Photo: Joshua Dalsimer
Step Up
Kiva’s founders [from left], Peter Wurman, Mick Mountz, and Raffaello D’Andrea,
envision thousands of robots in warehouses.
Kiva Systems founder and CEO Mick Mountz narrates a play-by-play video of how Kiva robots automate a warehouse environment.
—–
How Robots Think: Why Artificial Intelligence Is Nothing Like the Human Mind
Mick Mountz, Founder & CEO, Kiva Systems
in conversation with Jason Tanz
Mick Mountz is founder and CEO of Kiva Systems. Mountz founded Kiva Systems in 2003, after experiencing the inadequacy of existing material-handling technologies for ecommerce at the grocery delivery startup Webvan. Kiva’s integrated order-fulfillment solution employs hundreds of mobile robots and distributed intelligence to enable faster, more flexible ecommerce distribution centers for companies like The Gap, Saks Fifth Avenue, Diapers.com, Staples, Walgreens, and Crate and Barrel. Under Mountz’s leadership, Kiva was ranked sixth on the 2009 Inc. 500 list of the fastest growing private companies in the US.
Before joining Webvan, Mountz spent three years as a product manager at Apple Computer, where he helped move new technologies like FireWire, DVD, Fast Ethernet, and 3D graphics acceleration into the standard desktop platform.
He began his career as a mechanical and manufacturing engineer at Motorola. In 2008, Mountz received an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award in the New England region. He holds twelve U.S. technology patents.
