Welcome to Founder Spotlight — Meet the founders behind our portfolio. You are receiving this because you have subscribed to our Substack. Upgrade to CC+ for insider access & community or manage your subscription here.
But first: Network Fund & Climate Angels
→Invest in the Network Fund. Next-decade energy, infrastructure, and resilience. Q1 2026 fund now open; last quarter invested in 9 companies alongside Transition VC, Propeller, SOSV, and more.
→Join Climate Angels. Sessions w/ top investors, discounted CC Syndicate carry, community & more.
Invest in startups like Upshift alongside Climate Capital here.
Founders: Ezra Goldman, Ayako Hiwasa
Motto/Mission: Reinventing car ownership for the autonomous era.
Year Founded: 2012
Stage: Seed
Location: San Francisco, California, USA
_
Climate Capital: What made you want to solve this problem?
Ezra: I grew up surrounded by forest and spent my childhood playing in it, which gave me a deep appreciation for the value of nature. When I got older, I lived in cities and wanted to be able to easily access nature. I didn’t want to own a car because it’s an enormous waste of resources - it would just sit parked 6 days a week, wasting valuable curb real estate that could be put to much better public use (parklets, bike lanes, bus lanes, etc.). And it would be an expensive, depreciating hunk of metal I’d have to repark every few days, take in for service and repair, insure, etc. Someone once told me owning a car in the city is like “having a ghost appendage” - you are just always thinking about it (”did I park on the Tuesday side or the Thursday side?”). It’s like having the worst pet ever.
I tried all of the existing solutions for sharing cars but they all sucked - often unavailable (even sometimes when you book them), dirty (old pizza boxes and trash, dog hair, vape and cigarette smell), damaged (doors that don’t shut or lock), out of gas (literally empty), maintenance issues (no air or wiper fluid)... I saw it all - the bad, the terrible, and the ugly.
I just wanted a reliable way to go for a hike on the weekends without having to think about it.
More here: https://republic.com/blog/superheroes/ezra-goldman-upshift
Climate Capital: What are you building?
Ezra and Ayako: CaaS: “Netflix” for Personal Autonomous Cars
Upshift is a Personal Car‑as‑a‑Service platform giving city drivers on‑demand access to a dedicated vehicle that feels like ownership without the burdens of buying, maintaining, or parking. Plans are all‑inclusive (insurance, valet, charging, cleaning) and priced by utilization. We are building the ownership layer for the autonomous future.
Why this exists: Two massive shifts are colliding to reshape mobility:
From Ownership to Access: It makes no sense to own an autonomous electric vehicle in the city that sits street-parked 95% of the time. The future is having a car that’s there when you need it, and gone when you don’t - with monthly “cell phone plans for cars” based on how much you drive.
From “You Come to Us” to “We Come to You”: The entire auto industry is built on customers walking to a dealership, rental lot, or carshare pod. As AVs integrate into consumer fleets, the expectation will shift overnight to remote on-demand delivery.
Legacy dealers and rental giants are completely unprepared for this operational transition. Upshift provides the essential AV fleet orchestration layer to bridge the gap. By centralizing parking, charging, and maintenance (instead of using expensive street parking), our model enables 2x higher utilization, 10x higher revenue per member, and 10x lower parking costs compared to the incumbents we are disrupting.
Potential for 1 Gt CO₂ avoided annually
Targeting 211 M members using 26 M shared EVs by 2035
How it works:
8× fewer cars: Shared vehicles reduce manufacturing emissions (6.1 tCO₂ saved per member)
5.4× cleaner per mile: EVs produce far less CO₂ than gas-powered cars
43% fewer miles driven: Usage-based pricing incentivizes people to drive less
Comparable scale:
10% of global rideshare users today
3× carshare members today
12% of car buyers in 2035
Sources: Shaheen & Cohen, 2013; Martin & Shaheen, 2016
Climate Capital: What is next?
Ezra and Ayako: Upshift has built the core operating system for AV‑as‑a‑Service: member app, subscription logic, and dispatch algorithms, with integrated keyless telematics. We’ve put together an incredible team of seasoned mobility experts from Uber, Cruise, Getaround, Zipcar, and more. We’re now integrating tele-operations into our delivery process to offer remote control valet parking. And we aim to deploy fully autonomous car delivery service in 2027. We’re onboarding fleet partners who want to modernize their operations for the autonomous era.
Climate Capital: What are the core elements of the culture you are building at your company?
Ezra and Ayako: Our team is brought together by our passionate belief that transportation should be more reliable, flexible, and sustainable. I initially thought the company might attract people like me who don’t own cars or are super ‘anti-car’. But actually everyone else on the team owns a car - many are even really into cars - they are excited by how much better a solution we could build together.
Climate Capital: What are the key challenges as you scale your company?
Ezra and Ayako: We are tackling a pretty hairy challenge - how can we provide a service that is more compelling than owning a car in the city? There are a lot of moving parts - scalable vehicle supply, car selection, business model innovation, operational efficiency, managing utilization, insurance, hardware integration... Our biggest challenge is that personal autonomous cars still aren’t available, so we haven’t yet been able to execute on the full ‘Car-as-a-Service’ vision. But it’s coming.
Climate Capital: What have you learned that you want to share with other founders?
Ezra and Ayako: Keep pushing. Something always works out.
Climate Capital: How can the broader climate community help you on your mission?
Ezra and Ayako: We’re looking for forward-thinking fleet operators (dealerships, rental car, carshare, or rideshare fleet operators) who want to use our tech to modernize for the autonomous era.
If you want to learn more, visit https://www.upshiftcars.com/!
See also for reference, these older articles by Upshift on their vision that are still relevant:
What’s great about cars: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/cars-freedom-ezra-goldman/?trackingId=AZTFO%2BdaQdCBKTYzr6t3Og%3D%3D
What sucks about cars: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/cars-freedumb-ezra-goldman/?trackingId=AZTFO%2BdaQdCBKTYzr6t3Og%3D%3D
Upshift is everything that is great about cars, with none of the sucky bits: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/care-freedom-manifesto-future-mobility-ezra-goldman/?trackingId=AZTFO%2BdaQdCBKTYzr6t3Og%3D%3D