The Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship produces Bootstrapped, a podcast featuring founders, investors and serial entrepreneurs. The podcast is hosted by Elana Fine, Executive Director of the Dingman Center, and Joe Bailey, Associate Research Professor at the Smith School. Each episode brings a different startup story to life with special guests offering advice and lessons learned on topics that range from fundraising and marketing to team formation and customer acquisition.
On this episode of Bootstrapped, we interviewed UMD alumnus and co-Founder and CEO of Compology, Jason Gates. Compology provides the only image-based container monitoring hardware and software that allows for increased revenue generation, efficiency, transparency and sustainability across the waste and recycling industries. Compology streamlines the waste and recycling collection process for waste haulers, generators and regulators. The idea for Compology started in 2012 when Jason thought to join his passion and background in waste management with his co-founder’s experiences in sensor technology. While Compology initially focused only on monitoring food waste, through customer feedback and market analysis the founders decided to pivot their initial idea to encompass all streams of solid waste. In this episode, Jason discusses how his startup evolved over time and how his hands-on approach and flexibility with customers allowed him to build extensive brand loyalty.
Jason received a Bachelor’s degree in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of Maryland and went on to work as a Project Manager at Parsons Brinckerhoff from 2008 to 2010. From 2011 to 2012, Jason worked as an Operations Leadership Development Associate at Lockheed Martin until he and his co-founder came up with the idea for Compology and elected to pursue his startup idea full-time.
To listen to this episode and gain further insights into the startup world, subscribe to Dingman Bootstrapped on iTunes or download the episodes on the Dingman Center website.
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About the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business
The Robert H. Smith School of Business is an internationally recognized leader in business education and cutting-edge research. The school’s world-class faculty facilitate experiential learning opportunities rooted in the real world. Smith students learn to think like entrepreneurs, prepared to drive positive impact. The school offers undergraduate, online and on-campus business master's, full-time, part-time, online and executive MBA, plus PhD and DBA degree programs, and non-degree and executive education programs. Where Smith leads, the future follows.