mobility
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Sahas Katta and the car that needed a translator
A teenage technology blogger wanted to write an app for a car. The difficulty of that small request became Smartcar, a company built with his brother - and now part of a larger experiment in household energy.
Ahu Serter and the art of leaving the room
A family-company disagreement sent Ahu Büyükkuşoğlu Serter into the art-hotel business. Her work at Fark Labs and Arya follows a related instinct: look for possibility beyond the familiar circle.
Abdulkader Almkinzy and the journey before the journey
Before a rental car could take you anywhere, you had to go and find it. Telgani co-founder Abdulkader Almkinzy built a business around bringing it to you.
Mark Lawrence and the art of staying put
A pile of Chicago parking tickets gave Mark Lawrence a problem to solve. Building SpotHero meant learning when to move, when to wait, and whose advice to leave at the curb.
Mark Morelli and the art of getting things running
An old Triumph helped spark Mark Morelli’s interest in engineering. Decades later, Vontier’s founding CEO is working on a larger assembly: the technology behind fuel stops, repair shops, and the journey between them.
Peter Dames and the art of keeping time
A bassist, a former Toyota “Chief Dreamer,” and the first CEO outside Servco’s founding family. Peter Dames is carrying a Hawaiʻi business into its next chapter, with one ear on its past.
Atsushi Tsukigata and the distance between a good idea and a working partnership
Before leading Honda’s Silicon Valley innovation operation, Atsushi “Ash” Tsukigata spent years working on the organization itself. Now Honda Innovations’ COO, he brings that experience to the delicate business of getting a large manufacturer and young technology companies to build together.
Ro Gupta and the trouble with a finished map
Ro Gupta built CARMERA around a simple problem: streets change faster than maps. Now the New York founder leads Woven Capital, bringing the habits of a startup builder to Toyota’s $1.6 billion venture platform.
Rodrigo Volio and the value of keeping the founder in the picture
At Nacascolo Holdings, Rodrigo Volio is backing businesses whose founders already know their customers. His next task is to help them grow without losing what made people care in the first place.
Barsi Luna Put the Airport Ride on the Itinerary
The Cancun founder spent years watching a polished travel industry fumble its final mile. His answer was an operations company dressed as an API - built for the local transport businesses global booking sites could not easily reach.
Armir Harris Is Turning the Humble Bus Into a Software Business
A frantic request for 60 buses showed Armir Harris what the industry lacked. He has spent the years since turning phone calls, paper schedules and idle vehicles into a real-time transportation network.
Paul Li Wants to Turn the Car Into Two Pieces
After two decades inside the auto industry, the U POWER founder is betting that the next useful car company will help other brands build - and leave the badge to them.
Jim DiSanto Has Spent Three Decades Finding the Next Machine That Moves
Before maps lived in every pocket, Jim DiSanto helped put location on the web. His next act has been a long bet on the physical world - trucks, sensors, robots, energy systems and the stubborn infrastructure beneath the software.
Tomer Kashi
Tomer Kashi is the co-founder and CEO of VOOM Insurance (and its drone brand SkyWatch), an insurtech company building usage-based, on-demand insurance for underserved mobility segments such as drones, motorcycles, e-bikes, and rideshare drivers. A graduate of Israel's elite Talpiot program with a background in computer science and physics, Kashi led technology projects inside the Israeli Prime Minister's Office cyber unit before entering insurance. He frames VOOM as 'insurtech 2.0' and the 'Lemonade for Mobility,' using new sources of data to rebuild insurance products for episodic, high-risk vehicle use.
Matthieu Masselin
Matthieu Masselin is the CEO and co-founder of Wandercraft, the Paris-based robotics company behind Atalante, the Eve personal exoskeleton, and the Calvin-40 humanoid robot. Trained as an engineer at Ecole Polytechnique, he took over as CEO in 2018 and led the company through FDA clearances, a Renault manufacturing partnership, and a Series D that brought total funding to about $169M.
