Michael C. "Mick" Mountz (born May 5, 1965) is an American entrepreneur. He is the founder and CEO of

Kiva Systems Amazon Robotics, formerly Kiva Systems, is a Massachusetts-based company that manufactures mobile robotic fulfillment systems. It is a subsidiary company of Amazon.com and its automated storage and retrieval systems were previously used by compa ...

, which makes

order fulfillment Order fulfillment (in British English: order fulfilment) is in the most general sense the complete process from point of sales inquiry to delivery of a product to the customer. Sometimes, it describes the more narrow act of distribution or the ...

systems using mobile

robot A robot is a machine—especially one programmable by a computer—capable of carrying out a complex series of actions automatically. A robot can be guided by an external control device, or the control may be embedded within. Robots may be c ...

s for

warehouse A warehouse is a building for storing goods. Warehouses are used by manufacturers, importers, exporters, wholesalers, transport businesses, customs, etc. They are usually large plain buildings in industrial parks on the outskirts of cities ...

automation Automation describes a wide range of technologies that reduce human intervention in processes, namely by predetermining decision criteria, subprocess relationships, and related actions, as well as embodying those predeterminations in machines ...

. The company was bought by

Amazon.com Amazon.com, Inc. ( ) is an American multinational technology company focusing on e-commerce, cloud computing, online advertising, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence. It has been referred to as "one of the most influential economi ...

in March 2012. He is an

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the mo ...

(1987) and

Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

(1996) alumnus, and part of the MIT Deans Advisory Committee for the School of Engineering. In 2008, Mountz won the

IEEE The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operation ...

IFR In aviation, instrument flight rules (IFR) is one of two sets of regulations governing all aspects of civil aviation aircraft operations; the other is visual flight rules (VFR). The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) ''Instrument Fly ...

Innovation and Entrepreneurship Award along with Kiva co-founders Peter Wurman and

Raffaello D’Andrea Raffaello D’Andrea (born August 13, 1967 in Pordenone, Italy) a Canadian-Italian-Swiss engineer, artist, and entrepreneur. He is professor of dynamic systems and control at ETH Zurich. He is a co-founder of Kiva Systems (now operating as Amazon ...

, as well as the

Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award The EY Entrepreneur of the Year Awards previously Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Awards is an award sponsored by Ernst & Young in recognition of entrepreneurship. Founded in 1986 in Milwaukee as a single award, as of 2016 twenty-five pro ...

in the New England region.

Life

Mick was born in

Frankfurt Frankfurt, officially Frankfurt am Main (; Hessian: , "Frank ford on the Main"), is the most populous city in the German state of Hesse. Its 791,000 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located on its na ...

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

. He received a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from

in 1987, and in 1996 he received an MBA from

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

Early career

Mountz’s started his career as a manufacturing engineer at

Motorola Motorola, Inc. () was an American Multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, United States. After having lost $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009, the company split into two independent p ...

in 1987 where he worked for 7 years. In 1995, he joined

Apple Inc. Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Apple is the largest technology company by revenue (totaling in 2021) and, as of June 2022, is the world's biggest company b ...

as a product marketing manager, working on

Power Mac The Power Macintosh, later Power Mac, is a family of personal computers designed, manufactured, and sold by Apple Computer as the core of the Macintosh brand from March 1994 until August 2006. Described by ''MacWorld'' as "the most important te ...

FireWire IEEE 1394 is an interface standard for a serial bus for high-speed communications and isochronous real-time data transfer. It was developed in the late 1980s and early 1990s by Apple in cooperation with a number of companies, primarily Sony an ...

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kin ...

and

Gigabit Ethernet In computer networking, Gigabit Ethernet (GbE or 1 GigE) is the term applied to transmitting Ethernet frames at a rate of a gigabit per second. The most popular variant, 1000BASE-T, is defined by the IEEE 802.3ab standard. It came into use i ...

. After leaving Apple in 1999, he started working at online grocery platform

Webvan Webvan was a dot-com company and grocery business that filed for bankruptcy in 2001 after 3 years of operation. It was headquartered in Foster City, California, United States. It delivered products to customers' homes within a 30-minute window o ...

as the business process director for logistics. Though the company filed for bankruptcy and shut down not long after in 2001, Mountz credits his time at Webvan with giving him insights on how challenging and inefficient order fulfillment was.

Kiva Systems

In 2003, Mountz founded

with co-founders Peter Wurman and

. He led the company as the CEO until 2015. In 2009, under Mountz’s leadership, Kiva was ranked #6 on the Inc. 500 list of the fastest-growing companies in America, and

Gartner Gartner, Inc is a technological research and consulting firm based in Stamford, Connecticut that conducts research on technology and shares this research both through private consulting as well as executive programs and conferences. Its clients ...

named Kiva one of its “Cool Vendors in Supply Chain Management.” Kiva Systems sold to

Amazon Amazon most often refers to: * Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek mythology * Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin * Amazon River, in South America * Amazon (company), an American multinational technology c ...

in 2012, and was rebranded to Amazon Robotics in 2015. At the end of 2015, Mountz left Amazon Robotics.

Boards

Since 2016, Mountz has been part of the funding board for the MIT Sandbox Innovation Fund, which provides seed funding for student-initiated entrepreneurship ideas. In 2018, Mountz joined robotic piece-picking company RightHand Robotics as a board member after a $23M Series B funding round. In addition, he is a board advisor for retail drone company Pensa Systems, and autonomous indoor drone company Verity

Awards and honors

* 2009 Kiva Systems – #6 Inc. Fastest Growing Companies in America * 2009 Kiva Systems – Cool Vendors in Supply Chain Management * 2008 IEEE/IFR Invention and Entrepreneurship Award * 2008 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award in the New England region * 2020

National Inventors Hall of Fame The National Inventors Hall of Fame (NIHF) is an American not-for-profit organization, founded in 1973, which recognizes individual engineers and inventors who hold a U.S. patent of significant technology. Besides the Hall of Fame, it also opera ...

Inductee * 2021 Member of the

National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Engineering is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy ...

References

External links

* American chief executives of manufacturing companies Living people 1965 births Businesspeople from Frankfurt MIT School of Engineering alumni Harvard Business School alumni {{US-CEO-stub