Meet Our Team

chairman, ceo & co-founder

Marcus Hays

Marcus Hays is CEO and co-founder of ORBIS. He is a visionary entrepreneur and award-winning industrial designer whose career has centered on paratransit, electric, and autonomous vehicle solutions …

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chief financial officer

Brad Knop

Brad Knop comes to ORBIS as he enters his fifth year with Propeller Industries. Knop has performed all aspects of the Chief Financial Officer function for over 50 early-stage companies in sectors ranging …

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general manager, co-founder

Scott Streeter

Scott Streeter brings a wealth of expertise from 15 years as a tooling and prototyping engineer. Streeter has developed innovative tooling and manufacturing methods and created an efficient USA and …

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VP, mechanical engineer

Martin Windmill

Vice President at ORBIS, Martin is a mechanical engineer with decades of experience designing new and innovative motor vehicles and solutions for countless clients, from individual car enthusiasts to large corporate clients. He is the brains behind a number of the patented technological breakthroughs found in ORBIS products.

mechanical engineer

Ethan Daniel

A mechanical engineer and automotive enthusiast with a passion for all things that move. Graduated from Northeastern University with a BS in Mechanical Engineering and a minor in Industrial Engineering. Ethan has significant experience with SolidWorks, Creo and AutoCAD, as well as building, testing and repairing cars and their components. In addition to studies, he has been honing his engineering and leadership skills as president of Northeastern Electric Racing, designing and building their first-ever electric race car.

brand manager

Chance Claxton

Experienced Founder with a demonstrated history of working in the sustainable consumer goods industry. Skilled in Marketing and Brand Management, Product Development, Business Planning, Advertising, E-commerce. Strong entrepreneurship professional; adept at identifying global opportunities with a keen ability to straddle big picture thinking with targeted, results-oriented execution; outstanding leadership and interpersonal skills that nurture effective teams and strong vendor relations; successful multi-tasker; passionate about creating innovative brands that resonate with the consumer; over 20 years of experience in marketing and brand management.

creative director

Sue Redding

Creative leader with extensive experience at developing and refining brands and bringing products to market. Especially good at breathing new life into existing brands when they need a boost or a redesign. Expert at creating and implementing high-level creative and innovative design to create a cohesive brand look on all platforms. A strategic thinker and storyteller who is able to work in a supervisory role or hands-on as needed.

Board and Advisors

Marketing Advisor

Bill Kelley

Bill has been involved in the worlds of technology and transportation since the early 70s, managing advertising efforts for Intel, National Semiconductor and AMD in succession over a 17 year period. He was in early with Steve Jobs and worked on the development of the brand character and establishment of the Apple logo. 6 years later, he headed up advertising for … 

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senior connector

Larry Lautzker

From the streets of Brooklyn, the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, communal living in Key West, Fla to the biggest commune in San Francisco. He’s a street smart kid, aspired to be a Wall Street stock trader, then turned on, tuned in and dropped out. He became a part of the New York music scene and now a veteran San Francisco music entrepreneur.

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ADVISOR VICE PRESIDENT, CORPORATE TECHNOLOGY OF LENDING CLUB

Kal Majmundar

Accomplished executive with over 20 years of IT experience delivering solutions to global Fortune 500 companies. Extensive experience in aligning business and IT strategies including developing strategic roadmaps, financial and operational plans, developing, mentoring and leading high performing teams, executive business engagement. Talent development. Vendor engagement and overall service management.

software engineer

Bill Dawson

Dawson was on the Macintosh development team at Apple, where he produced the world’s first CD-ROMs, DVDs and dozens of products including scientific journals and video games. He was technical director of Xoom.com (NASDQ:XMCM) and president of Manex Interactive (The Matrix; Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon). He has programmed a number of AI machines.

Legal

  • Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati Mario Rosati and Mark Reinstra (Business Affairs). WSGR is the premier Silicon Valley legal firm. Based in Palo Alto, CA, WSGR principals are also investors in Orbis.
  • Maschoff Brennan (Intellectual Property)
  • R. Burns Israelsen (Lead Counsel)

Bill Kelley

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marketing advisor

Bill has been involved in the worlds of technology and transportation since the early 70s, managing advertising efforts for Intel, National Semiconductor and AMD in succession over a 17 year period. He was in early with Steve Jobs and worked on the development of the brand character and establishment of the Apple logo. 6 years later, he headed up advertising for Microsoft, introducing Excel and Project and nearly two dozen Microsoft versions of computer languages.

After striking out on his own, he managed marketing for Quarterdeck Office Systems, helping grow their revenues from $1.7 million to $60 million in 3 years. His Kelley Marketing company introduced the first digital camera, the Dycam Model 1.

In the telecommunications field, he worked with Micom (now part of Nortel Networks) to introduce VoIP.

In the software-as-a-service sector, he served at Billity and SatisFusion as VP Marketing.

In parallel with these tech activities, Bill had clients in the automotive industry, including Automotion, the leading retailer of Porsche aftermarket parts, Wheel Enhancement, a major retailer of high end wheels, and Suzuki, where he managed the introduction of the Samurai.

