Founder Stories: Troy M. Morris of Kall Morris Inc

If you ask Troy Morris what Kall Morris (KMI) actually does, he skips the buzzwords and speaks as you’d expect for a guy who learned to translate complex stuff for the slower people amongst us. People like your correspondent (that’d be me) “As a company, we are focused on mobility and logistics in space. So, in layman’s terms, tow trucks for space,” he says. There is a pause as thinks for a minute, the buzz behind him over the phone from yet another conference away from home to hawk their product, this time in Washington. He then adds the industry label, “relocation as a service”, almost as an afterthought.

When you consider what KMI does, and how Troy in particular came to be its co-founder and CEO, such clarity is actually disarming. 

It’s also the end product of a path that, by his own admission, didn’t point anywhere near space tech - until it suddenly did. “I don’t think that up until October of 2019, it was even in my hopes, dreams, or charting,” Troy says. He was thriving at Snap-on Tools, “doing well for myself, (but) getting very bored in my job,” living in the Chicagoland area, and trading texts with his KMI co-founders - his brother Austin, and Austin’s college roommate Adam Kall (hence the name) - both of whom were “in their cities and all wonderfully bored in our corporate jobs.”

The three had all attended Northern Michigan University in Marquette. Adam is the data guy who spent some time at NASA. Austin is the mechanical engineer who worked on helicopters and planes. The two ex-college roommates were working on what would become KMI when the text chain began.

Troy was intrigued. “Wow, you need a little bit of help on the business side… it’d be fun to help you out… be an adviser if nothing else” he told them. That advisory role grew into co-founder and CEO when the company was officially formed in November, 2019.

How he ended up working with space technology

Troy studied Psychology and ended up in Operations and sales for Snap-on. But space had been a fascination since way back when. “until 2003… (the) life plan was how can I be an astronaut?” a dream tempered by the realization that there’s “an upper limit for how tall an astronaut can be,” he jokes, but the interest never died.

As the company took shape, the timeline to build products for space has demonstrated the team’s dedication. Although founded in 2019, the greatest proof point of what they're building came in just the last year. “We have demonstrated the prototype on the International Space Station… (that) came back to our hands the 4th of July this year,” Troy says. KMI is what he frames as “post-prototype, pre-MVP”, and quickly headed toward customer pilots and further validation.

Hardware in orbit runs on a calendar of launch windows and government partnerships, not design sprints or all-night coding binges. Troy talks about founder friends who ship software with a click of a button, and how different the cycles are. By way of explanation, KMI’s first flight with one partner will come “as early as… November 1st, 2027,” with another “flying standby” arrangement that points to late 2027 or early 2028.

Even the cap table reflects how KMI’s space work is stitched to customers and institutions, not hype cycles. Funding, totalling $7.5 million thus far, has been “six-to-one… non-dilutive government contracts versus traditional equity,” Troy says. Contracts with the US Air Force and SpaceWERX (the Space Force’s innovation arm) have driven much of the de-risking and development, with Stellar Ventures (D.C.), and Cook Inlet Region, Inc. (Alaska), alongside prominent Michigan investors like Michigan Rise, Dug Song, and Chris Thomas who’ve helped open doors across the country.

Why Chicago and not the UP?

Where is the best place to build the “tow trucks for space” company anyways? Oddly enough, not necessarily where the rockets are. In 2019, the three co-founders were split across New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago. Troy says they didn’t want to build the company in places that were expensive and disconnected with shallow networks. Instead, conversations drew them back to their college town of Marquette, and although none of them are from there they chose it as the central base.

Why Marquette? The reasons sound like a manifesto for building deep tech in the Midwest: “ease of comfort,” “a lot of connections,” “great cost of living,” “beautiful nature,” and “ecosystem partners that could assist us,” Morris explains. He says it could’ve been Seattle or San Francisco, but “we knew absolutely no one there. We knew a few folks in Marquette.” That doesn’t mean the choice didn’t come with hiccups, especially for the ‘business guy.’ Marquette’s airport schedule didn’t support the customer travel he needed, so in early 2020 he moved to Chicago. When the pandemic hit, he “sheltered in place… bunkered down in Chicago” having signed his lease just three weeks prior.

