BoxMica

Some startups begin with years of planning; others begin with a single spark. For Derek Tishler, it was the moment he stumbled onto a radar satellite image showing faint tank tracks pressed into snow. “I instantly had the vision of high-ranking officers taking one look at this image and having their questions answered,”. A single, blurry, blobby picture; the kind most people would just scroll past, lit up years of his medical physics background. “It reminded me so much of staring at CT scans,” he said. “One image can tell a complete story.”

But the road from vision to impact wasn’t glamorous. “Three years to get to revenue was kind of hell,” he admitted. There were pivots, dead ends, losing battles with suppliers, and more than a few moments where a less stubborn founder might have walked away. Derek didn’t. “As a founder, you sometimes have to be the stubborn expert, to know the true value of your mission; you just have to keep going,” he said. “Ten years of failure will make you an overnight success.”

And woven through that journey was Groundswell.

Derek was invited into Groundswell around 2017 and found something he didn’t expect: a community that shaped the trajectory of his company long before BoxMica even existed. “Groundswell was just a great place to be and to work,” he told me. Advisors he met there opened doors to key supplier relationships. A pitch program sharpened how he thought about his business goals. Collaborations inside the building led to key early hires. Even today, many of the connections that allow BoxMica to move at the speed its customers demand trace right back to this space.

Now BoxMica is supporting the Space Force, growing from 4 to 15 full-time employees in 2025. And still, Derek says the heart of it remains the same: “Our only job is to support those who serve, to provide the fastest possible answers to the warfighters so they can succeed.”

Because sometimes the real story behind a startup isn’t just the moment of inspiration, it’s the community that keeps the fire lit.