Cornelius Schmahl — Ride-sharing operator & investor

The method

Win on intelligence, not budget.

The big platforms don't beat you because they have more money. They beat you because they spend it smarter — targeting every incentive (and pricing every ride) with systems most operators never build. That's the gap I close.

01 / rebuild

Rebuild the engine

I take the incentive engine already in your platform — the one that today returns too little to bother with — and rebuild how it targets, prices, and rewards. Geofenced, time-of-day, tuned to how your drivers and riders behave. Pricing gets the same treatment where it moves the needle.

02 / test

Test across every market

I run incentive experiments across your cities and dayparts in parallel, with held-out control markets. AI makes this fast and cheap now in a way it never was — we learn what works in weeks, not quarters.

03 / prove

Prove it, cleanly

Every point of growth is measured against a control, so you know it's real — not seasonality, not luck. You keep running your business. I just make the engine return.

You stay in control the whole way. I improve one part of what you already own — and hand you the growth, market by market.

The product

You see exactly where the money is — and what it's worth to capture.

Not a slide deck. An operator's cockpit that turns surge, utilization, and incentive ROI into a ranked list of moves — each one priced, each one measured against margin. This is what we build for your markets.

01 / the portfolio

Every city, ranked by where it leaks.

Surge and utilization across your whole network at a glance, sorted by the markets bleeding the most demand. A single view of the entire portfolio's health — and the net ROI of fixing it.

02 / the city

When each market fails — hour by hour.

A surge heatmap for all 168 hours of the week shows exactly when demand outruns supply. The early-morning gaps, the Friday-night peaks — quantified, so you know precisely where the prize sits.

$City surge heatmap$

03 / the result

What you put in, and what came back.

Every market rolls up into one number: incentive spend against margin returned. You see the before, the after, and the ROI — not the mechanics behind it. Implement with one click; the targeting stays inside the engine.

Illustrative data shown. The live cockpit runs on your markets.

Track record

From a 100-trip startup to billions of rides a year. I've worked at both ends.

I started at Uber in September 2013, doing the unglamorous work — answering customer support on Sundays, standing at airports handing flyers to taxi drivers to get them to sign up. From there I went on to run incentive and growth operations across roughly 50 cities and dozens of ride-sharing and micromobility operators — including cities doing a million trips a week.

I've operated a tiny 100-trip-a-week startup and a company moving billions of rides a year, and almost everything in between. The method travels across all of it. What changes is the size of the prize.

At the giants

Helped build Uber's ~$1bn Russia operation — which merged with Yandex in a $3.4bn deal. Worked inside a business doing billions of rides a year, where every percentage point is worth millions.

At the challengers

Operating roles at the exact size of business fighting for share against richer incumbents — including Jeeny, one of the leading challengers in the Middle East. This is the fight most mobility CEOs are in today.

Pro bono

Built Tandem, a ride-sharing service for the elderly, from a hundred trips a week — because the smallest operators teach you the most about what actually moves a marketplace.

As an investor

Backed roughly 100 companies, many in ride-sharing and micromobility — most notably Yassir and Lime, both now unicorns. Held shares in Uber, Grab, and Yandex.

Full client list and references available on request.

References

The people who've worked with me.

Leaders across ride-sharing and marketplace operations — with a dozen more from a decade inside the industry, available on request.

"The best business executive I've worked with. He hones in on the key problems in hours, not weeks — and instantly separates what matters from the noise. Direct, smart, and deeply logical."

Timothy Willis

fmr. Uber · CFO, Arc Risk Group

"We brought Cornelius in to help us grow, and he delivered. He helped us focus on the right areas and scale sustainably — a real pleasure to work with."

Hammad Ehtesham

CEO, Jeeny

"'German precision' is an understatement. Cornelius worked with me to grow our supply base — and the results fully manifested. I worried they wouldn't come soon enough. They did."

Dr. Alfred Msemo

fmr. Uber · Exec Director, Aleka Capital

"When we had to pivot, we wished we'd met Cornelius six months earlier — it would have saved us months of pain. Together we reshaped the model, focused on our strengths, and saved dozens of jobs."

Eugen Brikcius

Founder, Jeeny · fmr. CEO, Wadi

A dozen more references available on request.

Who this is for

Built for operators ready to take share.

You've raised, and you're scaling

Product-market fit is there, the money's in the bank, and now you need growth that outpaces what the budget alone can buy.

You're fighting bigger rivals

Uber, Bolt, or a regional giant is in your market with deeper pockets — and you need to win on smarts, not spend.

Your incentives underperform

You're running campaigns and surge pricing, but the ROI is murky and you suspect there's far more in the engine than you're getting.

What if you could grow 3x faster — even against rivals with ten times your budget?