About UniteGPS
Three founders. One real problem. A platform built entirely on customer revenue - and still going strong.
The Beginning
Chris Bunnell's children were waiting outside for their school bus during the harsh winters in Maine. Parents had no reliable way to know when the bus would arrive. In an age where smartphones could track nearly anything, it seemed unnecessary for families to stand in freezing temperatures wondering when the bus might show up.
So in 2014, Chris teamed up with Steve C. Lanning and Steven J. Lanning to build something about it. They started with a GPS tracking solution and a companion parent app - giving families real-time visibility into where their child's bus was. That was the product they expected districts to adopt right away.
They were partly right. But what they learned next shaped everything that followed.
In an age where smartphones could track nearly anything, it seemed unnecessary for families to stand in freezing temperatures wondering when the bus might show up.
How We Evolved
Early conversations with transportation departments revealed something important. Real-time bus tracking for parents was useful - but transportation leaders had far more immediate operational challenges.
Using a concept similar to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, they explained that their most pressing problems were foundational: routing students efficiently, syncing with school enrollment systems, tracking who was actually on the bus, and giving drivers reliable navigation.
So the company adjusted. UniteGPS began expanding the platform one capability at a time, gradually building a complete transportation system. Every feature came from a real conversation with a real district. And the company was fully bootstrapped - every dollar invested in development came from revenue earned from paying clients.
The Founding Team
Their partnership began years before UniteGPS. A federal project at the San Diego Supercomputer Center brought them together - and the foundation they built there carried into the company.
Chris brought the original idea to life after watching his own children wait in the Maine cold for a bus with no ETA. He led client relationships and on-the-ground work - representing the company to districts and stakeholders from the start.
Prior to UniteGPS, Chris worked on a Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services project, serving as the on-site representative in Baltimore while the technical team operated out of California.
Steve brought deep database expertise to the platform. He served as an Oracle database administrator on the CMS project at the San Diego Supercomputer Center at UC San Diego - where he first worked alongside Chris Bunnell.
In the early years of UniteGPS, the project was a side effort for Steve alongside other work - until traction made it a full-time commitment.
Steven was the primary builder of the UniteGPS platform from day one. He began his career on the same CMS project - working in solution quality assurance and testing software for production readiness - while simultaneously studying software development.
When the three founded UniteGPS, Steven focused full-time on product development, building and iterating as the platform grew.
Larry is a Bernese Mountain Dog owned by Chris Bunnell. He's become the face of UniteGPS in ways no one fully planned for - but everyone is glad happened.
Larry appears throughout the UniteGPS platform, including as the page loading spinner that greets users when the system opens. He starred in How Larry Rerouted His Destiny, a comic book about student transportation. Larry baseball hats and stickers have made their way into transportation offices across the country.
He represents the personality of the company. Friendly, approachable, easy to work with, and welcoming to everyone.
Our Mission
"We believe technology should make transportation departments' jobs easier while improving safety and communication for students and families."
Our goal is to build tools that are practical, dependable, and easy to use for the people who keep students moving every day.