Robbins Schrader
Robbins Schrader is the co-founder and CEO of SafeRide Health, a San Antonio-based technology company that runs non-emergency medical transportation (NEMT) for the country's largest Medicare Advantage, Medicaid, and provider programs. A former US Navy officer and Boston Consulting Group project leader with a Wharton MBA, he started the company in 2016 with his brother Whit Schrader and Ben Salter to fix healthcare's hardest mile: getting vulnerable patients to the care they need. Under his leadership SafeRide now coordinates more than a million rides a year and Schrader was named an EY Entrepreneur Of The Year 2024 Gulf South Award winner.
Joe Colangelo
Joe Colangelo is the Founder and CEO of Boxcar Transit, a luxury commuter bus and parking marketplace company he started in 2016 by renting out his own Cranford, NJ driveway for $2/day. A U.S. Navy veteran, UC Berkeley political science graduate, and former President of Consumers' Research, Colangelo built Boxcar into a profitable suburban mobility platform serving 21 New Jersey towns with named luxury bus routes to Midtown Manhattan, nearly 600,000 reservations across 7 years, and a parking network of 1,500+ spaces across 4+ states - positioning the company as the answer to every NJ commuter's prayer during rail strikes, mass transit disruptions, and the general indignities of commuting by train.
Nicholas D'Andre
Nicholas D'Andre is the CEO and co-founder of GridMatrix, a San Francisco-founded software company that turns a city's existing traffic cameras and sensors into a real-time, AI-driven nervous system for roads, tunnels, ports and airports. A supply-chain operator turned infrastructure entrepreneur, he spent years buying sensors and RF components at Apple and forecasting demand at Amazon and Google before deciding the bigger problem was the analog infrastructure those devices lived inside. GridMatrix was selected from more than 150 global startups by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and now runs on landmarks like the Lincoln and Holland tunnels and the George Washington Bridge, spotting near-misses, congestion and emissions before they become headlines.
Todd Roberts
Todd Roberts is the CEO and co-founder of ATDev (Assistive Technology Development, Inc.), a robotics company building an ecosystem of devices that help people stay independent regardless of physical ability. A mechanical engineer trained at Northeastern and UC Berkeley, where he researched exoskeletons, Roberts met his co-founder Owen Kent through a Craigslist housing ad and discovered they shared both a roof and a biomechanics class. Their company's first product, Reflex, is a sub-five-pound at-home knee rehabilitation robot that pairs guided exercises with remote clinician monitoring. ATDev raised a $3M seed round in October 2025 and is a partner in the $41M ARPA-H RAMMP robotic mobility initiative.
Bryan Frist
Bryan Frist is the CEO and co-founder of Yoshi Mobility, a Nashville-based automotive services startup that began by delivering gasoline to cars in San Francisco and has grown into a fleet maintenance, virtual vehicle inspection, and mobile EV charging company backed by General Motors, ExxonMobil, Bridgestone, and Y Combinator. A Princeton and Harvard Business School graduate and son of former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, he also runs the early-stage investment firm Friale Ventures and has raised more than $90M for Yoshi at a valuation north of $200M.
David Block-Schachter
David Block-Schachter is the Chief Business Officer at Transit, the multimodal trip-planning and fare-payment app used in cities across North America and Europe. A car-free MIT transportation PhD who started his career designing websites for American Express and IBM, he co-founded the microtransit startup Bridj, ran customer technology as CTO of the MBTA, and now helps transit agencies turn rider data into faster buses and simpler fares. His through-line: use technology and data to make public transit work better for everyone.
Tim Swift
Tim Swift is the founder and CEO of Roam Robotics, the San Francisco company building lightweight exoskeletons out of high-strength fabric and compressed air instead of heavy steel and motors. A UC Berkeley mechanical engineering PhD, he was one of the original three-person team that invented the Ekso exoskeleton at Ekso Bionics, then went to Otherlab before starting Roam in 2014. His bet: that wearable robots can weigh five pounds, cost a few thousand dollars, and be something a regular person buys to ski longer, hike farther, or move with less pain - not a tens-of-thousands-of-dollars hospital machine.
Bill Lin
Bill Lin is the Deputy CEO and Board Member of One Mobility GmbH, the automotive arm of Foxconn Interconnect Technology (FIT), headquartered in Reutlingen, Germany. With a career spanning supply chain management, management consulting, and EV business leadership at Foxconn, Lin bridges Taiwan's electronics manufacturing powerhouse with Germany's century-old automotive precision engineering heritage. He also serves as Chief Integration Officer at FIT, steering the integration of One Mobility's 11,000-person global workforce across 40+ locations in 17 countries following the 2024 acquisition of Auto-Kabel Group.
