Driving Data for Maximum Efficiency
In 2021, the Air Force came to Stanford’s MS&E 297: Hacking for Defense class with a problem. For all the military’s intelligence capabilities, the branch was struggling to manage its ground vehicles efficiently.
“So I learned a lot about fleet management,” says Jordi Vila, MBA ’22. “I was already a data nerd in a way, and then ended up building a machine learning model to predict future breakdown for the Air Force ground vehicle fleets.”
FLIP is a venture that grew out of that classroom effort. The acronym stands for Fleet Logistics Intelligence Platform.
“Logistics are the backbone of our economy,” says Vila, who is CEO and founder. “Our mission is to empower fleets of all sizes, from often overlooked small and medium fleets to even large enterprises, with tools for the 21st century.”
What he designed for the Air Force turned out to be highly relevant for the civilian transportation sector. Interviewing prospective customers, FLIP found that 80 percent of smaller commercial fleets—those with 20 to 100 vehicles—lacked software to manage their logistics. Instead, the maintenance records were in notes on the mechanic’s iPhone, or in Excel spreadsheets buried in someone’s hard drive, or in dusty binders in the garage.
“That’s not what we would call an enterprise solution. You can lose that iPhone. It’s not easy to search. It’s not accessible to anyone on your team,” says Ben Jacobson, who joined as cofounder in 2023.
“People are really hungry for modern tools. They’re all on their phones ordering DoorDash, or using Amazon, and they see the power of the technology, but it hasn’t crossed over into their day-to-day work in vehicles,” he says.
FLIP provides their clients a snapshot of the entire fleet’s efficiency—or inefficiencies. Where are the gas guzzlers? Which drivers are idling their engines? Which truck is the most likely to break down next? What preventative maintenance will keep the entire operation running smoothly?
It’s AI-driven predictive analytics for the road. With a tagline of 100% vehicle readiness / 0% downtime, their service has three steps:
- collecting and cleaning the maintenance data
- creating analytics to visualize the status of the fleet and send alerts
- anticipating maintenance needs using AI
“Then that full picture allows you to see the return on investment of your vehicles. How much money you’re putting into maintenance and fuel and drivers, and how much money you’re getting out of it,” says Vila. “That ties into supply chain, personnel management, and scheduling operations.”
Two roads converge
Vila grew up in Barcelona, Spain, with dreams of joining NASA in the United States—a feat he realized after graduate school, advancing missions to image the formation of new stars and planets 400 light-years away and searching for signs of life across the galaxy.
Jacobson is a New Yorker who crunched numbers for the NFL’s Cleveland Browns before joining the Marine Corps and serving as a platoon commander for two deployments. He also created strategy for Fortune 500 companies and large private equity firms at Bain & Company, one of the nation’s premier consulting firms.
In other words, they understand logistical complexity.
Today FLIP is a Silicon Valley startup of eight employees looking to hire more, with Vila based in Palo Alto and Jacobson in New York City. But the cofounders say they’re anywhere but home. More often, they’re on the move, discussing carbon emissions at the Offset Symposium in Washington, D.C., unloading boxes with FedEx in Florida, and strategizing at the London Defense Hackathon with NATO.
Though it’s too early to calculate carbon emission reductions or cost savings with precision, the FLIP team believes the opportunity is sizeable.
Broadly, the transportation sector is responsible for 28 percent[1] of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, or 1.5 billion tons[2] of greenhouse gases—the highest of any economic sector in this country. For FLIP’s client base, the fleet management market was $28.6 billion in 2023, expected to grow to $55.6 billion by 2028[3] —and the Department of Defense is spending $242 billion per year on operations and maintenance.[4]
As online shopping continues to expand, especially as autonomous vehicles gain traction, they only see the need for data analytics and predictive tools growing.
The team won an Innovation Transfer Grant from the TomKat Center in 2022, and the cofounders say the funding was a critical stepping stone. From hiring their first engineers to developing an initial prototype and validating it with the Air Force and commercial partners, the center’s grant led to milestones that landed FLIP’s first contracts and seed money.
“I have not enough words of gratitude for the TomKat Center. They were a huge unlock for us to get off the ground coming out from a Stanford class. That’s where everything started,” says Vila. “Now we’re off to the races.”
This article is part of the TomKat Center Spotlight series designed to highlight the impact and trajectory of the work of faculty and students who received funding through our Innovation Transfer Program, TomKat Solutions, and Graduate Fellowships. Stanford University does not endorse any non-Stanford entities, programs, products, or services listed in the article.
[1]Source: U.S. EPA
[2]Source: U.S. DOE
[3]Source: Markets and Markets
[4]Source: Department of Defense Operations and Maintenance table on page 5.
