Connor Cullip

Who is Connor Cullip

Connor Cullip is a veteran and a business owner in Austin, and he describes himself on his own account as an architect of connections. Business, he says, is his love language. That is not a throwaway line. Almost everything he does, from lending to lodging to this room, is about putting the right people in the same place and letting something get built.

He went to the University of Alaska Anchorage and has spent about ten years in the mortgage industry, working at Stearns Lending, Homeowners Financial Group and Premier Mortgage Associates before the 9 Line businesses. Two threads run the whole way through: money and housing on one side, the military on the other. Everything he owns now sits where those two meet.

From the Guard to business

He spent eight years in the Alaska Army National Guard as a medevac search-and-rescue hoist operator, the person on the wire when someone needed to come out. That work showed him a gap in how service members were housed when they traveled on temporary duty, and he built a company to close it. He came into business through real estate investing and mortgage lending, and he grew up around a bed-and-breakfast, so hospitality was never far from the plan.

He puts the line from the aircraft to the company plainly:

9Line Agency was created from my history in Army Aviation as a medevac crew chief and hoist operator.

What he runs now

Today he owns 9 Line Companies. Under it, 9 Line Agency books lodging for military units and government agencies travelling on temporary duty, and it manages more than 45,000 nights a year with worldwide reach.

The word compliant is doing real work in that sentence. Government travel runs on its own rulebook, the Defense Travel System and the Joint Travel Regulations, and a booking that does not satisfy both is a problem for the unit and for the person who approved it. 9 Line is built to satisfy them, is registered in SAM.gov, and carries the service-disabled veteran-owned small business designation. That paperwork is unglamorous and it is most of why the company wins the work. Anyone can find a hotel. Not everyone can find one that clears.

The lending side

The second business is 9 Line Loans, a VA-focused mortgage operation powered by Canopy Mortgage, where Connor is a licensed loan officer, NMLS number 1574424. It is the same customer as the lodging business met at a different moment. He houses service members while they are moving for work, then helps them buy when they stop moving. The VA loan is one of the few genuinely good deals a person earns by serving, and it is also one of the most commonly misunderstood, which is the part he spends his time on.

His Austin office sits at 9185 Research Blvd, which is the same building the room meets in. The businesses and the room are not a side project each of the other. They are on the same floor.

Where the name comes from

A nine line is the radio call. It is the nine pieces of information you pass when you are requesting a medevac for someone who cannot wait: where they are, how to reach them, how bad it is, what you need. Connor spent eight years on the receiving end of that call. Naming a lodging company and a mortgage company after it is not decoration. It is the standard he is claiming, which is that when somebody who serves needs something handled, it gets handled. He says it more directly than that:

Supporting those who serve isn't a side thing for us, it's the whole foundation.

The room he hosts

Connor is the reason Network of Directors exists. He opens the room once a month in Austin, free, for founders and operators to trade what is actually working. When a speaker takes the mic here, it is usually because Connor put them there. He runs the whole thing on the same principle as the rest of his work: get the right people together, and value takes care of itself.