Sultan Mehrabi

Worth knowing

He has taken a company from two founders to an acquisition by a US insurance giant, and he now decides which early-stage companies get funded out of one of Canada's best-known incubators. He also runs a hardware business selling autonomous delivery robots into hospitals, so he knows what enterprise and healthcare buyers actually sign.

Story

Sultan started as a software engineer at Cisco, spent five years building before moving into venture and consulting work with MK Capital and KPMG, and took an MBA at Kellogg along the way. In Toronto he was a director at Ryerson Futures and then head of strategy at Kijiji, which put him inside the city's startup and marketplace worlds at the same time. In 2016 he co-founded Zensurance with Danish Yusuf and served as its CTO through the Travelers acquisition two years later. Today he leads Relay Robotics, the supplier behind autonomous service delivery robots now expanding across BayCare hospitals, and invests at the early stage from the DMZ at Toronto Metropolitan University.

In Sultan's words

Moved to Toronto in 2010 as a new immigrant. Hustled! Founded Zensurance and sold it to Travelers. DMZ incubator is a second home. Now doing seed investments with DMZ ventures and also CEO of Relay Robotics, delivery robot design and manufacturing.

Highlights

• Co-founder and CTO, Zensurance (acquired by Travelers, 2018)
• CEO, Relay Robotics (formerly Savioke), autonomous delivery robots
• Managing Director, DMZ Ventures, Toronto Metropolitan University
• Judge, DMZ Ventures $100K Dual-Use and Sovereign Tech Prize, Startupfest
• MBA, Kellogg School of Management; BSc and MSc, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute