Hustle Awards 2026 Special: Andrew Cary, winner of Founder of the Year

0:01Welcome back to The Serial Entrepreneur. I'm your host, Anna Wood. In today's episode, I speak with Andrew Carey, co-founder and CEO of Snap Transportation. We discuss the frustration of traffic congestion and the tech that can help alleviate the issue, honing a strong team culture, and winning the founder of the year at the Hustle Awards 2026. Let's dig in. Hi, Andrew. Welcome to the podcast today. How are you doing? I'm doing fine, Anna. Thank you so much for having me.

0:59Now, when I was a kid, it was Captain Crunch. And why, I have no idea. Kids just love sugar, I think. Well, there you go. Now, you are probably going to get this out of the interview, but you may recall that while I do snap transportation, I've also been in education, ed tech, and nonprofit work for about 40 years. and there's a running joke in education that you do not give students pancakes and syrup on a rainy day because they're stuck inside and they're bouncing off the walls and it's not a good thing for the teacher. It's good to know if I ever look towards the education sector. So would you be able to introduce yourself and tell me a bit about your background and journey so far?

1:42Oh thank you so much again Anna. Again my journey is not a straight line. The way I characterized is that I have spent the last 40 years as a multilingual educator, a non-profit executive director board member, certainly a founder and CEO. I've now crossed into smart cities, transportation, future of mobility, and then I'm really a global strategist. I help companies of all types go from where they are to where they want to go with the least amount of pain and suffering and cost. And so today I'm Andrew Carey. I'm co-founder and CEO of Snap Transportation. And Snap Transportation is redefining the future of sustainable, scalable, and resilient urban mobility.

2:37And we believe strongly that there's a better quality of life for all through mobility, accessibility, job creation, and local ownership. So that's the education, education technology, non-profit, and of course my work now and global work. Yeah, fantastic. So you mentioned snap transportation. What is it and what is your mission there? Oh my goodness. Our mission is to help alleviate the problems that are caused by 80 % single occupant vehicles on roads throughout the world. The primary problem that everybody faces every day is traffic congestion. Now, the other things that are maybe not called out is pollution, environmental degradation, and lack of sustainable infrastructure.

3:28And it really doesn't matter where you go, but everywhere, no matter who you are, you will think of two things today, what you're going to eat and how to navigate your life through traffic congestion. It doesn't matter. Great. So you say that you have a very varied path throughout your career. So what was the inspiration behind then founding Snap Transportation? Well, it's a funny story. As I said, I've been an education, education technology, nonprofit worker for as many years. And Kristen Corville, who's the chairman of Snap Transportation, We have a joke, as you would imagine, that I said that I called her to see if she wanted to join one of the companies in education.

4:15We had worked together in the past, and she said that she'd think about it, but she was working on a project with her father. Her father's named Cal Chamberlain. He is the original visionary inventor, solution engineer. That's a whole backstory. And so she introduced me to her dad around this thing called personal rapid transit. Now, as I said, I'm a strategist. I tend to know what things are going to work, how they're going to work, and where they're going to work. And so after many months of talking to Cal, we decided, you know, you've been in the garage thinking about this, researching the problems around traffic congestion.

4:55And are you going to stay in the garage or do you want to stand this up? Do you want to do this thing? and so that Cal and I co-founded the company about eight years ago and it was after 25 years of his research we're now at five years of design and build we actually have an operating other cool cool aspects of the company in this journey but it was really applying a lot of things that I either have learned or known again what works this will work how it's going to work this is just certainly a good distance away from education but so far so good we have been executing to plan for the last six years and got us to actually the award with startups magazine and certainly we have a lot of global recognition now so your innovation is mobility and within cities how far away do you think it will be for this to be adopted next year next year and where would that be if you can discuss.

5:57So you can see over my shoulder, that's actually a view of the pod. And people, I actually had an email the other day and somebody says, well, I don't see it's going to be enough. And so when you're stuck in traffic, what is enough? Get me out of traffic. And since the problem with traffic congestion is approximately cost of single occupant vehicles, We have a single occupant pod. It's lightweight, it's battery power, solar charge. It deploys very easily, and I won't get into all the engineering design on the call, but when people think about public transit and public transportation agencies, they think about road construction, disruption, rail, light rail, monorail.

