On this episode, we covered a different kind of autonomous vehicle as I spoke with William Santana Li, Chairman and CEO of https://www.knightscope.com (Knightscope). Knightscope makes indoor and outdoor autonomous security robots that have been preventing crimes in the real world for over six years. The company just went public on NASDAQ through a Regulation A listing. Before founding Knighscope, William founded a series of mobility companies raising over $300 million in venture capital. He...

On this episode, I had an interview with Asaf Weisbrot, Head of Automotive at Nasdaq-listed https://otonomo.io (Otonomo). Otonomo is a provider of a pioneering vehicle data platform and marketplace, and is positioned at the epicenter of the data revolution in the automotive and mobility space. Otonomo vehicle data is being utilized by businesses, fleets, and smart cities for a wide variety of use cases, including, fleet management, insurance, emergency services, mapping, EV management,...

On this episode, I spoke with Dr. Cetin Mericli, co-founder and CEO of https://locomation.ai (Locomation) a Pittsburg-based startup building autonomous trucks. Previously, he was Special Faculty and Commercialisation Specialist at the National Robotics Engineering Center, at Carnegie Mellon University, where he led the Machine Learning and Perception group. In the past, he has been involved with many urban and offroad autonomous and semi-autonomous commercial and defense driving applications...

On this episode, I had a conversation with Mark Frohnmayer, Founder and CEO of https://www.arcimoto.com (Arcimoto) makers of (FUVs) Fun Utility Vehicles and fleet solutions for emergency services and last mile delivery. Their company is based in Oregon. Mark graduated from UC Berkeley in 1996 with a degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. After 11 years leading advanced technology projects in the game development industry and the sale of his first startup,...

On this episode I spoke with Clare Jones, the Chief Commercial Officer of https://what3words.com/advisedly.inroads.restrictions (What3Words) - the world’s first addressing system designed for voice that is used in 170 countries and is being adopted by governments all around the world as an official addressing system. Previously, Clare was involved in the development and growth of social enterprises and in impact investment. She was also featured in the 2019 Forbes 30 under 30 list for...

On this episode I had a conversation with Marc Ausman, the co-founder and CEO of https://www.airflow.aero (Airflow.aero), which is building an aerial logistics network for same-day e-commerce using electric Short Take Off and Landing aircraft. He was Chief Strategist on the Airbus Vahana eVTOL program an early employee at Eclipse Aviation that brought to market the world’s first very light jet. Marc was also a Board member at the Experimental Aircraft Association and served with the U.S....

On this special bonus episode I switched chairs with Brandon Bartneck, the host of the podcast that is coincidentally called "Future of Mobility" just like this season of "Accelerated". Brandon has interviewed numerous leaders in mobility on his podcast and we decided to post our conversation on both of our shows. Brandon and I covered a lot of ground on the current state of electric, autonomous, shared, and connected mobility. Usually I do the interviewing, but today you’ll hear some of my...

On this episode I spoke with Robert Falck, the co-founder and CEO of Einride. Based in Sweden, Einride is the first fully electric, totally autonomous transport vehicle to operate on a public road in the world. With remote monitoring and operation capability, operators can oversee and control the Pod on-demand, with no need for a human driver onboard. Their electric trucks already count Oatly, Coca-Cola, Lidl, and Electrolux as customers. In May, the company announced its $110 million Series...

A very special episode with Mate, the 33 year old Croatian founder and CEO of his namesake, high performance EV company Rimac – maker of the world’s fastest production car. In July, Rimac and Porsche, announced that the 112 year old legendary Bugatti brand will be in a new joint venture with Mate as CEO. I met Mate in 2012, shortly after he started the company. We worked closely on the company's successful Series B financing in 2017. On this episode, we reconnected for a revealing...

This bonus episode of Accelerated Podcast is a rebroadcast of a live East meets West event I moderated earlier in August. It was put on by https://www.digitimes.com/ (DIGITIMES Asia) and https://www.anchortaiwan.com/ (Anchor Taiwan). Asia Venturing is a series of monthly roundtables with roadmaps to the future focusing on the hype v.s. the reality of Asia's supply chain-boosted innovation ecosystem, jointly powered by DIGITIMES and Anchor Taiwan. They bring together leading industry...

On this episode, I had a conversation with Vlad Voroninski, co-founder and CEO of Helm.ai, the Android of autonomy. Vlad is an applied mathematician, AI researcher, and entrepreneur, with many years of RandD experience in algorithmic development. His PhD thesis in mathematics at UC Berkeley made fundamental contributions to phase retrieval and quantum tomography, for which he was awarded the Bernhard Friedman Memorial Prize in 2013 and the SIAM Outstanding Paper Prize in 2014. Previously he...

On this episode, I spoke with Gilbert Passin, CEO of Wrightspeed, maker of heavy duty EV platforms for commercial trucks and buses. Gilbert served as VP of manufacturing at Tesla during its most formative years. There he grew the vehicle manufacturing team from scratch and launched the Fremont factory and Model S and several other new Tesla factories and EV products. Before Tesla, he was the GM of US West Coast operations at Toyota, and led Volvo and Mack truck manufacturing. Gilbert Passin...

