The Story
Right Now, He's Three Moves Ahead
Christian Johan Smith does not slow down between companies. As of mid-2025, he is Chief Revenue Officer at Trially AI, driving AI-powered clinical trial enrollment across the United States. Before that, he co-founded Forta Health, an autism therapy startup that raised $55 million in Series A funding in January 2024 and now operates across 47 states. And before Forta, he co-founded TrackR - the Bluetooth device tracker that shipped over 9 million units worldwide and grew to $50 million in annual revenue.
Three companies. Three different industries. One connecting thread: the belief that quality products and quality care should be available to everyone, not just to those born in the right zip code, or who happen to find the right doctor, or who know the right questions to ask.
That belief is personal. When Christian was in his late teens, his mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. The family navigated the medical system as best they could. Standard treatment paths. The usual channels. What they did not know - what nobody told them - was that there were 28 clinical studies being conducted nearby that might have offered different options. His mother passed in 2005. Those trials were invisible to them.
Christian has spent the two decades since making sure that kind of invisibility ends.
"Sales solves all problems."
Christian Smith, quoting an early mentor - a maxim he has carried across every company he has builtThe Beach, the Keys, the Company
The origin story for TrackR reads like a pitch deck cliche. Christian Smith lost his keys on a beach. But what he did next is what separates a story from a case study.
He and co-founder Chris Herbert built the solution themselves - first as an app, then as a hardware device, then as a global logistics and consumer technology operation. TrackR was founded in 2009 out of UC Santa Barbara, where Christian had studied Mechanical Engineering. The early product was a small Bluetooth Low-Energy disc that you attached to your keys, wallet, or bag. When you couldn't find something, the TrackR app would show you the last known location on a map - crowdsourced from the passive location pings of every other TrackR user nearby.
That last detail is the interesting part. The Crowd GPS network - every device quietly reporting the location of every other device - turned a simple consumer gadget into an ambient location intelligence grid. At its peak, the network was tracking over 2 million items every single day.
The company raised $61 million in capital, secured distribution through Target and other national retailers, and integrated its technology into products by Amazon, HP, and Cross Pens. In 2017, TrackR was ranked #45 on the Inc. 500 list of fastest-growing private companies in America, and Christian and Chris Herbert received Ernst & Young's Entrepreneur of the Year award for the Greater Los Angeles region in the Retail and Consumer category.
TrackR's Crowd Locate network was tracking over 2 million lost items every day at its peak - using the passive location signals of millions of user devices to build an invisible, ambient GPS grid across America.
The Pandemic Pivot: 44 Testing Sites, 26 Cities
When COVID-19 hit in 2020, Christian did not sit still. He led direct-to-consumer operations at Dascena, a clinical diagnostics company, during one of the most logistically complex healthcare moments in recent history. In the space of months, the team opened 44 testing sites across 26 cities.
It was not a glamorous assignment. It was operations at speed - coordinating supply chains, staffing, locations, and regulatory compliance simultaneously. The skills required were exactly the ones that scaling a hardware company to 9 million units had already built: find the constraint, remove it, move forward.
That pandemic period also reinforced something. Healthcare had access problems. Not just sometimes. Systematically. Christian had watched it play out with his mother. He was watching it play out again at a population scale. Something needed to change structurally.
Forta: Putting Parents at the Center of Autism Care
Applied behavior analysis - ABA - is the most evidence-based therapy available for children with autism spectrum disorder. It works. The problem is the waiting list: in most of the United States, families wait 18 months or more to access an ABA therapist. For a child, 18 months is not a delay. It is a developmental window that does not reopen.
Forta Health's thesis is that the waiting list is partly a supply problem and partly a design problem. Traditional ABA requires a board-certified behavior analyst (BCBA) to be present for every session. But the most consistent presence in any child's life is not a BCBA - it is their parent.
Christian co-founded Forta in 2021 with Ritankar Das, who serves as CEO. The Forta model trains parents to become the primary behavior technicians for their own children - guided by AI clinical algorithms, supported by BCBA supervision, and tracked through automated progress monitoring. The result: therapy that runs every day, not once a week, by the person with the deepest knowledge of the child.
The clinical data backed the model: 76% of patients improved their therapy goal achievement compared to traditional approaches. Forta contracted with seven of the top ten largest US health insurance companies and over two dozen state government programs. By mid-2025, the platform operated across 47 states.
"Our current healthcare system is not able to provide dependable and quality care to families when they need it."
Ritankar Das, Co-Founder & CEO, Forta Health - the thesis that drove the company's foundingThe $55 Million Vote of Confidence
In January 2024, Forta announced a $55 million Series A led by Insight Partners. The round included participation from a roster of founder-investors that reads like a who's who of consumer-to-healthcare tech: founders of 23andMe, Warby Parker, Flexport, Harry's, Allbirds, Curative, Forward, and Prelude Fertility all participated.
The capital is earmarked to expand the ABA practice, build out Forta's suite of AI clinical algorithms, and begin the harder work of applying the family-powered model to other chronic conditions - including memory care for Alzheimer's patients.
Scott Barclay of Insight Partners put the mission plainly at the announcement: "In the USA in year 2023, children's zip codes or parents' income shouldn't determine access to proven therapy." That is exactly the sentence Christian Smith has been trying to make obsolete since he was a teenager sitting with his mother in a waiting room.
2025: Clinical Trials, Personal Stakes
In June 2025, Christian joined Trially AI as Chief Revenue Officer. Trially uses artificial intelligence to match patients to clinical trials - solving exactly the kind of invisible-trial problem that cost his family so much two decades ago.
The symmetry is hard to miss. A teenager who didn't know about 28 nearby clinical studies is now helping build the infrastructure that ensures no family misses that information again. As Christian said in the Trially announcement: the difficulty of navigating medical care when standard treatment paths don't yield results shaped everything that followed.
His role at Trially focuses on scaling enrollment partnerships with U.S. site networks, healthcare systems, and clinical trial sponsors - bringing the same direct-to-consumer and operational scaling playbook he used at TrackR and Dascena to the challenge of clinical trial recruitment.
Track Record
Milestones Worth Marking
EY Entrepreneur of the Year 2017 - Greater Los Angeles Region, Retail & Consumer category. Awarded at the Beverly Hilton alongside TrackR co-founder Chris Herbert.
9 Million+ Devices Shipped - TrackR's Bluetooth trackers reached consumers through Target, Bed Bath & Beyond, and integrations with Amazon, HP, and Cross Pens.
$55M Forta Series A - January 2024, led by Insight Partners. Backed by founders of Warby Parker, Flexport, 23andMe, Harry's, and Allbirds.
7 of Top 10 US Insurers - Forta Health contracted with seven of America's largest health insurance companies, unlocking access for millions of families.
44 Testing Sites, 26 Cities - Led DTC operations at Dascena during COVID-19, building a testing network from scratch at pandemic speed.
Inc. 500 #45 - TrackR ranked among America's fastest-growing private companies in 2017, the year Christian and his co-founder received EY recognition.
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