6:43And these are all deployed in really many, many years and decades of planning and you end up being 20 years old and saying they still didn't finish that. They still didn't build it. We actually designed this to be deployed in weeks and months. So for your question, where? We have some great interest here in the United States. We tend to regulate and mitigate ourselves in the corner, so it may not be here. But I will say that we've been very, very well greeted throughout the Middle East, throughout the Gulf cooperating council countries, the GCC, certainly in the UAE, Saudi, Qatar. And then also we have some joint venture agreements that are in Jamaica and then also very active conversations in Brazil.

7:36and one place in particular is the world famous sustainable city of Curitiba, Brazil. So any of those are possibilities and then we're actually creating a prototype that we're trying to move to a next level of testing and get closer to pilots. We could do some stuff this year but next year is reasonably conservative. Amazing. So you said that I guess traditional transportation, things like one rail, everything like that takes so long to be built and yours in comparison doesn't why is this so if you think about there's categories of mobility and we all know buses are on the ground and we know these new little micro scooters but when you think about aligning to the causes of traffic congestion you'd almost start to say as well people depending on the country depending on location and population people are very accustomed to using buses and bus what they call bus transit, bus rapid transit.

8:36And that falls into the category of group transit. The issue is that all group transit, it requires massive infrastructure, massive supports, and that's really what the governments, global governments have done for really the earliest days of mobility. Ours focuses on lightweight, flexible, scalable resiliency. And that is because that pod and anybody inside it is extremely lightweight. So we don't require concrete rebar and reinforcement. Where all these other systems are, again, 80, 100, 240 million dollars a mile, we estimate to build just the infrastructure about eight million dollars a mile.

9:24It's like a telephone pole in the ground and attach our ribbon way and then put the pods on I hate to make it that simple, but we've tried to keep, there's a way we've designed it and we talk about SNAP as it's an amusement park meets public sector. Or it's Mr. Jetson meets an amusement park monorail. Or if you remember old science gets an education, they used to have something called an erector set. It was a box and it was all these little metal pieces and screws and nothing bolts and you'd pour it out and kids like build things. Well, the key around that was that each piece was a given size.

10:00And so it allowed you to build at scale quickly. And so these are really founding principles of how we've designed SNAP. We don't overpromise what we do. People will say, well, we've got traffic congestion, so you need to have more people. Well, that's what the government does. That's what group and mass transit does. We're just another layer in really all the research says. We're just another layer in the future of mobility. Yeah, that sounds really exciting. I think you likening it to almost like an amusement ride is quite funny. Well, and it's also relatable. I mean, you can't put something out into the urban landscape if people aren't going to say, I'm not touching that.

10:41We hear often today, certainly in the U.S., and I'm not sure other locations, but there's a lot of people that say, I'm not getting in an autonomous vehicle. I don't want to get stuck. I don't want to get in an accident. Well, SNAP operates five meters or 16 feet above ground. That is a dedicated rail. It's its own environment. It's fully autonomous. Nobody's going to hit us. There's no cross traffic. That's a dedicated personal monorail. That's really what it is. And so, again, we found ourselves to kind of cutting right into a new area that people, mostly now, people saying, like your question, how soon?

11:21Yeah, great. So I kind of wanted to move on into what you mentioned earlier about winning the Hustle Awards. So once again, congratulations on that. I cannot thank you enough. The judges, the review, and actually the comments were really significant for us. I'll share it with the board and the team. And it was really just emphasizing how we've gone about buildings in many ways differently. Well, my question was going to be, so you won Founder of the Year. what does it mean for you both personally and professionally oh wow um let me tell you the founding of the company was really kind of based out of some sort of places that um i've helped companies of all sizes all along the way and i've uh certainly from my personal life a very faithful person um but i believe in giving i believe in having a giving heart um uh pay it the pay it forwards, if you would.

12:20But part of Cal Chamberlain and part of our initial goal was to build Snap in a manner that allowed an inclusive environment for people to join and be contributors. That's just not the team, but also investors. And so we had to create kind of a structure around that. So the way we've done it, and I've said this all the time, are really kind of three different areas and three different kind of buckets. So it's nine items. The first one is anybody who looks to join the team, their number one priority has to be their home, their family, and their faith. And that, you know, we don't dictate faith, just who you are and how you come.