It’s not either/or for Troy; it’s both/and. In his view, and especially considering their location in Chicago, the windy city is the region’s connective tissue - for flights, customers, partners. But the Upper Peninsula is where the company is “proudly based” in his words, and where he often heads back because, he says, the life outside the lab keeps people grounded. As Troy puts it elsewhere in the conversation, the life - short commutes, fresh air, big water - isn’t just a perk; it’s part of what made the three cofounders and an asset the company leans into.

Why he eventually became an entrepreneur

The irony is that the traits that make Troy an effective space founder - translating complex issues into layperson language, pattern-spotting and operational empathy - were honed far from rockets.

Right out of college, a professor’s sudden retirement blew up Troy’s grad-school plan. He pivoted into a frontline role at a contact lens company, often teaching people how to put in contacts. 

From there, he was recruited to Snap-on Tools, where he ended as a sales developer. The role wasn’t glamorous, and it was complex. He served as corporate counterpart across ~70 franchises, a middle-manager for a small region who had to be translator between independent owners and corporate, between supply and demand, between this week’s promo and the long-term plan. The job spanned Chicagoland, Indiana, and part of Michigan.

He even negotiated with his boss over where he’d live: a one-year stint in Indiana for the job, then back to Chicago. “I said I will live in Indiana for a year but I would like to be in Chicago… one way or another, I am not living in Indiana for another year,” he recalls with a laugh. His words, Hoosiers. Not ours!

All of that work learning to educate, field ops, franchise systems, middle-manager diplomacy, made starting a deep-tech company less about a leap into the unknown and more about recombining familiar muscles:

• Discovery & translation. He learned to interrogate the problem behind the problem: first with patients, then franchisees; now with satellite operators and program managers.
  
  
• Route-to-market empathy. He knows what it means to be on quota and under-resourced - and how programs and incentives actually change behavior on the ground.
  
  
• Systems thinking. He moved parts across complex networks: people, schedules, inventory. It’s not rocket science - but it does rhyme.
  
  

What he learned that lets him win in entrepreneurship

Ask Troy what advice he'd give other founders and he won’t hand you platitudes. He’ll tell you a story about a moment he failed - an investment round where “trying to run it all through me” jammed communications across “two or three week[s]” of inboxes, opportunities, and crossed wires. “It takes a big piece of being humble… to authorize and enable your employees and your partners… to do what they do best,” he says now.

He also offers three values which he actually uses:

1. “Collaboration is going to take you far further than (being) cutthroat.”
   
   
2. “Progress is going to move you along the line better than perfection.”
   
   
3. “Never be afraid to learn”. He points out that he’s never worked in a field that he was formally trained in. He had to learn about contacts, torque wrenches… and rocket launches, and says he’s not afraid of asking dumb questions. “If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room,” he adds.
   
   

Those aren’t slogans on a wall though. They’re hiring filters and training beats at KMI.

And they connect directly to the company’s choice of home, a talent magnet powered by mission and place. He says they receive enquiries from talent every week including Christmas, saying "Oh my gosh, I didn't know I could do space in Michigan. Here's what I've been doing. here's my resume, how can I apply?”

The through-line: a Midwest engine for space logistics

It’s tempting to tell this as a neat origin story: kid wants to be an astronaut, grows up, starts a space company. Troy’s version is messier and more honest: university tour guide; contact lens trainer; Snap-on operator-coach; middle manager across three states; Chicagoland for travel and customers; Marquette for building and belonging.

What makes it compelling isn’t the résumé; it’s the pattern:

• Translate the hard thing. (“Tow trucks for space” is a line you can tell your dad and your board.)
  
  
• Choose life and networks you’ll actually use. (Pick Marquette over mystique; Chicago for access.)
  
  
• Fund like an operator. (Bias to non-dilutive dollars aligned with the mission; add equity intentionally.)
  
  
• Ship milestones that matter. (ISS prototype → MVP flight windows—with real dates and real partners.)

And yes, keep a sense of humor. When friends brag, “we’re launching the app,” Troy laughs and wishes them well - but also reminds you that spacecraft don’t ship on a short schedule just because you say so. That’s not cynicism; it’s reality. And now it’s pointed at orbital logistics.

The truth of KMI as a business from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula is that it actually makes perfect sense when you hear their story: practical, patient, purpose-built. Or, as Troy would put it, progress over perfection, collaboration over cutthroat, curiosity over ego.

That’s a Midwest founder story and one that emphasizes the collaboration of complimentary skills and a business built with intention, not based on press cycles. Tow trucks for space, built the Midwest way.