{"id":8149,"date":"2025-10-19T21:13:31","date_gmt":"2025-10-20T01:13:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/spark\/?p=8149"},"modified":"2025-10-19T22:34:05","modified_gmt":"2025-10-20T02:34:05","slug":"from-spark-to-startup-how-curtiss-journey-led-to-founding-govdash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/spark\/2025\/10\/19\/from-spark-to-startup-how-curtiss-journey-led-to-founding-govdash\/","title":{"rendered":"From Spark! to Startup: How Curtis\u2019s Journey Led to Founding GovDash"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Curtis Mason (left), pictured with fellow co-founders of GovDash, Sean Doherty (middle) and Timothy Goltser (right).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n


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!.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a student, I was very active within the Spark! community,\u201d he recalls. \u201cI think it\u2019s easily the most rewarding department of Boston University\u2019s computer science and entrepreneurship programs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Curtis\u2019s Spark! journey took off during his sophomore year, when he landed a summer internship through Spark!<\/strong> that gave him hands-on experience deploying the UmpScores<\/a> 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\u2014and, as it turned out, it\u2019s how he met his future co-founder, Sean Doherty. \u201cI\u2019m sure that experience also helped me later land a Google internship,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Through Spark!, Curtis also built connections that led to paid freelance opportunities with several BU-affiliated startups,<\/strong> including Justus (Elyse Bush), Holdette<\/a> (Sarah Greisdorf), and Hang (Sean Doherty). \u201cThe Spark! community opened so many doors,\u201d he says. \u201cThose early experiences gave me the confidence to work directly with founders and build production-level products.\u201d<\/p>\n

Curtis also served as a Teaching Fellow<\/strong>, where he got his first hands-on experience with Docker<\/a>\u2014though he laughs and admits he \u201cwasn\u2019t the most skilled teaching fellow.\u201d XC475: Spark! Innovation Fellowship Program<\/strong> was especially impactful in elevating Curtis’ career. \u201cSpark! courses are great for getting hands-on experience deploying real applications into cloud environments,\u201d Curtis explains. \u201cThat skill often gets overlooked in computer science curricula, but it\u2019s so useful early in your career.\u201d He fondly remembers collaborating with Langdon White<\/a> and other engineers on complex deployment challenges\u2014a process that taught him as much about problem-solving as coding.<\/p>\n

Today, Curtis is the co-founder of GovDash<\/a><\/strong>, a fast-growing Series A company that helps government contractors streamline their business development lifecycles using AI. \u201cWe help clients process and create large documents, organize company data, build resumes for employees, discover new opportunities, and manage finances,\u201d he says. \u201cGetting large language models to understand everything about a company across thousands of documents is a challenging R&D problem\u2014but it\u2019s one our team loves solving.\u201d Notably, GovDash secured $10 million in a Series A funding round led by Northzone in 2024.<\/p>\n

Beyond the technical know-how Spark! gave him\u2014like experience with Docker, Heroku, and AWS\u2014Curtis says the relationships he built were even more valuable.<\/p>\n

His advice for students taking XC475?
\u201cNetwork and stay in touch with your peers. If you\u2019re even a little bit interested in starting a company, your future co-founders might be sitting right next to you.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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!. \u201cAs a student, I was very active within the Spark! community,\u201d he recalls. \u201cI think it\u2019s easily the most rewarding department of Boston University\u2019s computer science and entrepreneurship programs.\u201d Curtis\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18463,"featured_media":8150,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[68,65],"tags":[62,71],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/spark\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8149"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/spark\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/spark\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/spark\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18463"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/spark\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8149"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/spark\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8149\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8156,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/spark\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8149\/revisions\/8156"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/spark\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/spark\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/spark\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/spark\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}