13:00But home has to be a healthy place. And that's more important than anything to me. People want fellowship, they want connection. And because we work so hard and so much at life, we want to make sure that this work isn't the drag, the pull and the pain. The second really, so those are the three. The second is around your priorities. So everybody at SNAP Transportation after home is good. We're all equity-based employees. No one at SNAP for six years has earned an income, nobody. And so everybody's equity-based and everybody's, you know, drank the SNAP Transportation Kool-Aid. So they have to be dedicated.

13:44But since they don't get paid, their second responsibility is their day job or whatever keeps their home lights on and the home and happy. And then the third priority is really around SNAP, is if your home is good and you're comfortable with your living and lifestyle, then you have time for SNAP. Now, I just wrote to somebody today that's a double-edged sword. It can sometimes slow our development progress, which is challenging as a pre-revenue company. but it also has created the culture of how we grow and how we are debt-free. I'll say it now, we are a woman majority-owned company. We are minority investor-led.

14:23We carry zero debt. We own 100 % of our intellectual property. We have an operating prototype. And then based on joint ventures, letters of intent,$500 million to$60 billion worth of pre-built pipeline. So we've structured ourselves that way for a purpose. The second bucket, if I can elaborate further, is really around the right people to join the team. It's based on the book, The Ideal Team Player. The Ideal Team Player talks about people who are humble, they're hungry, and they're smart. I won't unpack all of that, but people that want to read a really great book, it's called The Ideal Team Player.

15:02I'll just leave it at those two for now. That is really where we've set up this culture. So that's both personal and professional. There's not a lot of distance between. We're all friends. We all work together. We all struggle. We all have adjustments that have been made over the last six years. But that has been the environment. And again, the comments made by the judges actually, I think they pulled that out. And so that was both personally and very professionally, really, really felt good. Gratitude and getting recognition for that is certainly really, really nice. Yeah, that is really impressive to hear.

15:40So how many people are currently on the team? We started out with five, then we were eight, and now we're about 23. We've got a PhD in architecture around city design in Melbourne, Australia, although she is actually Hungarian. We've got animators from Texas to Chicago. We actually have really our test and demonstration site is in Chattanooga, Tennessee, United States. And so we have actually a build team that's there. And of the 23, you're probably around nine or nine or 10. Our lead design engineer is in Santa Barbara, California. And the executive team is really distributed. So we have functioned almost in a very hybrid model and mostly remote for six years.

16:32So if you think about everybody's contribution and then the time dedication and the building of all this stuff, we've had people observe us, potential partners, potential investors, look and say, you kind of a miracle what you've done. And we're like, yeah, it really is. And we don't tell everybody that. We just wanted to kind of look and say, you know, with some curiosity. and it's working. It's never fast enough for a founder, but we're getting there. Great. So you've spoken about the team and kind of the team dynamic, but how would you describe your leadership style and how do you think it's evolved?

17:10I hire against my blind spots and my weaknesses and then stay out of their way. If you hire or onboard people that are the ideal team players, if they are humble, if they're hungry, if they're smart, you kind of, that's going in as an assumption. You know, certain things you can ask around, have you worked in startups? Have you worked virtually? Can you work both collaboratively as a team member, but also in vacant days, you know, still not forget about the work? Can you operate within the imperative of delivering it to market when you have other competing priorities? and so it's still that challenge of having come up and recently as people say well you know you got to watch out because people are really volunteering for this.

17:58I said oh no no no they're not volunteering. The reason is because if you volunteer you don't expect anything but because we are viewed the way we are I think everybody expects some really exciting things to happen when we implement and grow as we're really projected to do. So I think people see that it's something that they're going to do. So hiring the right people, their contributions, the time, I think is all kind of proving itself out. Yeah, great. So kind of moving more onto your journey as a founder, what would you say have been some of the biggest challenges so far? I also said this recently, if you told me I would be doing this this way for this long, I would have never started.

18:43I still do consulting and education, ed tech, nonprofit work really globally as an advisor and consultant and executive leader. The biggest single challenge is paced funding and kind of being the cheerleader. You know, when things take longer, we tend to have attrition while we're at 23 people only only a few people and have ever joined snap didn't stay so our retention rate is very high but some people it was really timing or fit or other things that were really not about snap up more about the priorities that we set and things that take them away I mean we had one person who's absolutely fabulous was with us for maybe five months and we expected more and the comment upon her exit was I can barely do what I'm doing for snap today and I know I can't take the next step that you want for me it was a genuinely great conversation very professional that they were being pulled by that second priority there you know home and then their day job and frankly they're very successful at what they're doing so you know you don't want that there's no angst there's no negativity um so it's been it's been that same challenge of of how do we onboard people they stay um and rare that they leave um but just kind of the careful vetting out along the way has been uh helped help that process and on the flip side of that question what do you think are some of the biggest highlights of the journey so far um bring something to life.

