Founder of PAVE
AI-powered vehicle inspections commercialized across enterprise automotive workflows.
Stephen Southin
Founder, product architect, and lifelong student of how systems scale.
Explore the JourneyOver the last two decades, I've built companies across automotive technology, software, computer vision, and AI.
From one of the first mobile dealer-to-dealer wholesale platforms to patented vehicle inspection technology and visual intelligence systems, every venture has pursued the same question:
How do we transform better information into better decisions?
Known For
U.S. Patent Holder
Vehicle appraisal, capture, and visual intelligence technologies.
Deloitte Technology Fast 50
PAVE ranked #29 after achieving 1173% growth over three years.
Building Halo
Capture intelligence infrastructure for reliable visual evidence.
Companies built
View all workCompanies built from zero. Products commercialized at scale. Ideas pursued obsessively.
Mobile Wholesale Commerce
2006 - 2012
Built around mobile wholesale commerce.
One of the first mobile dealer-to-dealer automotive wholesale platforms, enabling dealers to book, bid, buy, and sell vehicles directly from BlackBerry devices before modern mobile marketplaces became common.
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Retention & Service Commerce
2012 - 2018
Built around customer retention and dealership lifetime value.
A customer engagement platform designed to help dealerships retain customers throughout the ownership journey through service marketing, financing, and lifecycle automation; driving fixed operations revenue, loyalty, and repeat business.
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Computer Vision & Vehicle Intelligence
2018 - Present
Built around guided capture, computer vision, and vehicle condition intelligence.
AI-powered vehicle inspection technology commercialized across high-scale fleets and enterprise automotive workflows. Stephen founded PAVE and remains on the board as a major shareholder after stepping away from day-to-day operations in 2025.
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Visual Evidence Infrastructure
2025 - Present
Built around capture intelligence and reusable visual evidence.
A capture intelligence platform focused on making visual evidence reliable, structured, and reusable before it reaches downstream systems, AI models, inspections, retail, insurance, or finance workflows.
→The journey
Every company began as an obsession with fixing a workflow that should have worked better.
Proof of work
View all recognitionPatents, interviews, articles, speaking engagements, and public records from the companies and technologies built over the last two decades.
Builder Notes
View all articlesEssays on product development, entrepreneurship, visual intelligence, and building things that matter.
Observation Becomes Intelligence
Most intelligence problems are actually observation problems. Before intelligence can exist, something must first be observed.
Read articleBuilding at 7000 RPM
Operating at 7000 RPM is not about motivation. It is about momentum, endurance, and staying with a problem long enough for compounding to do its work.
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The Most Expensive Assumption in Business
The most expensive assumptions are not the obvious ones. They are the beliefs that become invisible before anyone remembers to question them.
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