Beep Inc. was chosen as one of Orlando Business Journal's 2022 Fire Awards honorees, which were featured in OBJ's April 29-May 5, 2022, weekly edition.
The firm has deployed more than 20 autonomous, electric shuttle routes across the U.S., including five in Lake Nona. Orlando-based Beep manages these first-mile and last-mile transportation routes from its headquarters and command center in Lake Nona.
Beep successfully grew its mobility network in 2021, and it's been busy so far in 2022. For example, the firm partnered with Israeli tech firm Mobileye and German manufacturer Bentler to produce and deploy autonomous vehicles across the U.S., and Beep closed a $25 million fundraising round.
Here's more from CEO Joe Moye:
What was your company’s biggest accomplishment of 2021? Beep’s greatest accomplishment is its continued expansion of the largest and longest-running autonomous shuttle network in the country in Lake Nona and surpassing 50,000 riders since the inception of the alternative mobility network in September 2019. The high rider adoption in Lake Nona is a testament to the community’s culture of embracing innovation. In Lake Nona, Beep also trained its 300th first responder with the Orlando Fire and Police departments which marked a milestone in community engagement to ensure safe operations where we are headquartered.
How did you get it done? Working with Lake Nona stakeholders, Beep works closely with Tavistock Development to expand the network parallel to the community’s growth. As the 17-square mile advanced district in the City of Orlando continues to expand, Beep is continually evaluating additional routes to ensure sustainable, shared, safe and alternative micro-mobility options are available for residents, visitors, workers and students.
How does your company stay innovative? Beep delivers on a primary goal of enabling safe mobility-for-all with the services and software we provide. Through our live road learnings every day across Central Florida and the country, Beep leverages our data and learnings from its public road deployments to produce vehicle agnostic, edge solutions meant to enhance safety, access, artificial-intelligence and driverless operating capabilities of autonomous platforms.
What strategies have you implemented to recruit and/or retain talent in a competitive labor market? Recruiting and retaining talent in a competitive job market requires a combination of finding candidates who possess a combination of a strong skill set and the right cultural fit. We place a heavy emphasis on onboarding new team members with continued support beyond orientation through an open door policy encouraging all team members to ask questions.
What is the biggest challenge facing your industry? The industry as a whole is challenged by widespread adoption and acceptance. However, Beep has been successful at our project locations in driving ridership and adoption by engaging various stakeholders in the community such as the disabled and first responders. By Beep focusing on safety, remote monitoring, oversight and engagement it has promoted rider adoption and acceptance.
What is your company’s top goal for 2022? Further developing our software and products to support our current fleet of autonomous vehicles locally and nationally. This will be a vital component to our Next Gen vehicle, a collaboration with Beep, Benteler and Mobileye.
In the past year, what progress have you seen in the growth of Central Florida’s entrepreneurial and tech ecosystems? Lake Nona has proven to be a tech hub for the entrepreneur. It has provided Beep the nirvana of use cases and environments to develop our products to support the safe operations of autonomous shuttles. Additionally, Lake Nona creates an eco-system with other tech partners to test a multitude of technologies alongside each other. The Lead Accelerator program in Lake Nona is also a prime example of developing an environment for entrepreneurs to create, test and thrive.
Are you hiring now? Yes. Learn more here.
Beep Inc.
- Top executive’s name and title: Joe Moye, CEO
- Year founded: 2018
- Capital raised since founding: $50 million
- Employees in Central Florida: 45
- Employees companywide: 80
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