20:25Cal was referred to as crazy Cal in his garage. So after 25 years, he had, he had some of the fundamentals and done incredible research and the design, the visionary design, the whole basis of this. But that was really a question of, of Cal certainly wasn't the businessman. He's an engineer. So he wanted to solve a problem. I'm a strategist and go-to-market guy. So when we came together, we wanted to make sure that the first biggest thing, and while Cal initially was CEO, and he passed away three years ago, I became co-founder CEO at that time.

21:04When we took his ideas from him, and got it on paper, and then designed the first prototype pod, we actually were seeing it come to life. And I mean, a full pod that's, you know, X number of high in inches and the batteries. And so literally seeing something be built from thought has been incredible. And we laugh, Kristen Corville and I laugh daily about people love the idea. And so investors are often reluctant. They don't want to be the 1.0. They might be the 2.0, the 2.5, the 3. They want to always see more. And so when they saw the idea, they're like, you know, incredible. And I said, great.

21:50You know, we're looking for investors. I was like, hey, you know, I want to see something else. And so we'd see the, they'd see the actual pod. We made the molds and created the first pod. We're like, oh my gosh, you could sit in it. And then we put the hydraulics on the door and it would go, oh, that's great. And so, you know, hey, we're looking for investors. I got to see something else. And so then it was not the pod or what we now call the cockpit. But, you know, how does it move? was, oh, that's battery power and solar charge. When I see that, okay, yeah, we're still inviting investors. So every step of this journey has brought this thing to life.

22:26You can climb in it today and take it for a ride. So from concept and ideation to really building a new layer of physical infrastructure has been an incredible journey. So literally from idea to design, to mold, to motoring, to prototype, it's always a bell ringer. There's always a bell ringer out there. And it's been, I think this next one, which we're working on literally now is this next level of end to end testing. Because people that know kind of development or familiar with NASA, they call them technology readiness levels. We're at this really inflection point of getting SNAP from a test and demonstration site, finishing up this component work, and then moving into really a pilot opportunities.

23:17So be the next bell ringer. Yeah, that's great. There's some huge highlights. So what would you say has been the biggest lesson that you've learned since founding the company? Learned about myself. I really learned about myself. not just that I said that I hire against your blind spots and your weaknesses, but deeply personal things about faith. I literally, Anna, before this call with you, I was on a call with a founder. Interestingly, he's in London. So that was kind of fun. But there was this relatability with founders that probably doesn't get as much press and play about the quiet times, the lonely times, the fear times.

24:07Certainly people approach that differently. I've worked again as a startup person, but this one has taken me to, I'll say really another place. And so if I said to the team, you know, home and faith and family first, I'd say that that is where I have learned the most, grown the most and expect that to be singularly the greatest takeaway. We will, SNAP transportation will be deployed globally. We just established our offices in Dubai called SNAP transportation EMEA, so Europe, Middle East, and Africa. We will be a global system, but no matter how much that is, no matter how we deliver it, how people have access and mobility and accessibility and job creation, local ownership, probably the greatest takeaway is the legacy of it.

24:57both for my home, my family, my friends, my faith, and then all the other distributive things that are going to happen because of the system. Great. Thank you. And if you were to impart kind of one piece of advice or knowledge onto another founder to help them succeed, or something that you wish you would have known before starting the journey, what would it be? um get good counsel assemble people around you that are smart um you know there's the the expression if you're the smartest person in the room you're in the wrong room very very very true um i'm not an engineer so while i'm a strategist i'm a business person i know how to do that stuff you know the many people that we brought on board we've got social media marketing city design smart city people um engineers electrical structural uh ecosystem software back in front i mean that's not my wheelhouse you got to have great people and very interestingly all of these people have come to us all just very organically um so that's that That would be a single encouragement is study the market and bring around experts to support your vision.

