We recently sponsored Dallas New Tech for their June #LaunchCEO featuring Co-founder of Kubos and Owner of Stoke Coworking, Marshall Culpepper. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Dallas New Tech, #BigDNT is a monthly event hosted by Launch DFW showcasing the newest and brightest tech startups in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. In this video you'll learn about a satellite software startup that's changing the way we look at space technology.
A Little Background
Marshall has been a software engineer for over 25 years, getting started in programming at the age of twelve. At seventeen he started an internship at Nortel, and was hired right out of high school where he spent the next year writing code for them. He then packed up and moved to Southern California where he met his wife, along with kickstarting his career in open source software at JBoss, a startup based in Silicon Valley. Coming on board following their series A funding, the company grew from 50 to 300 employees in a matter of two years. They were averaging $30 million per year in revenue, leading to an acquisition by Red Hat in 2006 of $350 million (one of the largest exits in the open source community at the time). In 2008 Marshall worked with Appcelerator as their first employee, overseeing the development of a project making it possible for web developers (writing in HTML, CSS, and Javascript) to create desktop applications on Linux, Windows, and Mac OS for the first time. Following their success, Marshall began researching astronomy (mostly thanks to his wife gifting him a telescope). As for what he’s up to now, you can read on or watch for yourself in this video.
The Event
The night starts out with host Jason Croft interviewing Marshall about his journey of discovering his passion for space and how he came about his latest startup, Kubos. As Marshall recalls, seeing Saturn's rings for the first time was an inspiring experience, one that lead him searching for his own niche in the field. He came across a startup called Spyr that was sending satellites into space, and ended up writing all the flight and ground software for them within a year. Then came the idea - what if we could update satellite software from anywhere like a smart phone? And so, three years later, that's exactly what Kubos is doing. They currently have 5 customers ranging from satellite startups to government, military and universities. To date, they've raised over $3,000,000 in funding, and plan to go for their series A in the coming months with support from their lead investor, Tim Draper. While startups like Kubos are typically in Silicon Valley or Austin, Marshall has chosen to locate his company in Denton, Texas. In his words, "Denton has an amazing combination of talent, a collaborative culture, and low cost of living." It's located 45 minutes North of both Fort Worth and Dallas, is the home of two widely known universities and one community college (UNT, TWU and NCTC), has plenty of affordable land, and perhaps most important to creatives, posesses a thriving art and music scene. Learn more about Kubos here.
After the fireside chat, a number of startups receive 5 minutes to present their pitch deck, followed by 5 minutes of Q&A. One of those startups happened to be Stoke Coworking members Cortex Therapy Solutions. They are a local tech startup out of Denton, creating a digital therapy solution for individuals suffering from communication, cognition, and swallowing disorders. You can read about their experience at FUND Conference in our last blog here.
Takeaway
Events like Dallas New Tech are a crucial part of the North Texas startup community. It’s a great place to network, find mentors, make new friends, and contribute towards a growing ecosystem. It’s also a place to learn first-hand what it’s like to build a startup business. Whether you’re new to startups or an experienced entrepreneur, everyone is welcome - you just have to show up.
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