Evangelos Simoudis
Seasoned venture investor, senior advisor to global corporations, and a recognized thought leader in big data, digital platforms, and corporate innovation. Author of the book The Big Data Opportunity In Our Driverless Future.
Founder and Managing Director of Synapse Partners, a firm that invests in early-stage companies developing applications that combine artificial intelligence with big data. Previously Managing Director with Trident Capital and Apax Partners.
Prior to his investing and advisory work, Evangelos had more than 20 years experience in high-technology industries, in executive roles spanning operations, marketing, sales, and engineering. He was the CEO of two startups.
He is a member of Caltech’s advisory board, the Advisory Board of Brandeis International School of Business, and the advisory board of Center for Urban Science and Progress. In 2014, he was named a Power Player in Digital Platforms.
Evangelos earned a Ph.D. in computer science from Brandeis University and a B.S. in electrical engineering from Caltech.
The Automotive Industry at a Crossroads
Recently I have been collaborating with Stephen Zoepf, Executive Director of the Center for Automotive Research at Stanford on the challenges facing the incumbent automotive industry because of the emergence of new business models and technologies. The piece below is the first of what we hope to be a series. The automotive industry has survived […]
Six Requirements for Growing and Scaling Autonomous Mobility
As we enter a period of autonomous vehicle pilot deployments it is instructive to understand how far we’ve come in making these vehicles an achievable reality, and what we still need to accomplish before autonomous fleets can address the mobility goals, we’ve set for consumer transportation and logistics. Technological innovation and adoption typically follow particular […]
Seven Implications to Adopting Multimodal On-Demand Mobility
On-demand mobility services continue to evolve fast. New solutions are introduced constantly to address changes in consumer urban transportation tastes, or address shortcomings of existing offerings. Consumers demand for personalized transportation solutions that are affordable, convenient, and safe has led to the rapid growth of ride-hailing. But in cities where it is most popular, single […]
Before Regulating Next-Generation Mobility Data, We Must Understand That Data
The congressional and European Parliament testimonies of Facebook’s CEO focused attention on Internet and ecommerce corporations whose business models rely on the collection and exploitation of big data, with personal data being a major component. Legislators and the public at large came to realize a) the leverage such companies now possess through the dominant positions […]
Five Categories of On-Demand Mobility Services Companies
On-Demand Mobility Services, and particularly ride-hailing, have emerged as a strong option for consumer urban transportation. In the process, ride-hailing has disrupted the taxi and limo industries and could next disrupt public transportation and last-mile package delivery. Nowhere is this more evident than in cities such as New York and San Francisco. Other mobility services […]
Next-Generation Mobility Stratifies OEMs
Early last November Waymo announced that while it will continue its tests in Washington, California, and Texas, it was ready to start ferrying consumers in its fleet of driverless minivans in Chandler, a suburb of Phoenix, Arizona. Later the same month GM’s management team held an investor day to present the roadmap of its autonomous […]
Monetizing Big Data in Next-Generation Mobility
In my book and previous posts I build a broad case for the importance of big data and AI in next-generation mobility, and provide several examples of data that is being collected, or can be collected, in a variety of transportation and logistics situations. Next-generation mobility is about autonomous vehicles, electrified vehicles, and on-demand shared […]
Analysis Of The Next-Generation Mobility Value Chain
In the previous post I described a new value chain that will connect companies providing on-demand mobility and three emerging models for the realization of this value chain. This value chain is the result of the consumer shift from a car ownership-centric transportation model to a hybrid model that blends car ownership with mobility services, […]
A new value chain for next-generation mobility
In my book, The Big Data Opportunity in Our Driverless Future, I make two arguments: 1) that societal and urban challenges are accelerating the adoption of on-demand mobility, and 2) technology advances, including big data and machine intelligence, are making Autonomous Connected and Electrified (ACE) vehicles a reality. ACE vehicles and on-demand mobility will cause […]
The Most Critical Horizon to the Success of Corporate Innovation Initiatives
With existing business models in many different industries reaching maturity and providing little or no growth, and startups disrupting them with their new solutions, corporations find themselves more than ever in need for creating new businesses. But few corporations are able to consistently create from scratch new, big businesses that use innovative technologies and employ […]
