A spreadsheet, a friend, and a thesis.
The operator who hit the wall.
David Robledo was an early beta tester of Turo's co-hosting product — running his own cars and, as more LA owners asked him to run theirs, building Limitless Rentals into a fast-growing fleet.
By 40 vehicles under management, owner statements alone — reconciling Turo CSVs, billing back expenses, chasing receipts from field ops, verifying payouts — were eating his weekends. The spreadsheets that worked at five vehicles were buckling at 20 and crashing at 40.
So David made a hard call most operators don't: he paused growth and pared the business down to 20 vehicles to get the back office, accounting, and owner reporting right before scaling further. He's now ready to scale Limitless to 100+ vehicles across LA, on a foundation that won't buckle the second time around.
A spreadsheet, a friend, and a thesis.
David turned first to Tyler Chen, a sharing-economy CFO who'd spent years doing accounting for Airbnb hosts and knew exactly what happens when an operation outgrows its bookkeeping. Tyler started untangling the books, then pulled in his friend Cliff Huang — a data scientist with an x.AI background — who began hacking real technology around the spreadsheets.
Cliff showed the project to James von der Lieth, and the pattern landed instantly. James had spent years at Ceterus building niche accounting systems for franchise operators — Orange Theory, Jimmy John's, Massage Envy — learning that generic tools never solve specific industries well. As an Airbnb owner/operator himself, he'd already watched this exact movie.
James and Cliff teamed up to turn the project into a company, starting with dozens of operator interviews to map every pain point hiding under the Turo dashboard.
The same path Airbnb walked a decade ago.
Turo, Outdoorsy Auto, and direct rental businesses are on the same trajectory Airbnb walked a decade ago: what started as people listing a car on the side has become a real business — multi-car fleets, owners expecting monthly statements, and all the financial complexity that comes with it. The hosts are going pro; the tools haven't kept up.
Operator after operator, the same four pains came back:
Owner statements eat the weekend
Manually reconciling payouts across Turo, Outdoorsy Auto, and direct bookings for every owner — every month — is a full-time job.
No visibility into what's profitable
Revenue looks great until you factor in maintenance, insurance, depreciation, and platform fees. Per-vehicle truth is invisible.
Flying blind on buy & sell
Every vehicle has an optimal hold period. Without real depreciation and per-vehicle returns, you're guessing on when to exit.
Co-hosting growth stalls on admin
Every new owner you bring on multiplies your paperwork — receipts, statements, splits, 1099s. Growth becomes the bottleneck.
A financial system built for the sharing economy.
We stopped thinking of FleetPilot as a tool to fix Limitless's spreadsheets and started designing the financial system operators like David actually need — the people running other people's sharing-economy assets at scale.
The asset class keeps expanding: autos, RVs, trucks, boats — and soon Cybertaxis and autonomous EVs deployed by owners into fleets run by professional hosts. The complexity per asset is real — variable platform revenue, depreciation, owner payouts, multi-state tax, 1099s, deductions, claims — and none of it fits a generic accounting tool, no matter how many integrations you bolt on.
FleetPilot is built for the operators managing these assets, today on Turo and direct rentals, tomorrow on whatever comes next.
Built with an operator who built his own tools.
When the tools available to fleet operators fell short, Alexander Stevens did what operators do: he built his own. Nights and weekends, he started developing his own fleet accounting tooling from scratch — not because he wanted to be a software developer, but because nothing on the market was solving his actual problem.
Alexander spent 11 years as a Naval Aviator flying F/A-18 Hornets and Super Hornets off carrier decks worldwide. After leaving the Navy, he built High Flying Rentals into a 75-vehicle premium fleet in Phoenix — one of the most diverse independent fleets in the Turo ecosystem.
James met Alexander at a conference. The conversation started with the usual operator frustrations and quickly shifted when Alexander mentioned he'd been building his own tooling. We brought him on as a Founding Operator Advisor to guide the product from the inside — someone who understands the problem at a technical and operational level most advisors never will.