Blending these experiences, Bill wrote the business plan for Digital Performance, an online cataloger/lead generator for the performance automotive industry. Bill later served as VP Marketing at Digital Performance.

Along the way, Bill managed consumer product accounts (Olympia Beer, Vivitar and Mitsubishi Electronics) and an internet service, MatchNet (now Spark) and Autostream, a publisher of automotive content, which had the longest running automotive news show on YouTube.

His philosophy is to bring understanding of the prospects needs and wants to the product development process assuring expectations match deliverables.

Larry 'The Hat' Lautzker

Linkedin

Senior connector

From the streets of Brooklyn, the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, communal living in Key West, Fla to the biggest commune in San Francisco. He’s a street smart kid, aspired to be a Wall Street stock trader, then turned on, tuned in and dropped out. He became a part of the New York music scene and now a veteran San Francisco music entrepreneur. As part of the business team at the Church of the Good Earth Commune, in 1971 operated one of the first and largest Recycling Centers in the US and was a part of the political team that stopped the City of San Francisco from (ref Season of the Witch) demolishing the Haight Asbury in 1972.  He’s worked with the who’s who of promoters, musicians and bands in his 55 years as a independent producer, venue operator, national booking agent, band manager, audio technician, Mill Valley Film Festival event producer and many of his home town of Mill Valley’s special events and benefits. He’s a town leader, former member of the Business Advisory Committee and recipient of the prestigious Milley Award for his contribution to the creative arts.  

Advisory Board Member of Music Heals International a non-profit building music schools in Haiti and India. MHI is partners with CORE and Little Kids Rock.

He’s operated a men and women’s wholesale and retail clothing company for the past 36 years, famous4.net 

Larry started selling Ebikes and Escooters in 1998, and says “this was my first introduction to the EV world and for me, the writing was on the wall”, the dependence on fossil fuel and foreign powers was changing and I wanted to be a part of the future. 

Larry is our Senior Connector, he brings people together who support and share our mission, he gets stuff done!

Scott Streeter

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General manager, Co-Founder

Scott Streeter brings a wealth of expertise from 15 years as a tooling and prototyping engineer. Streeter has developed innovative tooling and manufacturing methods and created an efficient USA and offshore manufacturing process that is cost-competitive with global manufacturing competition. He has worked as an independent consultant, mechanical engineer, and fabricator for many successful companies.

Streeter brings special expertise in mechanical design, Computer Aided Design and Drafting, additive manufacturing 3D printing, and manufacturing processes.

Brad Knop

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Chief Financial Officer

Brad Knop comes to ORBIS as he enters his fifth year with Propeller Industries. Knop has performed all aspects of the Chief Financial Officer function for over 50 early-stage companies in sectors ranging from technology and business services to food/beverage and consumer goods/apparel. Knop’s leadership at Propeller draws on a combination of deep experience in finance and operations with his stewardship of efficient and scalable accounting teams, all managed using the latest technologies. Knop’s strategic thinking and financial acumen is essential to supporting ORBIS’s efforts to secure funding and support exponential growth.

Marcus Hays

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Chairman, CEO and Co-founder

Marcus Hays is CEO and co-founder of ORBIS. He is a visionary entrepreneur and award-winning industrial designer whose career has centered on paratransit, electric, and autonomous vehicle solutions since his studies at Art Center College of Design (Pasadena. 1991-1993).

Hays collaborated in a start-up incubated at the CalStart Advanced Transportation Center, focused on diesel-electric taxicabs, and acquired by Battery Automated Transportation in 1998. A 1998-2000 collaboration with Dr. Paul MacCready, then chairman of AeroVironment, on a series of electric bicycles with novel drivetrain (“mid-drive”) was later adopted by Bosch®. Hays’s multi-year consultation with mentor Lee Iacocca, former Chrysler Chairman, also led to offering the first ever mid-drive lithium-powered mountain ebike at Interbike, Las Vegas, NV, in 1999.

Other collaborations included with Richard Rice at Scaled Robotics, producing man-portable ground robotics platforms equipped with IED sniffers. Deployed in the second Iraq war, these led to multiple discoveries in miniaturized electric propulsion.

Hay’s PiCycle® electric bike brand was distributed at BestBuy® and heralded for its design by the Chicago Museum of Science & Industry, which has a PiCycle in its permanent collection. As CEO, Marcus led lobbying efforts in Washington D.C., and Sacramento with D.O.E., U.S. Department of Commerce and ARB. In a related venture, back-to-back land-speed records were set at the Bonneville Salt Flats in 2006 and 2007 aboard pioneering Li-ION-powered electric motorcycles.

Since the 2015 formation of ORBIS, Hays and co-founder Streeter have authored 17 issued patents on Ring-Driven™ technologies. Thirty more are in process that address novel autonomous vehicles and devices including desalination pumps and kinetic energy recovery systems, a type of mechanical energy storage.