Making Introductions and Opening Doors for Startups
For more than a decade, Cox employees have contributed thousands of hours of mentorship, offering what matters most in the startup world: experience, perspective and candid feedback. This three-part series spotlights some of the mentors behind that impact. Read on for part 2, then check out part 1 and part 3.
Entrepreneurship has always been close to home for Mackenzie Baines, a strategic planning director at Cox Automotive.
“In my family, everybody except for me and my sister are entrepreneurs,” she said. “So the founder bug is definitely strong within my background.”
Her career has followed the path of emerging technologies. She began in mergers and acquisitions for broadcast television stations, gaining early insight into capital investment, before moving into an ad tech startup. Since joining Cox Automotive in 2020, she has worked across electric vehicles, connected cars and autonomous technology.
Early in her tenure at Cox, a leader recognized how those experiences came together and encouraged her to mentor startups.
“I had a really incredible leader who he saw the mentor in me,” she recalled. “He said, ‘I think you'd really enjoy it, and it would be an opportunity for you to have your day job in the corporate world, but then also stretch that founder muscle.’”
Since then, Mackenzie has supported startups through several Cox-sponsored programs. She served on the selection committee for the launch of the Cox Cleantech Accelerator and mentored companies in both 2025 cohorts. She has also participated as a mentor for one of Startup Runway’s showcases and most recently became a startup advisor for Engage, a venture fund, go-to-market program and corporate innovation platform backed by Cox and other leading corporations.
As a mentor, Mackenzie focuses on building strong relationships with founders and understanding the problems they’re trying to solve so she can help them land pilots and commercial contracts. She coaches startups on structuring conversations, refining their proof of concept and showing how their solutions address immediate business needs. Her goal is to give founders the tools to walk into conversations prepared, confident and ready to demonstrate real value.
“A lot of the leaders have issues right in front of them that they’re trying to solve,” she said. “How do you create urgency for a proof of concept to actually get your foot in the door? How do you show this is a problem worth solving today?”
She also spends time making introductions, whether connecting founders with the right people to pitch within Cox or tapping her broader network when a founder needs guidance in a specific area.
“This is more about supporting our startup tech investments when they’re just looking for a friendly conversation with someone who’s been there before,” she said. “I have such immense respect for anybody who decides that they are going to take that leap and be a founder.”
One of Mackenzie’s favorite parts of mentoring is the two-way exchange it creates.
“Learning goes both ways,” she said. “It gets me out of my bubble, and I’m energized by it. I learned so much about different industries and different technologies that it keeps me sharp and makes me better at my job.”
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