Ziv Aviram

Overview

Ziv Aviram is one of the three co-founders of Mobileye, which he started in 1999 together with Amnon Shashua and Norio Ichihashi^[1]. Within that founding team, the division of labour gave Aviram the operating side of the business rather than the research side: he took responsibility for operations, finance and investor relations^[1].

Those three functions sit between the technical work and the outside world. Operations turn plans into schedules and deliveries; finance keeps the organisation funded and its accounts in order; investor relations manage the expectations of shareholders and prospective backers. For a young technology company, these are the tasks that decide whether research becomes a lasting business.

Taking the company public

One outcome of that work was the company's listing on the New York Stock Exchange in 2014^[1]. A listing of this kind means the company sells shares to the public and has them traded on an exchange; it brings in capital and also brings in a much larger and more demanding set of shareholders. For a co-founder who handled finance and investor relations, the preparation before the listing and the reporting duties afterwards are a central part of the job.

Exit and retirement

Aviram retired after Intel completed its acquisition of Mobileye in 2017^[1]. An acquisition means the original company becomes part of a larger one, and the founders' roles typically change or end. In his case the sequence is simple: he stayed through the completion of the deal and stepped back once it closed.

Place in the company's history

Aviram's record at Mobileye is therefore bound up with three dated milestones that belong to the company rather than to him alone: the 1999 founding, the 2014 listing on the New York Stock Exchange, and the 2017 completion of the Intel acquisition^[1]. What the founding team's own account emphasises is the split of responsibilities — Shashua and Ichihashi alongside him at the start, and Aviram himself carrying operations, finance and investor relations^[1].