Travis VanderZanden

You might say that public transportation is in VanderZanden's blood. His mother, Robin, operated a Valley Transit city bus in his hometown of Appleton, Wisconsin. His father left the family shortly after Travis was born, and Robin often had to bring her son along to work. In 2002, after graduating from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire with a computer science degree, VanderZanden packed up his forest-green Pontiac, borrowed money from his older sister, and headed for San Diego to find a job. He did, becoming a product manager at Qualcomm, where he worked on the cell-phone application platform BREW, which allowed third-party developers to create and sell games, ringtones, and other apps. In 2008, he quit Qualcomm and moved to Austin, where he started his first company, QikCom, an enterprise chat app. VanderZanden then started the sales team at Yammer and became its chief revenue officer. By 2011, though, VanderZanden had quit to start another company, this one called Cherry, an on-demand car-wash app. In 2013, Lyft bought Cherry, and promptly made VanderZanden its COO. He quickly landed at Uber, as vice president of driver growth. Just as quickly, Lyft sued in November 2014, alleging he breached confidentiality agreements and stole company secrets. VanderZanden countersued, accusing Lyft of accessing his personal text messages and emails, thus setting off a two-year court battle that ended with a confidential settlement in June 2016. In September 2016, VanderZanden left Uber. By April 2017, VanderZanden had incorporated Bird Rides and raised $3 million in seed capital. As Bird's value crested $1 billion, physical threats against the company and Vander­Zanden ensued--a sobering touch at an office more inclined to startup whimsy, where each conference room is named after different avifauna: Dove, Eagle, Falcon, Penguin, Cardinal, Toucan, Robin, and, yes, even Big Bird.