Christof Baumbach

Christof Baumbach is a French-American entrepreneur best known as one of the four co-founders of Wingz, the San Francisco–based ridesharing company (originally launched as Tickengo in April 2011, alongside Geoff Mathieux, Jeremie Romand, and Fred Gomez). Wingz was a pioneer in the peer-to-peer ride space — the company claims to have introduced an online peer-to-peer ride platform in October 2011 and became the first ridesharing service to obtain a license from California regulators, ahead of Uber and Lyft. The company today focuses on scheduled airport rides and non-emergency medical transportation (NEMT) / healthcare mobility across the United States.

At Wingz, Baumbach initially served as Head of Operations and team-builder, where he scaled the company's customer-support and operational capacity as its rider base grew. He later stepped into the Chief Executive Officer role (around 2018), setting strategic direction, before moving into his current position as Senior Vice President of Driver Safety and Reliability. Across these roles he has been a consistent public voice for the company, including commentary on the competitive dynamics with Uber and Lyft.

Before Wingz/Tickengo, Baumbach worked at Nexway, a software and digital-commerce firm, as Global Key Account Manager and Director of Operations, managing key client relationships. Academically, he studied at Université Paris 8, where his education spanned linguistics and communication (BS), science and technology with a focus on hypermedia / InfoCom (MS), and doctoral-level work on the social and technological implications of communication.

His angel/investor footprint is closely tied to his founder role: he is listed as a seed-stage investor in Wingz (a Seed round recorded around December 1, 2013, at roughly a $600K valuation). This reflects founder-side participation more than a broad external angel portfolio.

• Invests at the Seed stage, consistent with his profile as a founder-operator rather than an institutional VC.
• Draws on deep marketplace / ridesharing / mobility operating experience — the natural lens for evaluating consumer-marketplace and transportation startups.
• Values operational execution and the ability to scale customer support and operations — the areas he personally built at Wingz — over pure product hype.
• Regulatory savvy is part of his DNA: Wingz's early edge came from being first to secure a California ridesharing license, so founders who navigate regulated markets thoughtfully align with his experience.
• No large, publicly documented external angel portfolio is available; his verifiable investment activity centers on his own company, so treat his "angel" designation as founder-led / operator-angel in nature.