Jeremy Andrews

Listen up about Jeremy Andrews. This guy is the real deal in the startup game, especially in hardware and engineering. So, Jeremy’s a Canadian dude from Newfoundland, and he’s basically been crushing it since day one. He came up through the engineering world, working at Tesla on Model 3 battery stuff, which is no small feat. Before that, he was at places like General Dynamics, ExxonMobil, and Nalcor Energy, so he’s got serious chops in big tech and energy. But what’s really interesting is how he took all that experience and turned it into something totally different, building tools to help engineers work better.

Back in college, Jeremy was all-in on hyperloop tech. He co-founded the Model Hyperloop team, and they actually did pretty well, second place at SpaceX’s Hyperloop Pod Competition in 2017. That’s where he got the spark for CoLab, a company he started with his buddy Adam Keating. CoLab is all about making collaboration software for mechanical engineers, so they can review designs, share ideas, and push products faster. It’s like Slack for hardware nerds, but way more tailored to the engineering grind. They built this cloud-based tool called Gradient, inspired by their hyperloop project struggles, showing how real-world problems push you to innovate.

Jeremy and his team jumped into Y Combinator in summer 2019, first Atlantic Canadian company ever to get in, which is a big deal. That was a clear sign he’s not just building a startup, he’s building something big. Fast forward, CoLab’s now got over 120 people and is backed by serious cash, $21 million in 2024 alone. They’ve got clients like Lockheed Martin, Hyundai Mobis, and Fortune 500 giants like Johnson Controls and Polaris. That’s some heavy trust in a company that started just a few years ago.

What’s wild is how Jeremy’s process shows what it really means to start something. He’s not just chasing tech for tech’s sake; he’s solving real problems he faced himself during hyperloop development. His experience at Tesla and big defense and energy firms gave him a solid foundation, but the hyperloop project was where he really learned what it takes to innovate on the edge. That drive to improve engineering workflows, to build tools that actually make a difference, yeah, that’s Jeremy in a nutshell.

So, honestly, Jeremy Andrews is a guy who turned his passion, his engineering background, and his hyperloop dreams into a company that’s changing how hardware gets made. He’s proof that if you jump into the shit you care about, learn from failures, and keep pushing, you can build something massive. No cap.