Exclusive Interview: Motive's CEO On AI, Pre-IPO Plans And His Biggest Startup Mistake
CEO Shoaib Makani talks AI and growth plans, his biggest mistake and his advice for founders in an exclusive in-depth interview.
The Upshot
Motive can help detect drivers falling asleep at the wheel. And as a promising startup unicorn that’s approaching an IPO, you might be sleeping on it.
The lack of name recognition would be understandable. In the 12 years since CEO Shoaib Makani co-founded Motive, the startup has gone through several waves of relevance. Initially a fleet management tool for tracking trucks’ whereabouts, it launched a freight marketplace years later, then shut down the business before its category’s bubble burst.
More recently, Motive has focused on using AI to help ensure commercial drivers operate safely on the road. It’s also changed its name, from KeepTruckin. “There’s a fundamental lesson here, which is: don’t name your company after a Grateful Dead song,” Makani tells Upstarts.
Motive’s growth has accelerated, its CEO says in an exclusive in-depth interview. Its run rate for yearly recurring revenue is approaching $500 million, with positive operating cash flow since Q4 of last year. Customers include FedEx Freight, Halliburton, and Cintas. (More on its financials below.)
Motive’s growth story – and why the wider startup ecosystem should be paying attention – centers around an AI safety system that Makani says he first started plotting in 2017, when the startup had just $1 million in ARR.
Motive works with about one million vehicles on the road, and as many AI-enabled cameras. It employs 800 engineers across its hardware and software stack. And its tools, which combine custom-trained AI models with full-time employee humans in the loop, detect 15 kinds of unsafe behaviors, provide AI-enabled coaching, and increasingly will be able to take corrective actions like pulling a truck to a safe stop.
The pitch is simple: half the world’s gross domestic product comes from the ‘physical economy’ of construction, energy, manufacturing and the like. Those businesses have vehicles and drivers.
“These are customers who have a pretty distinct set of needs from the knowledge economy,” Makani says. “We’re the best in the world when it comes to computer vision and operational AI, observing what’s happening, generating very reliable and high-precision predictions, and then allowing our customers to execute on them.”
Need one more reason to pay attention? Makani and Motive will soon be telling this story to the public markets.
Motive raised an additional $150 million last month at an undisclosed valuation; that financing happened via a convertible instrument that can roll into a future price, a source tells Upstarts and a Motive spokesperson confirms, meaning its valuation of $2.85 billion from 2022 is still a baseline, albeit an increasingly dated one.
Yesterday, Bloomberg reported that Motive has hired JPMorgan Chase to forge ahead with an initial public offering. Upstarts has confirmed the bank’s involvement through a source with knowledge of the situation. JPMorgan declined to comment.
Asked directly about hiring banks, a Motive spokesperson followed up with a statement: “We understand there is a lot of interest around Motive’s future plans, but we do not comment on rumors or speculation. Our focus remains on delivering the best possible products and experience for our customers.”
But in our wide-ranging conversation with Makani, Motive’s CEO shared a bit of useful intel about how the company is thinking strategically about growth ahead of an IPO, how Motive built its AI suite, and how it’s approaching international expansion.
“Things look like an overnight success, and it’s just wild how much wood is behind the arrow,” Makani says.
The interview highlights – including Makani’s advice for startup founders learned the hard way – are below.