Author

Connor Cullip

Host of Network of Directors and owner of 9 Line Companies. He runs the free monthly room for founders in Austin, interviews the founders on its stage, and writes the pages on this site that explain what the room is and who it is for.

Role

Host and author

Network of Directors, Austin

Business

Owner, 9 Line Companies

Veteran-owned lodging and lending

Service

Alaska Army National Guard

Eight years, medevac hoist operator

Find Connor online

His own accounts and his companies. Anything about the room goes through the contact page and reaches him.

LinkedIn Instagram Facebook 9 Line Agency 9 Line Loans Speaker profile Contact

The short version: Connor Cullip is a veteran and business owner in Austin who hosts Network of Directors and writes about it here. He spent eight years in the Alaska Army National Guard as a medevac hoist operator, about ten years in mortgage lending, and now owns 9 Line Companies, a veteran-owned group that houses service members on temporary duty and helps them buy homes with VA loans. The room is the part of his work that is not a business: a free stage for founders, once a month, built so that every entrepreneur in Austin can have a board of directors.

Experience

Alaska Army National Guard, eight years. Medevac search and rescue hoist operator, the person on the wire when someone had to come out. The 9 Line name is the radio call for a medevac request.
Mortgage lending, about ten years. Stearns Lending, Homeowners Financial Group and Premier Mortgage Associates, on the way to running a lending operation of his own.
9 Line Agency, founder. Compliant temporary duty lodging for military units and government agencies, more than 45,000 nights a year, registered in SAM.gov and certified as a service-disabled veteran-owned small business.
9 Line Loans, mortgage loan officer. A VA-focused lending operation powered by Canopy Mortgage. NMLS 1574424.
Network of Directors, host. The free monthly room for founders in Austin, and the interviewer on its stage.
University of Alaska Anchorage.

What he writes about here

Connor writes the pages that explain the room rather than the pages that report on it. The About page is his: why the room is free, who the three thirds are, and where it is going. The ground rules are his words. The interviews on the events pages are his questions. Speaker profiles and sponsor pages are researched and written by the site team from public sources and the speakers' own material, and every page carries the date it was last changed.

He does not write about mortgages or military lodging here, and he does not pitch either of them from the stage. The rule that nobody sells in the room applies to the host first.

How he runs the room

The room is built in thirds: new owners there to learn, owners of two to ten million dollar companies who are the center of the networking, and founders past ten million or past an exit who can be called on from the crowd. He keeps the mix deliberately, and he keeps two kinds of people out: anyone there to sell, and anyone who asks great questions and does nothing with the answers. The full picture of who the room is for is on the About page.

He calls himself just the host, and then describes the job more accurately as an architect: when he introduces two people, the point is what they build afterward. He was also clear about how this site should read.

I want this to be about the network and the directors in your network rather than a singular person.

Connor Cullip, on how this site should read

Which is why this is the only page on the site that is about him.

Credentials

Licensed mortgage loan officer, NMLS 1574424, with Canopy Mortgage.
Owner of a service-disabled veteran-owned small business, 9 Line Agency, registered in SAM.gov.
Eight years in the Alaska Army National Guard on Army Aviation medevac crews.
Host of Network of Directors in Austin since its first event.

His office is at 9185 Research Blvd in Austin, the same building the room meets in.

Reach him or correct something

Anything about the room goes through the contact page and reaches him. If something on this page, or anywhere on the site, is wrong, say so the same way and it gets fixed, with the date changed.