Gaurav Khandelwal is the founder and CEO of Velostics, a Houston-based logistics SaaS company that automates appointment scheduling, dock and yard management, and the gate in/out process for shippers and carriers. The son of a tea blender from India, he came to the US for college at tiny Goshen College in Indiana, built the behavioral-science software studio ChaiOne into a multi-million-dollar firm starting in 2009, then turned his attention to the friction-filled 'middle mile' of commerce. He launched Velostics to digitize the antiquated handoffs between warehouses and trucks, raised a $2.5M seed round led by Flyover Capital, and is a fixture of Houston's startup ecosystem as the founder of START co-working space and a Houston Exponential board member.
Tom Dean is the co-founder, President and CEO of Renaissant, a Milwaukee-based logistics technology company building a voice-enabled, agentic AI operating system for warehouse yards and loading docks. A former Ernst & Young auditor turned hedge fund trader and investment manager, Dean pivoted Renaissant from a building-security platform into freight tech, raised a $5 million Series A in 2024, and now runs software across roughly 130 sites that talks to truck drivers in their own language to speed check-ins, deter cargo theft, and cut idle time.