I hate to be that guy, but it was “don’t be evil” not “do no evil”.
Basically meant “don’t be like Microsoft” back in those days.
Very different meaning than people often assume, and not about hype. More about not letting success get to your head and using it to crush everyone else.
"Kentley-Klay, 43, is an improbable entrant into the crowded race to develop self-driving cars. He has no engineering degree, no background in computer science. Through his early 30s, he was a successful artist and designer—creating music videos and ads for major companies like McDonald’s and Birds Eye frozen vegetables."
"In a move that some will call devious and others will call ingenious, Kentley-Klay reached out to some of the biggest names in the field and told them he was making a documentary on the rise of self-driving cars. The plan was to mine these people for information and feel out potential partners."
The whole thing seems insane to me. I don't understand why you would fund someone with no tech or business background... I'm sure he hired some good people, but it still doesn't make sense.
As to why the investors booted him? Investors generally don't kick out the CEO unless they did something crazy. It doesn't look good for the investor, and it makes it investment look bad (and follow on investment less likely).
I'm curious how likely it is that driving sequence (on real roads, not the track) from the Bloomberg video is as real as it looks. If so, is that impressive? It certainly looks more advanced than other demos that have come out, but it's unclear what they didn't include in the video.
If that were the case, you'd have a better managed transition.
Ideally you'd have the CEO onboard with this from the start. Alternatively when it came time to boot them, you'd a) already have someone in place to take over b) be able to pay them off sufficiently to not make a fuss, and help you frame it as transitioning to a new role (i.e. they'd stay on as an advisor, move to a COO role etc.).
Tim has lots of experience in business and tech. From scratch he built a self driving car company valued at $3.2 billion, whose autonomous OS is outperforming efforts from major automakers and tech companies and with a fraction of the resources. Zoox has gotten to where they are now on about $300 million. Others have spent far more and have a lot less to show for it.
Your comment history suggests that you have some relationship with Zoox that you're not disclosing.
You've commented on Zoox several times before in an overly enthusiastic manner. You've also commented several times before on autonomy and your comments have been called out for astroturfing in a couple of instances.
Readers please beware and take this comment with a grain of salt.
I've been accused of working for Waymo and Cruise too, because I defend them against the unfounded bullshit you guys spread about them. And about me, too, apparently. I'm a self driving car nerd, I moderate a subreddit dedicated to the subject under the same username I have here, and I've been following the industry, the technology and it's players since the DARPA days. Relative to the rest of the industry Zoox is doing incredibly well, so if you want to challenge me about something, how about instead of making up teleological conspiracy theories, challenge me on the facts.
I'm interested in the facts of what they're doing so well - do they have deployed systems taking passenger rides? This is/was my industry, so I'm not just asking idly.
As an aside, the lack of clarity about who you do work for is probably what's contributing to the "teleological conspiracy theories".
Rock on, dude. Eff the haters. People love to make claims like above or downvote as soon as a positive comment is posted on something they don’t like or someone else comes to their enemies defense.
Accusing someone of astroturfing (or in your case, merely suggesting it) undermines the integrity of online discussion. It has a chilling effect on perspectives that may be viewed as controversial.
Just because someone is enthusiastic doesn’t mean they’re a shill. Even if you’re ultimately correct you shouldn’t wield that accusation without exceptional evidence - being an apologist for a company is not exceptional evidence. Cynicism has a place but you can’t just use it like a blunt instrument.
Valued at 3.2B USD, by investors who have just fired him...
It's a sign of how crazy things are when 300M USD can be considered a small amount of money to spend on technology development (particularly for a product that doesn't actually require anything inherently very-very expensive, aside from staffing costs).
I don't have a strong opinion on Zoox, this CEO, or even this story, but there sure does seem to be a lot of frustration in the self-driving world.
Leaves me with two thoughts:
* There's a lot more runway for these bike sharing startups then I thought there'd be.
* There's limits to current AI/ML technology that create a hard ceiling and extends timelines long beyond the current hype cycle and nobody wants to admit it or else funding might stop coming in.
Exactly this. The hype was all in the prototyping phase of the technology, going as far as you can get to make a demo and impress some investors. Progress looked like it was happening quickly because a controlled demo could be made with existing technology.
Now that it's time to build full production systems the hardest problems and edge cases need to be addressed, which could be ignored for demo systems, and the solutions aren't available without some new research developments.
Zoox? Those "Web 2.0 Name Generators" are fine if your company makes games or some nerdy stuff but I don't know how comfortable most people would be turning operation of their vehicle over to something that sounds like it was invented by Dr Seuss.
You don't just get rid of the founder and CEO for shits and giggles. I'd love to know what it was that prompted this, although I'm not sure if we'll ever find out.
Since he doesn't claim to know why, by far the most likely reason is that they don't believe he has what it takes to take the company further, whether technically or in terms of management or industry experience.
Well he says he doesn't know why, but that seems disingenuous. If they had said they don't have confidence in his abilities to take the company forward that would be a reason - he could disagree but he would absolutely know why. So either they genuinely didn't tell him - which indicates it's something they think would cause trouble, or he does know why but won't tell us.
Of what I've heard of Zoox (admittedly 2nd or 3rd hand), there definitely has been some precidence for "engineering to fit design goals" rather than "fitting design around engineering realities". Wouldn't surprise me if this non-technical CEO was part of this.
I fail to understand the issue here - Successful companies do often stretch the limits of engineering to fit design goals (assuming that the design is an informed one to begin with). If design was always fitted around what is known to be possible with engineering, we would have much less innovation around.
Also, wasn't this practice (i.e. engineering to fit design goals) what made Apple successful in releasing the iPod, iPhone, etc?
I am an engineer but welcome the perspective of designers and believe anyway that both need to work hand in hand.
In the case of driverless vehicles however, I am not sure the focus should overly be on design because this is a very hard problem that has yet to be solved, and maybe there was a way of designing a vehicle that was evolutionary rather than revolutionary, while mostly focusing on the technical challenges that must be overcome to get us to autonomy.
The key is that if your design goals are ambitious but achievable then you end up with a killer product. If your design goals are unrealistic or unachievable you tank what's achievable chasing a dream. Being frank the difference is probably that Steve Jobs had 30 years being a hands on expert in his field, and this guy was just some bloke who fancied building a self driving car.
All too often I've seen people set design goals when they don't understand the underlying problem. If jobs had targeted building an iPod that was physically smaller than the current smallest hard disk available he'd have been in this position.
The degree I take a company seriously is inversely related to the hype spewed by these articles (see pre 10/2015 Theranos press)