26:20That is probably the first thing. The second thing is funding is really be very practical about how you want to found the company that was baseline. What is the foundation on which this company will be built on? certainly the expertise the vision knowing the market but then funding it and how do you choose to do that and how do you intend to onboard people and then how do you expect them to be compensated how do you know who are your your co-founders all those early stage decisions and then probably patience I can't speak for any other founder but I would certainly say that founding a company, there's a inherent drive.

27:06Some people say it's waking up leaning forward every day. But that is really getting people that view your work the same way, like-minded people. And then I think the last thing would be balance. I've worked some time for six years, for three years, almost seven days a week, 40, 50, 60, 78 hours a week. That's not balanced. I tell the team, everybody else, you guys have to be balanced. I'm the only one who can become imbalanced and there's only one person that can tell me that and that's my better half so those are probably a few of the nuggets that I give other founders and I do speak to this in conferences and engagements of various kinds so it leaks out a little bit yeah that last one is like a do what I say not what I do oh absolutely Hannah you're good yeah So my final question is, I think you've already mentioned this throughout the interview, but what does the future hold for snap transportation?

28:08And do you have any big plans coming up that you can discuss? Well, the future is one of our taglines. The future is here. Take it for a ride. It's like people that see the pod and they see our designs and so forth. They're like, really? And so I said it earlier. How soon? I mean, really how soon? And I'll give you one example. I've been in Dubai quite a lot since we introduced ourselves to the world just not even two years ago. We had 25 years of research, five, four and a half years of design and build, and then announced ourselves in October of 24. So the last year and a half has been quite a rip.

28:48but an example is in just very practical terms and I'll pick Dubai because I just think it's a really extraordinary place there's an area in the Dubai Marina Dubai Harbor and on the left side it's the largest ferris wheel in the world and it's very famous and you can type in a I n Dubai and you'll see this ferris wheel and that's to this left and it's this entertainment area it's very widely recognized globally. But then if you go around the marina to the other side, to what's called Dubai Harbor, and you'll see what they call the Dubai Harbor Cruise Terminal. So it's like a horseshoe. It's barely seven kilometers.

29:29To get from there around to the cruise terminal on a good day-to-day is probably 45 minutes. It doesn't make sense. But if you had SNAP climbing in a pod at AIN Dubai, Blue Water, Dubai, and you're elevated and you have really a very nice view going around 70 kilometers, you're about eight to nine minutes guaranteed every time. Battery power, solar charge, nice view, you, your partner. If you've got kids, people say, well, what about my kids? It's only one or two people. We can platoon them or stack them as you go. That is an example of the reality check. I don't know about London as well, but I'll say where I live.

30:11We were just voted the worst traffic congestion during the holidays in the United States. But it's a beautiful, we love where we live. But our commute 15 miles, the first 10 miles is really pretty predictable. It's that last five miles that could be an hour. And that's the brutal part. So what are some of the exciting things? There are smart city initiatives globally, there are certainly extraordinary plans in the Gulf in the Middle East, and particularly UAE, and Dubai specifically. organization that is putting out something called sustainable city 2.0. There are what called eco vista or eco city, smart, sustainable cities, whether that's in Kazakhstan, the Caspian sea, Kingston, Jamaica, or I mentioned earlier, a Curitiba Brazil, which is one of the most globally recognized sustainable city visions from a guy named Jaime Lerner decades ago, Or it could be here in Florida or over there in South Carolina.

31:15So any one place could be the first. There's trepidation to be the first of anything. But we believe that our design, our practicality, and really the vision could come starting 27, really come anywhere. So and certainly we will keep Startups Magazine abreast of that. Amazing. Thank you. And I think the way you describe it as well, it sounds like Snap is just, it's more than just transportation. Like, it seems like it's an experience. I think being above ground, you do see so much more. And it almost becomes that, yeah, it's one way to get from A to B. But it's a whole other thing. So in London, they have, I can't remember what it's called, the Sky Cars.

32:05And it goes from, I think, near kind of the O2 somewhere. And I think the big thing about that is some people do just see it as something to do as well, to go see it, because you see things from a different angle. Well, and two things I want to add to that is, first of all, you see the pod, it's windows everywhere, and it's fully autonomous, so you're not having to do anything. And it's also nonstop. And some of these other kind of rides or transportation systems, you know, move along at, you know, 10 miles an hour, 12 miles an hour. It's like, you know, am I ever going to get to work? Although people build that into their life.