owner-operators
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Chuck Davis and the education that took its time
He stumbled through college, found his footing in finance, and helped build Stone Point Capital around the habit of knowing a business deeply. Decades later, Chuck Davis still makes room for the student he used to be.
Guillermo Garcia
Guillermo Garcia is the co-founder and CEO of SmartHop, a Miami-based platform that acts as an autonomous dispatcher and 'business-in-a-box' for small trucking companies and owner-operators. A Venezuelan industrial engineer who started out delivering pet food, he built a bootstrapped ~500-employee logistics company back home before political and economic instability pushed him to the U.S. After studying at Columbia and running an over-the-road fleet in Miami, he founded SmartHop in 2017-2018 to give independent truckers the software, load recommendations, and financial tools that big carriers take for granted. SmartHop has raised over $56M, including a $30M+ Series B in 2022.
Jin Stedge
Jin Stedge is the co-founder and CEO of TrueNorth, a San Francisco freight-tech company building an AI loadboard and virtual dispatcher named Loadie that helps independent truckers find loads, price them, and get paid. Born in Korea and adopted at seven into an American family of owner-operators, she studied aerospace engineering at MIT, did neuroscience research, and worked in HR tech and autonomous driving before returning to her family's roots in trucking. She founded TrueNorth in 2019 with Sanjaya Wijeratne, raised a $50M Series B backed by Sam Altman and Lachy Groom, and earned a spot on Forbes 30 Under 30.