2012 Fellow Scott Lowe hails from Muskogee, Oklahoma and attended the University of Oklahoma, where he earned a degree in Engineering Physics. While in Detroit for his fellowship, Scott split his time between working at Chalkfly and renovating an abandoned mansion in order to transform it into a co-working and living space for future VFA Fellows. The project led him and fellow Fellows Max Nussenbaum and Tim Dingman to launch Castle, a property management software platform that has raised $100k since their launch. When Scott’s not banging out code into the late hours of the night, you can usually find him shredding his guitar (he’s pretty awesome) or diving into a new book.
Name: Scott Lowe
School: University of Oklahoma ’12
Fellow Class: 2012
City: Detroit
Where you worked with VFA: Chalkfly
Where are you now? Working full-time on my own company, Castle, with fellow Fellows Max Nussenbaum and Tim Dingman
Graduation was just around the corner, and VFA was my next step. It was the spring of 2012, and despite my background in physics and computer science, I had zero interest in writing code for a startup. Coding was a hobby I was really passionate about, and I was afraid that doing it for a living would ruin all the fun. Plus, I signed up for VFA to learn how to build businesses, not websites, and I was extremely leery of being pigeon-holed as a developer.
Still, nine months into VFA I ditched the title “Business Analyst” for “Software Engineer” and fully embraced my role.
Being a developer at a startup shattered my expectations in two major ways:
1. Being a developer at a startup didn’t actually limit my responsibilities.
Rather than boxing me into software development, the title change resulted in a huge expansion of my responsibilities. By leveraging my problem solving talent, I skyrocketed my value-add to the company which earned me the latitude to contribute to nearly every arm of the business, from digital marketing to recruiting. Being in the trenches and working on the many problems that you inevitably encounter while building a startup only fueled my passion for coding.
2. The lessons I learned were more applicable than I ever expected.
Perhaps the most surprising thing about writing code at a startup is just how applicable the lessons learned actually are. I wrote some pretty cool software in college, but that all pales in comparison to the sense of pride I felt every time I solved an actual customer’s problem. Each new language or library learned is like another tool on the toolbelt, and over time you learn how to pick the right tools for the job, allowing you to get more done with less time and less effort.
Fast forward two-and-a-half years, and my VFA fellowship has come to an end. I’d been restoring a house with a few other Detroit Fellows, and we decided to take what we learned from the house and our combined experience at startups and start our own.
Now, along with my co-founders Max Nussenbaum and Tim Dingman, I’m applying what I learned to building Castle, a real estate tech startup that takes the work out of being a landlord. Sure I was apprehensive and anxious when deciding whether to dive in to building a business of my own– but in the end, I went for it. Despite all my anxiety and apprehension, I decided to dive in because VFA taught me that there’s no better way to learn than by building.