Dara Khosrowshahi
Dara Khosrowshahi is the CEO of Uber, the global ride-hailing and delivery platform he has led since September 2017. An Iranian-American who fled Tehran as a child during the Revolution, he spent 12 years building Expedia into a travel giant before inheriting Uber at its most turbulent moment. Under his leadership, Uber went public in 2019, achieved sustained profitability, and expanded into a multi-service platform operating across 70+ countries with $193+ billion in annual gross bookings. A self-described gamer, sci-fi geek, and cycling enthusiast who once wore a Slayer T-shirt to his wedding, Khosrowshahi has rebuilt Uber's culture around a simple principle: 'We do the right thing. Period.'
Ritu Narayan
Ritu Narayan is the founder and CEO of Zūm, the Redwood City company rebuilding the United States' largest mass transit system: the yellow school bus. After 15 years as a product leader at eBay, Yahoo, Oracle and IBM, she left to fix the unreliable rides she was juggling for her own kids. Today Zūm runs electric school bus fleets for more than 4,000 schools, deployed the nation's first all-electric district fleet in Oakland with vehicle-to-grid technology, and has raised about $577 million.
Jim Adler
Jim Adler is the Founder and General Partner of Toyota Ventures, the corporate venture arm of Toyota with $800M+ in assets under management and 90+ portfolio companies. A rocket-engineer-turned-serial-entrepreneur, Adler built the fund from a $100M seed in 2017 into a powerhouse backing frontier technologies in AI, autonomy, robotics, climate tech, and mobility. Known for his 'geek, suit, wonk' identity, he bridges deep technical expertise with sharp investment philosophy, insisting financial returns must precede strategic ones.
Matt Logan
Matt Logan is General Partner at Earthshot Ventures, a $60M San Francisco-based climate tech fund he helped build from the ground up. Formerly with Elemental Excelerator and Advanced Microgrid Solutions, Logan brings a rare blend of project finance, corporate partnerships, and data-driven sourcing to early-stage climate investing. He built Earthshot's proprietary outbound sourcing engine and focuses on companies where powerful technology waves - AI, robotics, materials, and energy - intersect with outsized climate benefit.
Andre Haddad
Andre Haddad is the CEO and All Star Host of Turo, the world's largest peer-to-peer car-sharing marketplace. A Lebanese-born, HEC Paris-educated entrepreneur who survived Beirut's civil war, co-founded and sold iBazar to eBay for $140 million, and then spent a decade inside eBay before taking the helm of Turo in 2011. Under his leadership, Turo has grown from a niche car-sharing startup into a global platform operating in the US, UK, Canada, France, and Australia, generating nearly $1 billion in annual revenue and empowering hundreds of thousands of hosts worldwide.
Jozsef Kovacs
Jozsef Kovacs was the co-founder and CEO of Commsignia, the world's largest company fully dedicated to Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) communication technology. Born in Hungary and trained as a computer scientist and PhD researcher in cooperative intelligent transportation systems, he co-founded Commsignia in 2012 alongside fellow researchers from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Under his leadership, Commsignia deployed V2X technology across 130+ intersections in Las Vegas, secured partnerships with Volkswagen, Audi, Ford, and major OEMs, raised $26M+ in venture funding, and expanded to 20+ countries. Kovacs passed away in late 2021, leaving behind a company that continues to lead the global V2X industry.
Steve Kelley
Steve Kelley is a serial clean-energy entrepreneur and CEO of L-Charge, the Sunnyvale-based pioneer of off-grid ultra-fast EV charging for commercial fleets. With six successful startup exits and over two decades building energy and mobility ventures, Kelley co-founded Green Charge Networks (acquired by Engie), scaled InCharge Energy's revenues nearly tenfold, and in October 2025 took the helm at L-Charge to push its grid-free Charging-as-a-Service model nationwide. Under his leadership, L-Charge closed a $10 million funding round in January 2026, enabling fleet operators to electrify in weeks rather than months by bypassing grid bottlenecks entirely.