Rob Smithson Email & Phone Number

Austin, Tx, Us

Corporate Investment, founded in 1984, is a leading sell-side M&A advisory firm based in Austin, Texas, representing companies throughout Texas. Corporate Investment works primarily with the owners of private companies in a variety of industries, guiding them through the process to a successful exit.

GenZe by Mahindra is a manufacturer of e-bikes and e-scooters along with software and IoT solutions for last mile mobility shared fleets and consumers.

Lajitas Group, Inc is a quick service restaurant franchise operator and consulting platform. I returned the fast-growing Teriyaki Madness chain to the challenging Austin metro food market in 2018, and operated the restaurant until selling it in early 2020. The store had consistent, strong social media ratings of 4 or more stars, and developed a solid catering business with 100% repeat business.

I bring a wealth of experience in building organizations, development of technology, strategic planning and execution to work with entrepreneurs and growth companies at all stages as an advisor and mentor.

Maumee, Ohio, Us

In this role, I combine business development, technology assessment, investment assessment, and business building skills to look both at what Dana will be building 10 years from now, and how we will be building it, in a global transportation industry that stands on the brink of massive change. This is a multi-disciplinary effort within the company that encompasses interfaces with early stage companies, internal Dana BU's, and external business partners. I work with early stage companies through accelerators and incubators to scout for the Next Big Thing while helping those companies to succeed by conveying lessons learned from my own startup experience, and by connecting them to parts of Dana that they can do business with, when appropriate. On the business development side, I work with both internal Dana technologies and with external technologies that we may consider licensing or otherwise acquiring to build new business units within Dana. This includes support of our M&A activities in technology and market due diligence and building business partnerships with other suppliers and customers to leverage Dana's advanced technologies. These combine to expand our global market footprint and place us in a position to be a high value, technology-driven partner to our customer base in the automotive, commercial truck, and off-highway sectors. The search for emerging technologies also includes how we make our products. This includes corporate strategy and hardware/software business case evaluation for implementation of advanced robotics, IoT, and additive manufacturing.

Maumee, Ohio, Us

Responsible for building a new, ground-up technical center, engineering staff, and business for Dana around the recently licensed VariGlide continuously variable planetary technology. The technology was licensed from Fallbrook Technologies Inc, a company that Rob co-founded. His role at Dana includes both commercialization of the new VariGlide continuously variable planetary technology and assessment of other new technologies and their commercialization opportunities within the global mobility industry.

After playing a number of roles for Fallbrook in my previous position, I began to focus on these two roles in late '09 as the business began to expand and the opportunities in powered applications (ie, all of Fallbrook's applications that do not have pedals) came into focus. I was responsible for strategic business planning and sales for the powered applications side of the business, as well as overall technology direction. I also had oversight of powered applications marketing. I played a lead role in Fallbrook's strategic fundraising efforts, culminating in investments by Allison Transmission and Dana Holding Corporation totaling $40M. During this time, the Fallbrook staff expanded to more than 125 people on three continents, Fallbrook made its first foray into M&A to acquire Hodyon (an early stage company in large truck auxiliary power units that I initiated relations with), and the second generation NuVinci N360 was designed, developed, launched, and sold over 100,000 units.

I began coaching FTI through VentureRAMP when it was still in the inventor's basement in California with only 1 contract employee. I made a fulltime commitment to FTI in mid-2003 and assumed the VP-Product Development position, and formally became an employee in early 2004. I created the company's first strategic plan, centered around an IP strategy that would protect the company's assets to a degree that would enable ultimate entry into the global automotive market, starting with smaller market entries in bicycles and EV's. I played a key role in formulating our technology and business strategies that raised our valuation from ~$3MM to >$100MM in our last round of angel funding, and our staff grew from 3 to 46, the majority of whom were in product development at the Austin office. I was responsible for leading all aspects of technical and product market due diligence with our potential investors. I helped close the recruitment of our CEO, VP-IP, and VP-BD, and I recruited the key technical staff and initiated our first commercial joint development agreement. We launched our first commercial product, the award-winning NuVinci N170S CVP for bicycles, to critical acclaim in Europe. We went on to close ~$26MM in angel funding from '03-'06, and then in '08, when the VC world was shutting down, we were one of a handful of deals funded nationwide in Q4 by a $25M venture capital round. I contributed the bulk of the business plan, created the pitch materials, and presented with CEO Bill Klehm to more than a dozen VC's in Silicon Valley and elsewhere for this round.

I co-founded VentureRAMP with Jim Brazell with the objective of building a platform company for serial entrepreneurs and early stage service providers to use collaboratively to coach, evaluate, consult for, and help form other early stage technology companies. The concept was that staff would regularly move from early stage companies to VentureRAMP, then back to new early stage companies as they found companies of interest. I succeeded in executing this model with my formal exit to Fallbrook Technologies in mid-2003.

The Institute is a not-for-profit, contract R&D entity with about $400MM in annual revenues. There is no affiliation with the government or an institution of higher learning. The technical divisions are essentially loose confederations of independent entrepreneurs. I was responsible in my position for selling programs, financial and technical delivery, generation of marketing materials, hiring staff and/or borrowing staff from other groups for large projects, etc. We worked with both the government and the automotive industry, and I had business relationships in every major auto producing country, including Japan, Korea, Germany, Great Britain, the US, France, and Australia. Over the course of 7 years, every client who did work with my team did repeat business with us.

Dearborn, Michigan, Us

After completion of the MSME at the University of Texas, I joined Ford through the Ford College Graduate Program (FCGP), a two year training program that included substantial classroom training in addition to 3-6 month assignments in all aspects of the business. The program was self-governed to a great extent by the FCGP Steering Committee. I was elected chairman of this committee by my peers after a few months at Ford, and I was subsequently tapped to be the sole FCGP representative to the company's Global Engineering Excellence Committee. I completed assignments in NVH, powertrain development, vehicle dynamics, new model launch, and forward model year planning over this time. Classes taken included Design for Manufacturing, Design for Assembly, 8D Problem Solving, Vehicle Dynamics, Design for Robustness, and numerous other topics in the industry.

Us

Co-founder

Msstc, Entrepreneur'S Mba

Msme, Mechanical Engineering, Robotics

Bme, Mechanical Engineering, Co-Op