From Spark! to Startup: How Curtis’s Journey Led to Founding GovDash

When Curtis Mason looks back on his time at Boston University, one community stands out as the most rewarding part of his college experience: Spark!.

“As a student, I was very active within the Spark! community,” he recalls. “I think it’s easily the most rewarding department of Boston University’s computer science and entrepreneurship programs.”

Curtis’s Spark! journey took off during his sophomore year, when he landed a summer internship through Spark! that gave him hands-on experience deploying the UmpScores app to real users. He authored both the frontend and backend for the project while collaborating with a data science team. That internship evolved into a part-time role during the semester—and, as it turned out, it’s how he met his future co-founder, Sean Doherty. “I’m sure that experience also helped me later land a Google internship,” he says.

Through Spark!, Curtis also built connections that led to paid freelance opportunities with several BU-affiliated startups, including Justus (Elyse Bush), Holdette (Sarah Greisdorf), and Hang (Sean Doherty). “The Spark! community opened so many doors,” he says. “Those early experiences gave me the confidence to work directly with founders and build production-level products.”

Curtis also served as a Teaching Fellow, where he got his first hands-on experience with Docker—though he laughs and admits he “wasn’t the most skilled teaching fellow.” XC475: Spark! Innovation Fellowship Program was especially impactful in elevating Curtis’ career. “Spark! courses are great for getting hands-on experience deploying real applications into cloud environments,” Curtis explains. “That skill often gets overlooked in computer science curricula, but it’s so useful early in your career.” He fondly remembers collaborating with Langdon White and other engineers on complex deployment challenges—a process that taught him as much about problem-solving as coding.

Today, Curtis is the co-founder of GovDash, a fast-growing Series A company that helps government contractors streamline their business development lifecycles using AI. “We help clients process and create large documents, organize company data, build resumes for employees, discover new opportunities, and manage finances,” he says. “Getting large language models to understand everything about a company across thousands of documents is a challenging R&D problem—but it’s one our team loves solving.” Notably, GovDash secured $10 million in a Series A funding round led by Northzone in 2024.

Beyond the technical know-how Spark! gave him—like experience with Docker, Heroku, and AWS—Curtis says the relationships he built were even more valuable.

His advice for students taking XC475?
“Network and stay in touch with your peers. If you’re even a little bit interested in starting a company, your future co-founders might be sitting right next to you.”