He left Microsoft with a plan to read the roads through GPS signals. Seventy investor rejections and two decades later, Bryan Mistele is still working on the question that started INRIX: what could we do with all that wasted time?
After 70 investor rejections, INRIX replaced helicopters and roadside loops with a moving network of vehicles. Twenty years later, its harder job is turning a 50-petabyte data lake into answers cities, carmakers and logistics teams will actually pay for.