In late summer 1993 some USAF technical staff (mostly civilians) lead by John Wigand from the Air Intelligence Agency on Security Hill at Kelly AFB thought it would be a good idea to support a local school for entry in to a US First Robotics competition which had started in 1992.  They approached SwRI to support financial, some of the technical/mentoring, and fabrication aspects of this endeavor.  The company president, Martin Goland invited several SwRI technical staff including Louis Kim to the meeting with the group from the government knowing there was already interest from the SwRi staff in supporting community activities promoting STEM careers to pre-college students.  During that meeting once the costs were explained, Mr. Goland indicated it was beyond the level of support SwRI could supply for a single team.

Once the team that had formed related this to US First (that San Antonio would not have a US First team supported by this combined group), the US First organizers were kind enough to provide contact information for a group (mostly engineers) at Texas Instruments in Sherman Texas that were forming a similar, but much lower cost (no entry fee) grassroots robotics competition called North Texas BEST - Boosting Engineering Science & Technology in their area.  They had already started the competition cycle (almost two weeks in to the then six week program), but agreed to send a kit to San Antonio and the team at Taft HS got to participate.  The combined team of staff from Kelly AFB and SwRI who mentored that team in the Fall of 1993 returned to San Antonio after the competition with a mission to create their own version of BEST.  When the SwRI leadership was approached for a similar dollar amount but for numerous teams (12 was suggested for the inception year), they agreed to support it via partial direct contribution and Mr. Goland would solicit his peers in San Antonio for more donations (in kind and direct monetary).  He also agreed to bring to bear several SwRI resources: Legal Dept. for support in starting the non-profit (established July 1994), Publications Dept for promoting the fledging organization, Video/photo production services support as well as graphics artists to create logos (one of which still generates a small royalty for SAbest from other BEST organizations - This is a Robot, Some Assembly Required) and promotional materials.  His contacts at St. Mary's University were vital in establishing the first competition host site in the Fall of 1994 for free.  The core group from the 1993 team also began promoting numerous technology organizations for mentors and volunteers.