Call Anna Brunelle the “startup whisperer.” Raised in California, she is steeped in Silicon Valley’s startup culture and helping early-stage companies reach milestones: raising venture capital, finding strategic investors, growing the business, and going public or being sold. Founders of startups — a friend, or friends of friends, for example — often come to her for help, and she finds it difficult to turn them down.
“When you think about entrepreneurs, they're risking everything. And when one reaches out and asks for help, it's almost impossible for me to say, ‘no,’” Brunelle said. It happens so frequently that her family teases her about it. But Brunelle also sees it as a way to give back after achieving a certain amount of personal success.
Brunelle is CFO of May Mobility, a developer of autonomous vehicle technology aiming to provide micro-transit services using driverless vehicles to municipalities and enterprise customers. May Mobility raised a $105 million series D funding round led by Japan’s Nippon Telegraph and Telephone not long after Brunelle joined in November 2023. She’s focused on a financial plan to navigate the company to profitability in a series of steps, in an environment in which other companies have found raising funding “almost impossible,” she said.
“My belief is that every piece of moving machinery on the face of this earth is going to be automated,” Brunelle told CFO. “If you believe that, there’s no more exciting place to work than for companies like May Mobility.”
Anna Brunelle
CFO, May Mobility
- First CFO position: Tivo (2005)
- Notable previous companies:
- Ouster
- Soylent
- GobalLogic
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
VINCENT RYAN: Name one of the things that excited you about this company.
ANNA BRUNELLE: In my career as a CFO, I've wanted to work for companies that are very capital-efficient and very focused on what they're doing. At May Mobility, the approach to the technology is much more capital-efficient.
In the multi-policy decision-making approach that May Mobility uses, you have one-tenth of the headcount of other companies. Companies in this space are losing billions of dollars per year trying to win this market. We have a much smaller footprint. We're using a different technology process to code, allowing us to get the product to market faster.
What is the multi-policy decision-making approach?
BRUNELLE: The multi-policy decision-making platform is a more efficient way to develop the technology. You're not trying to hard-code each edge-case scenario. The sensor stack and platform work together to monitor the road and run simulations on possible situations and hazards more reliably than rules-based systems. Our system does a couple of hours worth of potential computing time in a second. The system looks at different scenarios. What if the light turns red? What if the woman with the dog steps off the curb? What if the car in front of the vehicle swerves to the right?
In hard coding, each time there's a new scenario, it has to get coded in. So the code gets very large and very cumbersome. It is very expensive and requires quite a bit of energy. With an EV, power consumption determines how many hours the vehicle can be on the road. Efficiency is a key performance indicator as to whether the technology is adoptable in a large-scale format.
How is the go-to-market strategy integral to the approach?
BRUNELLE: May Mobility is going where customers are willing to pay for autonomy now and part of our development costs are paid for through this go-to-market strategy: working with municipal transit agencies to bring transit to underserved areas of the market, where operating a bus is inefficient, inappropriate, or too expensive.
If you talk to city managers, they want to ensure all neighborhoods of their city are served equally. We work with the city to take over some of their underperforming routes — like a bus that used to cost $150 an hour to drive around mostly empty or that wasn't provided at all because the city didn't have the funds.
"Having partners like Toyota and NTT and others has helped us to get the right relationships and the right foothold in [the Japanese]market."
Anna Brunelle
CFO, May Mobility
What’s the company’s approach to finance operations and systems?
BRUNELLE: We’re very rigorous in our approach to our finances, and I think that can be very differentiating in a growth company. It has helped us to attract large strategic investors, like Toyota and NTT and others, who want to feel that their investments are being managed properly.
In my past, I've joined young startups that operate on more of a cash basis, focused more on [research and development] and on getting their first commercial sales. May Mobility is in a little bit more advanced state. We have strong multi-year forecasts. We have goals across the company with OKRs [objectives and key results] and deliverables that we track — the kind of rigor that you would see in a public company.
Japan is a focus market for the company. Why is that?
BRUNELLE: Most of our fundraising to date has come from strategic partners, many Japanese-based, who are looking to take part in the autonomous vehicle opportunity in Japan. There are driver shortages in Japan, and I think the average age of a driver in Japan is nearing 60 years old. So, the government is phasing in a timeline for autonomous vehicle technology — thinking ahead to what the country needs. Having partners like Toyota and NTT and others has helped us to get the right relationships and the right foothold in that market.
"I've also agreed to help other companies and got drawn into working full-time for them. You fall in love with the founders, and you fall in love with the product."
Anna Brunelle
CFO, May Mobility
Do you enjoy working at these relatively early-stage companies?
BRUNELLE: I’ve enjoyed helping companies bring in fairly large [financing] rounds. If you find the right ties to other companies and to investors who would also benefit from the technology, you can put together a roster of investors and get a round closed. NTT is just a perfect example. We went out there, pounded the pavement, and talked to as many people as we could. But we also focused a lot on strategic investors. And almost everyone in the round was a strategic investor who wanted to have a tie to May Mobility so that their businesses would be successful.
[The CFO has to] figure out how to tell the story of the company in a way that each investor understands how a partnership or an investment could benefit [them], both in financial return and in strategic relationships.
In your profile on the company website, it said you were considering retiring before taking on the job at May Mobility.
BRUNELLE: Often I find myself acting as an adviser or a board member [to a startup company.] Prior to joining May Mobility, I thought that I would move to doing that full-time. And the next thing you know, I'm pulled into working full-time. This isn't the first time this has happened.
I've also agreed to help other companies and got drawn into working full-time for them. You fall in love with the founders, and you fall in love with the product. Putting together a public company, helping them put together public company transactions by making the right introductions, helping the founders craft their pitch or hone their skills, I really enjoy doing that. I think it's so fulfilling.