A Bridge, Not a Destination: One Year of Launchpad Inc.

This month marks one year since Christian Kunkel joined Launchpad as Vice President of Software Sales and Delivery. He came to us after a career spent building places where people learn complex skills by doing the work — at Startup Corps, the entrepreneurship nonprofit he co-founded, and at Slate, the open-source learning platform he led — with stops in esports and climate tech along the way.

Over the past year, he’s led the buildout of Launchpad Inc., our social enterprise where developers do AI work for real organizations, on real deadlines, for real pay. We sat down with him to talk about the year, what our developers have taught him, and what’s coming this fall.

Can you tell us a little about yourself and what brought you to Launchpad?

I’ve spent most of my career working with young people and schools with the common theme being a desire to develop systems that create more authentic learning environments and ways for people to learn complex skills by actually building things. That was true at Startup Corps, the entrepreneurship nonprofit I founded, where students launched businesses and we funded them. And it was true when I was building Slate, an open-source learning management system that helped project-based schools measure higher-order thinking skills instead of traditional grades.

I also spent time outside education — in esports, selling venues to college campuses and helping them build the facilities into their curriculum. The premise was that students already love gaming, so you can use that to pull them toward real growth: personal, social, and professional. Additionally, I spent two years in climate tech at BlocPower, further building out my product management and data experience by running a multimillion dollar research collaboration with Oak Ridge National Labs to model the energy efficiency potential that could be achieved by electrifying every building in the country. At BlocPower, I also oversaw a workforce development program in partnership with the Community College of Philadelphia and Wilco to train entry level electricians. 

Though I very much enjoyed my time outside of education in well-funded, high growth startups, I knew I eventually wanted to be back working with young people. When I was catching up with the Building 21 team last summer, Launchpad kept coming up as a common theme, and we started turning our focus there. By that point I’d built a lot of experience running technical teams and doing product and operations work, so it was a seamless fit: a chance to come back and teach those skills in a genuinely applied setting.

Coffee, playlist, or silence — what’s your setup when you’re heads-down building?

I started in an office that could be better described as a cave, but quickly realized I needed the energy of having people around, so I’ve intentionally put my desk in the middle of the mayhem. Coffee is a must, though less than I used to drink — I have a two-a-day habit now. Definitely music, but usually no words. Classical or lo-fi beats all day long, depending on the mood.

You just hit one year at Launchpad. How has the job shifted since you started?

The biggest change isn’t the job itself, rather it’s the ground the job sits on. The capability of AI-assisted software development has shifted how software teams have to operate in really fundamental ways. It’s exciting. There’s a lot of power now available to developers at every level. But it changes how fast we can move, how we operate as a team, what’s realistic to take on and how fast developers can learn.

The core of what I came here to do, sourcing valuable tools to build for clients and guiding our young people to build them well, that’s still squarely in our sights. But how we get there looks different than it did a year ago because we can go bigger and faster on smaller budgets.

Launchpad already had a training program. Why build client work on top of it?

There are a few reasons, and they’re all about our developers.

The first is that while they’re going through the process of applying for jobs, they need to keep growing their portfolio and their network. The best way to do that is to deliver real work for real clients who can directly see the value they add. We think this process is a better pathway to permanent employment. Our developers leave us with strong relationships with clients. They have face-to-face experience and work they can point to. That’s more likely to result in a hire than being one resume in a stack of a thousand.

The second is financial. Launchpad Inc. is a bridge. Paid projects mean income that can sustain them while they’re job searching, and that search is genuinely hard right now. They also learn to operate as contractors, balancing multiple clients and priorities simultaneously, which opens up additional optionality going forward.

For someone hearing about the client work Launchpad offers — what is it, and who is it for?

The initial offering is an AI intelligence layer that allows organizations to organize and leverage the data they already have, so they can better understand what’s actually happening in their organization. We build the foundation on which they can later expand by adding more data and then automate key processes that free their people to focus on work that’s more mission-aligned or profitable. 

As for who it’s for: small-to-medium sized businesses and non-profits that have a lot of data and are interested in AI but don’t really know where to start. Usually our tools are the first AI implementation or prototype rather than an extension of an existing AI infrastructure. If you’re just getting started with AI and you don’t know where to begin, but you have a lot of operational data, that’s where we can uncover a lot of value. So far we’re four for four — every proposal we’ve scoped has been signed.

What does a client engagement actually look like from the inside — from first conversation to shipped tool?

Step one is understanding your pain points, tools in use and data available to identify where we want to start leaning in.

Step two is organizing that data and deploying the technical infrastructure so you can actually talk to your data.

Step three is setting up monitoring — how the AI is being used, how the system is being used, who has access and control — plus the standard recurring reports.

Step four is process automation. In an initial engagement, we commit to your first two automations. Once that foundation is in place, you can start building on top of it. 

Step five is training your team to extend the system themselves. That last one matters. We’re not building something and then leaving you to figure it out alone, but growing your teams’ AI skills so you can continue to build strategically.

What’s a task you’d hand to AI tomorrow if you could never do it again?

The daily morning report to pull hour logs, GitHub commits, internal communications, and schedules into one place across all projects. Seeing what happened yesterday across the whole team at a glance instead of going to eight different systems would save a half hour every morning, so it is next up on the build list. 

Your developers are 19, 20, 21 years old, and they’re shipping work for real clients with real deadlines. What have you seen them do that impressed you?

What’s something the developers have taught you?

They keep me current on new AI capabilities, automations, technologies and development workflows: all of that is changing so rapidly and they provide a constant flow to keep us cutting edge.

The other thing is perspective. They bring a fresh read on the current economic and technical climate, and that’s genuinely helped shape how I think about what we’re teaching and why.

How do you make sure Launchpad Inc. stays a bridge and not a destination?

Structurally, we have a program that continually produces new developers every 6 months so we intentionally overlap timelines for knowledge and experience sharing. At the same time, we’re looking for organizations that have the potential to hire our developers. That’s the ideal client for us: someone who works with us, gets to know a developer, sees what they can do, and hires them. If we do our job and that happens, it’s a bridge and developers continually exit as the next group arrives.  

A lot of organizations are curious about AI and a little nervous about it at the same time. What do you tell them?

Start with an honest assessment of how deeply you understand your organization and what processes could be improved or automated. You have a finite number of staff hours available to do your work and it is common to lack deep insight into every phase of your operations. I’ve never met an organization that doesn’t have messy data or processes that could be improved or offloaded. AI, directed intentionally and accurately, can surface a much better understanding of your current processes and free your team to focus on more mission-aligned or profitable tasks.

One understandable pushback comes down to job displacement concerns, and my honest answer is that you get to choose what to do with the time you gain back. You decide how to focus your people. If AI takes something off someone’s plate, that time can go toward something you think matters more. That’s especially true for small, resource-constrained organizations. I don’t know many organizations sitting around thinking they have too much time or are over staffed. Usually, they’re already trying to do more with less, and this is a real way to achieve it.

Another concern is data ownership. The answer is to build a system where you retain control of your data instead of handing it directly to one of the large LLM providers. That’s exactly the kind of setup we can help you put in place so you retain ownership and control. 

What’s coming this fall?

We’ve completely redesigned the LiftOff experience to reflect the current reality of software development and a changing job market. Practically, that means teaching much more AI-assisted development and much more building of AI tools for organizations.

To do that well, our developers have to be embedded within businesses so they understand the business problems they’re solving. Technical knowledge goes hand in hand with the ability to understand business problems and diagnose issues. So they’ll be working on real projects with outside organizations. That’s how we add value quickly, in the ways AI is actually unlocking right now — and how companies see what our developers are capable of today.