Biography

Samir Mehta is an Affiliate Assistant Professor in the University of Washington
Information School, where he teaches entrepreneurship and works with student
founders through the iStartup Lab, a role he took on in 2026 after two years as a
guest lecturer. His research examines how artificial intelligence is changing the way
new ventures are started and run, with particular attention to mainstreet founders
who lack technical training or the professional support that larger companies take
for granted.
Much of the conversation about AI and entrepreneurship centers on software
startups. Mehta's work extends it to main street businesses: the restaurants, clinics,
trades, and independent professionals that make up most of the 36.2 million small
businesses in the United States. He studies how these owners can put AI to work
on the operational side of a company, without first having to master a fast-moving
landscape of tools. Related work looks at human-in-the-loop design for high-stakes
business operations, where AI output must be verified before money moves or a
filing is made, and at how interface design shapes long-term customer
engagement.
Mehta brings three decades of experience building and scaling technology
companies, including leading teams across 12 countries. A sixth-time founder with
two exits, he co-founded 4thpass, acquired by Motorola, where his team shipped
one of the first Java microbrowsers and a mobile content-delivery system adopted
worldwide by carriers including TMobile, China Unicom, China Mobile and
Telefónica. He then founded Keetli, a home media-streaming venture acquired by a
Swiss public company, Nagra.
His operating roles include General Manager of Connected Home Solutions at
Motorola, Senior Vice President at Nagra, and Vice President of Digital Content and
Commerce at Amazon. As Chief Operating Officer of Conviva, he helped scale its
analytics platform thirtyfold to one trillion events per day; as Chief Product Officer of
Wrench, he shipped the auto-services platform that grew sixfold; and later he
served as President and CEO of CarAdvise. He is a named inventor on six patents
in mobile application distribution, billing, and television user experience.
Mehta is the founder and CEO of CR3SCENDO AI, an AI-native operating platform
for startups and small businesses. The company was incorporated through its own
platform and runs on it every day, which gives his research a working laboratory. He
also advises early-stage startups and mentors first-time founders at community
colleges across the Pacific Northwest.