Although a lot of startups are created by people right out of college, Dave Cunningham founded Flint Hills Group after decades of working for other companies.

About half of the group is in Wichita, and the rest are scattered across the country. Cunningham works out of an office at Groover Labs and was one of our first members.

He and a crew of about 40 developers who work remotely write custom software solutions that help scale businesses.

“There’s a lot of companies out there that can’t find off-the-shelf solutions,” Cunningham said.

One of them is McAlister Oil, a Wellington company that approached Flint Hills about a solution for its work refueling train cars.

A tool McAlister — and its competitors — used to monitor refueling “was built on top of a really old operating system, Windows CE, and was dependent on 3G,” Cunningham said. The tool — called PeopleNet — “was at the end of its life, and the company that built it was not going to support it anymore.”

McAlister turned to Flint Hills for help. You can read more about the work Cunningham and his colleagues did in a Wichita Business Journal story.

 “The competition is now coming to McAlister asking them to sell it,” Cunningham said.

Cunningham enjoys working with remote teams and was accustomed to doing so at his job at NetApp.

Groover Labs, he said, is “creating a community where people can collaborate. A rising tide lifts all boats.”

When he met co-founder Curt Gridley, “I saw that he was absolutely sincere about wanting to help the community and grow something. I think what fuels us is very, very similar.”

His advice for startups is to learn from others’ experiences growing a business.

“I think the most important thing you can do is find a trusted, knowledgeable mentor,” Cunningham said. “It makes things go so much faster, and you make fewer mistakes.”