When John Barbour graduated from South Dakota Mines this
spring, he started his first job with his own company. Barbour, a chemical
engineering major, is one of the founders of CounSil, LLC. The company seeks to
serve software needs within the United States Department of Defense (DoD).
South Dakota Mines offers a range of opportunities for
students to sharpen their entrepreneurial skills, and Barbour took advantage of
them all. As a freshman, he joined the Innovation
Club on campus and then signed up for the university’s Engineers Make
Great Entrepreneurs speaker series. He went on to enter the CEO Business and Giant Vision
Competitions, where he got the chance to build business plans and
pitch them to panels of judges. He also cultivated relationships with mentors
in the university’s Entrepreneur
in Residence Program, which includes a volunteer group of seasoned
business creators across multiple industries. All of this instilled a number of
the important skills required to launch a high-tech start-up company.
“Fellow students like alumnus Bill
Trevillyan were also awesome mentors to me,” says Barbour. “Bill helped introduce
me to the entrepreneurial community on campus, and this exposed me to the
opportunities here. All of this got me excited to build my own company in the
Black Hills.”
Barbour took an important step in starting this
company when he enrolled in the semester-long course Hacking for
Defense at Mines, which is run by the National Security
Innovation Network (NSIN). Elevate Rapid City published this article on Barbour’s
experience in this course that opened the door to an NSIN X-Force Fellowship in the summer
of 2021. During this fellowship, Barbour was connected with real-world problems
at the DoD and tasked to find a solution.
During the X-Force Fellowship, Barbour joined fellow
student, Sebastian Nau at Texas A&M they later brought on Manasy Manoj who
also took part in the Hacking for Defense Course at Texas A&M. The trio was
then introduced to top-brass at Ellsworth Air Force Base. Their problem was an
antiquated system for prioritizing needs on base with available funds from
different pools of money at the end of every year.
“The current system for purchasing with these funds
is cumbersome and labor intensive,” says Barbour. “In the end, this can limit
the Air Force from becoming mission-ready rapidly, and our nation’s ability to
quickly become mission-ready is important for our defense overall.”
Through NSIN, Barbour and his team were able to work
directly with military leadership. In a series of meetings, they learned the
details of the problem, its variables and the challenges in overcoming the
issues they faced.
“The ability to have access and talk to these
different groups of DoD leaders was a pretty incredible opportunity; this is
thanks entirely to NSIN,” he says.
Through this process, Barbour and his team were able
to begin the problem-solving process and the solutions they have proposed are
now spinning-off into their own company. CounSil, LLC is helping build a software
solution for Ellsworth.
“The main priority of CounSil, LLC is speeding up
the Air Force’s ability to become mission ready quickly, while optimizing the
amount of funding available,” says Barbour. “Given that Ellsworth is now in the
process of scaling up to take on the B-21 Raider, this is an issue that will
only get more complex for base leadership.”
Furthermore, Barbour says the company plans to
develop solutions that can work not only for Ellsworth Airforce Base but across
many other government sectors.
“This is a common problem across almost every Air Force
base that we have spoken with; our plan is to develop a solution we can sell to
the whole Air Force,” says Barbour. “Given the state of the world and the
current number of global threats, this is an important problem to solve.”
Barbour’s initial success with the DoD also opened
the door at Elevate Rapid City’s David Lust Accelerator Building (DLAB), where
the company now has an office. The business incubator gives start-ups and small
businesses, like CounSil, LLC, a low-cost place from which to launch their
business. The incubator provides a wide range of resources to help get new
businesses on their feet. Barbour says it’s a game changer.
“This has been an amazing resource not only to be in
this incubator and to access these resources but also to be around all these
like-minded entrepreneurs in this environment,” says Barbour.
In the spring of 2023, Barbour was selected as the
first recipient of the annual Mines Entrepreneurial Fellowship Award. The award
provides a select group of students an opportunity to stay in school after
graduation and earn a one-year accelerated master’s in engineering management,
and at the same time, provide a $20,000 stipend to support them as they develop
their entrepreneurial venture. This is the final step of our Student Innovation
Pathway and designed to be catalyst to allow select students to choose the
entrepreneurial path right out of college. Students who land this award must
show incredible drive and determination to achieve success.
On April 25, Barbour won 1st place in
the student division of the 2023 Governor’s Giant Vision Competition against a highly
competitive field of entrants. Mines teams took home four of the top five
spots. “It’s the pinnacle of the
innovation cycle,” says Barbour.
“John deserves a lot of credit for his incredible
drive and determination to make all of this happen,” says Mines President Jim Rankin.
Over the coming months Barbour will also continue to
grow his skills with help from Wildfire Labs. The accelerator,
formed by Mines alumnus and the university’s Entrepreneur in Residence Todd
Gagne, helps fledging businesses, like CounSil LLC, launch their software product
and grow their company.
“They have a proven methodology for developing
software that utilizes iterative design to solve problems and support the needs
of business growth throughout various stages,” says Barbour. “We’re also lucky
to have advice and mentorship from both Todd Gagne and Mike Vetter at Wildfire Labs.”
He says the next step for CounSil LLC is to secure
funding from a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant. Throughout his
time at Mines, Barbour gives praise to the ecosystem around campus and in the
Black Hills that supports small companies like his.
“I can’t thank Joseph Wright, Mines associate vice
president of economic development, and Jason Combs, NSIN university program director,
enough; they have been guardian angels that have helped get us to the point we
are today. Elevate Rapid City took us further with this spot in the DLAB. In
return, I hope we can grow this company to bring more jobs to the Black Hills
all while improving our own national defense,” says Barbour.