Before finishing his degree, Warren Shepard ’26, a computer science and mathematics major, has already begun building his next chapter, a startup backed by Y Combinator, a startup accelerator based out of San Francisco that helped launch companies such as DoorDash, Airbnb and Reddit.
In January, Shepard incorporated Control Seat, a company that aims to design a modern, digital control system for large-scale industrial operations, with fellow student, Jack Grodnick ‘26, who is majoring in CS and economics.
Shepard did internships at SpaceX and Microsoft and Grodnick at Tesla, Amazon, and SpaceX during their time at Dartmouth. Grodnick is currently on leave from Dartmouth to work full time on developing Control Seat.
The duo has been accepted into Y Combinator’s 2026 summer program that accepts roughly 2 percent of applicants and invests $500,000 in each startup. The three-month program also pairs founders with mentors and provides access to a network of peers, alumni, and investors.
Shepard discussed his startup journey so far and the lessons he’s picked up along the way.
How would you describe what Control Seat does? More specifically, what problem are you trying to solve?
We’re building modern controls and monitoring software for industrial environments like factories, data centers, water treatment facilities, and energy systems, which have thousands of hardware devices spread across large spaces that all need to be monitored and controlled. Our software connects everything into one unified system, so operators can monitor equipment, control processes, and manage operations from a central interface instead of physically moving from machine to machine.
This is not a new idea, but the software that's used to do it right now is very old, and it uses a lot of proprietary pieces that make it harder to work with. There's a steep learning curve, and it's very manual. We’re building a much more modern platform that automates a lot of these workflows and makes the systems significantly easier to use.
We’re starting by adding an intelligence layer on top of existing systems, because a lot of these tasks can just be easily automated by AI. Also, the legacy platforms collect a ton of data from all the hardware they are connected to, but don’t do much with that information. There's an opportunity to add some intelligence around that, to perhaps help predict problems before they happen.
How did you first encounter this problem, and what convinced you it was both important and timely enough to start a company around?
Both my co-founder, Jack, and I got to know and use existing control software during our internships and found it to be clunkier than modern software that we use every day. It just seemed like a very clear problem that needed to be solved.
But control software is very sticky because once you start using one piece of software, it is hard to switch over to another one because there's years of configuration data in there.
So, it’s not like upgrading to a newer version of an existing phone, but switching operating system platforms, say from Android to Apple, and expecting all the apps to work the same way and data to sync perfectly.
Secondly, these systems are incredibly complex, so there's a very high barrier to entry. Or there was—but now AI can write software really, really quickly, and you can just move a lot faster now. There's a bigger opportunity to innovate in this space.
Was entrepreneurship always part of your plan, or did it develop over time? What ultimately helped you take the leap?
I’ve been interested in entrepreneurship since my freshman year, but didn’t really do anything to pursue it. My co-founder Jack and I have always talked about wanting to launch a company. After our internships, we realized we had a lot of shared experiences and viewpoints and found an idea that we could both get behind.
Additionally, Y Combinator visited Dartmouth in the fall, around the time that I was trying to decide what I wanted to do with my life after college. I had an offer with a big tech company, interviewing at others, and considering grad school as well.
I asked one of the YC partners during a coffee chat why he might recommend choosing the startup route and his response really resonated with me.
Jack and I are at a time in our lives when we have fewer constraints and the freedom to choose what we want to do and have an idea. So, the opportunity is there, the idea is there, the team is there and it just made sense to do it now, right after I graduate.
What skills and lessons from school have been most useful in building your startup, and what are some things you’ve had to learn outside the classroom?
The courses I took at Dartmouth helped me develop the ability to think deeply about problems, especially the many CS theory classes that I took. They really explore every possible aspect of a problem and taught me how to identify and eliminate bottlenecks on the way to finding solutions. You have to think that way when you're solving problems in startups too.
I didn't take many coding classes at Dartmouth, so that was something I learned during my internships, or I just taught myself.
Another thing I take away from Dartmouth—I was a teaching assistant for CS 10: Problem Solving via Object-Oriented Programming 7 times. That really hammered down the fundamentals, and I think knowing the fundamentals inside and out is really important.
I think my debugging skills are better for it too, because that was half my job—debugging students’ code for years.
As a TA, I had to understand the material to the point where I was able to teach it and communicate it to someone else, and that's important for my own products nowadays too when I have to tell potential customers about it.
I’m still working on developing a customer mindset now, because I never got that experience in college or during internships.
Do you have any pointers to other students who might be considering a similar career path?
I think that the best advice is to do an internship to gain real-world experience. If you can't get an internship, then do a project that's going to solve a real problem or contribute to open-source software.
Being a TA was really useful for me too and I recommend that for anyone who's trying to learn a subject in depth. You achieve maximal understanding, and you really improve your communication skills.
I also recommend not falling into the trap of doing something (whether it’s grad school, a job, or something else) as a temporary thing to delay making a decision on what you really want to do with your life. Surely there's at least a few things you're passionate about–just choose one of those and try it out! You can always pivot if you don’t like it, and that’s much better than taking a “general” path because you haven't decided what you want to do with your life yet. If you want to make an impact in the world, go out there and get your hands dirty!
