Betabox, an education services company aiming to increase hands-on learning in the STEM and STEAM fields for students in K-12 schools, was founded in 2014 by an NC State student. The company started by offering a specially designed makerspace packed in a shipping container.

At a presentation at Entrepalooza, Sean Maroni, founder and CEO of Betabox, demonstrated a self-driving car experience with miniature cars.

“They’re just powered with a Raspberry Pi, some microcontrollers, some wires, some 18650 batteries, wheels and some plastic laser-cut stuff,” Maroni said.

Maroni, a former NC State student who was involved in creating the university’s Entrepreneurship Garage, developed the idea for this startup while in school.

“I just recognized the power of community around technology and how many awesome companies that we had around it,” Maroni said. “The idea was to take a little slice of that activity, put it in a box and bring it around to K-12 schools so they could experience that too.”

Greg Pearlman, chief success officer at Betabox, said the company’s mission is to bring technology to more students in an inclusive and accessible way.

“We want to increase access to STEM and STEAM technology and curriculum and eliminate any barriers that students and teachers may have in getting into these fields,” Pearlman said.

Pearlman explained what the Betabox experience looks like in full as it connects with students on K-12 campuses to allow further access to its other products and online resources.

“It starts with field trips that we deliver inside of Betaboxes — twenty-foot shipping containers — which are stacked with emerging STEM and STEAM technology, and we build experiences around those pieces of technology,” Pearlman said. “We deliver these onsite field trips at K-12 campuses across the southeast.”

Regardless of the experience each student has, they are provided access to an online learning center with different modules for students to further explore these technological fields, Pearlman said. Pearlman also spoke about the Betabox Boost program, which allows for a large-scale education opportunity.

“If a company, institution or non-profit wanted to start an initiative that provided youth education, we would take a Betabox, and we could do custom manufacturing and fabrication to fit the organization’s specific program needs, provide staffing options with the programs and train volunteers,” Pearlman said. “We provide the curriculum and the experiences.”

This idea was hard to prove to customers initially, but packaging their product in a shipping container turned out to be highly sought-after, Pearlman said.

“We built the Betabox as a first prototype to show off our design prowess,” Pearlman said. “No one wanted the design services, but everyone wanted to rent this lab.”

Pearlman said local partners have helped Betabox get started.

“We’ve got some great partners locally that have been instrumental in getting the business off the ground,” Pearlman said. “We get our containers from Carolina Container, located a couple of minutes out of town. The NC State community has been great, and we’ve done a number of different entrepreneurship conferences.”

Speaking more to the business culture in Raleigh, Pearlman provided some perspective of the local scene.

“I think the startup community in general in Raleigh is pretty unique,” Pearlman said. “If you’re capable enough to ask for help, the startup community here is readily available to help you if you ask the question. We’ve been fortunate to be a recipient of this good-natured community.”

Pearlman said Betabox has worked in over 30 states and even in Canada. Mainly operating in North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and Georgia, Betabox has provided special experiences for a lot of students.

“At this point, we’ve impacted over 200,000 students across the country, primarily in the Southeast,” Pearlman said. “We’ve delivered over 120 events at K-12 campuses. Over the course of three-day events, we’ve impacted around 450-500 students.”

Further information about Betabox can be found on its website.