Ramp USA

Ramp's mission is to cure disability with robotics. Today, we're building an attachment that converts any manual wheelchair into a sub-30lb. electric vehicle that can self-balance over rough terrain. Tomorrow, we'll build exoskeletons to make wheelchairs obsolete.

March: Completed first full-size, self-balancing prototype
April: Techstars Boulder ‘19 (~1% acceptance rate, $18.2B market cap)
June: Hired a world-class electric racecar engineer
July: Thiel Fellowship $100k grant (~0.5% acceptance rate, $8.2B market cap)
August: Presales begin for our first units
Aug 4, 2018TECH SA: Medical robotics company creates self-balancing wheelchair with high speed
Jan 18, 2019Techstars: Announcing the Class for Techstars Boulder 2019
Jul 10, 2019Business Wire: Thiel Foundation Announces 2019 Thiel Fellows

• Office expenses
• Bill of Materials
• FDA 510(k) Clearance Application
• UL 2272 Safety Testing
• Capital Assets (Machinery) 
• Intermediary fees

Mel Du
CEO
Paralyzed at 14, first wheelchair engineering internship at 16, nanomaterials graduate research intern at 17, full scholarship to engineering school at 18, NASA research team leader at 18, biometrics startup job at 20, raised venture capital and dropped out of school at 21, Thiel Fellow at 22 (founder of Paypal pays dropouts $100k to stay out of school).

Amro Eltayeb
CTO
Mechatronics Engineer who developed his own controls algorithms for self-balancing using three accelerometers, three gyroscopes, and three magnetometers.

Mitch Hooper
Electric Racecar Engineer
Mitch and his team designed and built this racecar from scratch in two semesters while studying automotive engineering full-time.

Peter Shaddock
Finance & Operations
Rice University MBA with experience founding multiple electronics hardware companies, after leaving Exxon Mobil.

Yannick Roux
Fmr. Tesla Director of Manufacturing Engineering
After his automotive engineering career at Renault and Fiat in France, he worked on everything at Tesla from the first Roadster to the Model S and Model 3, through high-volume production.

Todd Hargroder
Fmr. CEO of ADI Wheelchairs
Acquired by market giant, Sunrise Medical in 2015, ADI pioneered many trends in the wheelchair industry, including the first carbon-fiber composite backrests, and first disc brakes. Now that his acquisition contract is over, he’s free to work on sales & distribution at Ramp.

Thiel Foundation (Grant)
Peter Thiel, billionaire founder of Paypal


Techstars
Well-known LPs: Brad Feld, Jason Mendelson


Techstars Impact
Well-known LPs: Morgan Stanley AIP Private Markets Team, Impact America Fund


Geekdom Community Fund
Well-known LPs: Graham Weston (fmr. CEO of Rackspace)