Kaan Gunay, who was born in Germany, raised in Turkey, and now living in America. Gunay’s journey started with an education, in this case an Ivy League one at Brown University. During business school at Stanford, Gunay got to thinking with his childhood friend Onur Kardesler, about the gig economy and rideshare drivers in particular. These drivers had become the backbone of the transportation industry. Uber and Lyft had both helped address the United States dearth of public transportation as well.
Kaan Gunay is co-founder and CEO of Firefly, a global startup that operates a first-of-its-kind network of “situationally aware” digital smart screens mounted to existing ride share vehicles.
Gunay has raised a total of $51.5m USD for Firefly, which is proving to be a win-win business and attracted a number of Silicon Valley’s top venture capitalists and angel investors including GV, NFX, Pelion Venture Partners, Decent Capital (Tencent founders), Jeffrey Housenbold (SOFTBANK Vision Fund), Cross Culture Ventures, Muse Capital, and StartX.