Military Veteran Couple's Tech Startup Dream

I’m Melanie Gonzalez. My husband, Dylan Damboise, is my best friend. It’s been ten years and the honeymoon phase hasn’t worn off yet. We were high school sweethearts from sixteen. We joined the Marine Corps together and served at Camp LeJeune and Cherry Point. After that, we returned to Long Island NY to spend more time with our families. Now we’re pursuing our college degrees as student veterans at Fordham University.

We’ve always had different interests, but while considering our future Dylan came up with an amazing idea for a company that combines our favorite things: storytelling, tabletop RPGs, and gaming! So, we founded Sentinel Studios to offer the most cutting-edge and fun online tool for the tabletop RPG community. We haven’t seen it done yet, so we’re going to develop it! We have already invested most of our savings (around 20,000$) from our time in the Corps, and we’re likely to put our house up as collateral for a bank loan, so we’re serious about getting this product made.

What we’re fundraising for here on GoFundMe is just the initial startup costs. Although developing our first product entirely would require a lot more money, the ten-thousand-dollar goal is literally just the start-up operating costs. 10,000$ would reimburse us for;

·         LLC Formation Filing

·         Lawyer’s fees (NDAs, Paperwork Amendments, Contract reviews)

·         The New York State Publishing Requirement

·         Sentinel Studio’s Website & Maintenance

·         Business P.O. Box

·         Accountant // Bookkeeping

·         Relevant software subscriptions

But more importantly, I think it would help us feel a sense of community. It was easy to shrug off how difficult it could be to readjust to life outside the military until it was us, and we we’re living it – wondering how we would make our way in the world – as a lot of veterans do. We wondered how we could take charge of our own future.

Well, this is it.

We know what we want, and how we’re going to improve the world. Dylan is my best friend, and I know we can do this together. We just need some support along the way to achieving our goal. Contributing to our dream would help us build a company that could pay it forward. If you don’t want to (or can’t) contribute financially – but still want to help – then sharing this campaign, or following us on social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit) to see how we’re doing would be an amazing way to support us as well! Nothing seems to get done without community, and it would be beyond amazing if you helped up grow ours.

Thanks!

Melanie