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