Raleigh startup Betaversity plans aggressive expansion for ‘BetaBox’ mobile labs

Homemade rockets flew from the parking lot of Raleigh’s Saint Mary’s School one day last spring. It was the first time a class of freshman girls got to put their physics knowledge into action.

That was all thanks to a fast-growing Raleigh startup bringing science, technology, math and even English and arts education out of classrooms and into mobile prototyping labs built within shipping containers. They’re called BetaBoxes, and combined with a software platform all about creativity, experimentation, problem-solving and showcasing your work, they’re the magic behind Betaversity.

A year-and-a-half since the company launched out of the inaugural ThinkHouse program in Raleigh, co-founder and CEO Sean Newman Maroni is raking in $30,000 a month in sales from BetaBox placements at schools K-12, colleges, museums and corporate campuses. He’s got plans to add a second BetaBox in St. Louis, where Betaversity won a global startup competition called Arch Grants in 2014, in partnership with a global marketing research agency called Brado.

Here in the Triangle, there’s a lineup of school programs along with a project with the North Carolina Museum of Art. It’s part of Maroni’s ambition to make Betaversity a $60 million business by 2018, with up to 10 BetaBoxes moving around within different regions, every 500 miles of the country.

“We want to work with over 10,000 companies, in addition to the 45 companies and schools we’ve already worked with,” Maroni says.