On this episode, I had a conversation with Jay Giraud, Founder and CEO of Damon Motorcycles based in Vancouver. Damon is often compared to Tesla for its innovative reinvention of an entire category. Jay found early success as a professional snowboarder and then set out on a personal mission to rid the world of oil. He first did this at REV Technologies that converted fleet trucks and military vehicles to electric and was a pioneer in vehicle to grid technology. He then founded Mojio, the most...

On this episode, I spoke speak with Praveen Penmetsa, the CEO of the smart and electric tractor Silicon Valley startup Monarch. Before founding the company, he spent two decades developing core technology and full products across energy, mobility, agricultural tech, and even aviation. Since 2010, his company Motivo Engineering has completed over 540 projects: from drone controls and luxury aircraft seats; to automation in meat processing and broccoli transplant machines; to autonomous...

On this episode, I had a conversation with Michel Taride, who I’m humbled to call one of my Partners at Drake Star. We discussed his 38 year career at Hertz where he went from a summer job as a young entry level clerk to Group President. We covered some really interesting topics in Connected, Autonomous, Shared, Electric vehicles, smart cities, subscription models in mobility, how smart corporations avoid getting disrupted, and SPACs.

On this episode, I spoke with Mark Joseph, the CEO of Mobitas Advisors and Advisor to Drake Star Partners. During Joe Biden’s campaign and transition, he served as the co-chair of the subcommittee on infrastructure and stimulus. Mark has had a fascinating career in transportation that started with him taking over the family taxi business in Baltimore. He grew it 50 fold and sold it to the international energy, water and waste management conglomerate, Veolia, where he grew the business 16...

On this episode, I had a conversation with Monika Mikac, the CBO of QEV Technologies and a former member of the founding team at Rimac Automobili - maker of the all electric and fastest production car in the world, the Nevera. There, as the COO, she helped grow the company from 8 crazy kids in a Croatian garage to hundreds of employees and a very respected position in the global automotive industry. We talked about how she accidentally went from dreams of becoming a journalist to building a...

On this episode, I spoke with Andrés de León the CEO of Hyperloop Transportation Technologies. He first joined the company as its COO before taking the helm in 2019. Prior to Hyperloop he build an illustrious career leading many initiatives in energy and infrastructure. We talked about how the crazy idea of Hyperloop became a full fledged industry, HyperloopTT’s unique crowd sourcing and business models, key technologies that has to be developed, and most importantly when we can get in a pod...

On this first episode of "Accelerated" Season 2, I spoke with Drake Star Senior Advisor, Stefan Krause - Founder of Canoo, CFO of Faraday Future, BMW, and Deutsche Bank. Stefan shared his views on the EV revolution (and the non-obvious challenge for legacy brands in the transition), when we can expect to see autonomy on the road, building brands, making the transition from a corporate career to entrepreneurship, and why SPACs are here to stay. Stefan Krause is a Senior Advisor to Drake Star...

As the pandemic began tightening its grip on the world in March of 2020, those who have been through a few economic cycles said, "here we go again". Borders closed, factories shut down, and everyone held their breath not knowing what’s next. Like many crises before, opened the door to opportunity. When work stopped, old supply chains faded away and opened the door to rebuilding with a vision for the future without the inertia of the past. On this second season of the podcast we are going to...

On this episode, I spoke with Dr. Tia Kansara, a sustainability expert, multi award-winning entrepreneur and economist who’s consulted some of the worlds largest brands like Coca Cola, Formula One, and MIT. We discussed the importance of thinking beyond sustainability to replenishment. How startups can integrate long-term principals into their core. How big brands should think about lining up with young generations. Why you are not a tourist on this planet. And how consumer behavior and...

On this episode, I spoke with Dave Troy an entrepreneur, speaker, and disinformation researcher based in Baltimore, Maryland. We covered: disinformation, misinformation, what's wrong with Twitter and Facebook, the threat of Tok Tok, foreign operations using social media to divide Americans, BLM, Conspiracy Theories, Trump encouraging violence, COVID, what to expect from elections... and some startup stuff. David was the first to use the Twitter API, and his data visualization work has been...

On this episode, I spoke with a Forbes top business woman in Asia, Shannon Kalayanamitr, a Shark on SharkTank Thailand and Partner at $1B fund, Gobi Partners. In the past, she was part of Rocket Internet's founding team in SEA and CEO of Orami, the top ecommerce destination for women. We had a very personal conversation about the trials and tribulations of being a founder, gender roles in Asia, growing up between US and Thailand, how she raised capital while pregnant with twins, how she is...

On this episode, I spoke with Gary Stewart, CEO of The Nest aka “Masterclass for startup founders”. We covered some serious hot topics, including: What it was like growing up in an immigrant family in the Bronx Thriving at an elite University and Law School What Stacey Abrams and Cory Booker were like in college What Black people really think about Candace Owens Corporate bureaucracy in Europe Startup cultures in US and Europe Diversity in tech LGBT rights in Russia And...