[sofon]

"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."

https://www.forbes.com/feature/zoox-autonomous-cars-taxis/#1...

"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."

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-07-17/robot-tax...

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).

[jamestimmins]

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.

[bitL]

> I don't understand why you would fund someone with no tech or business background...

Maybe that was the board's plan for the initial rocky phase of the company, without telling Tim?

[sofon]

Why would this be a good plan?

Booting a startup CEO always looks bad in my opinion and would likely concern anyone doing a follow on investment.

[lbriner]

Because you think he was good for fighting his way through the early stages of a company but doesn't show the right skillset to go the next level.

[sofon]

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.).

[bitL]

Intel did the same - threw out CEO with some mud flying down. Decency seems to be out of fashion lately.

[sofon]

Yes, I think throwing out the CEO of an established company with revenue is quite a bit different than throwing out the CEO of a pre-product startup however.

With a startup, you've invested in the founding team. If you throw them out... you've effectively thrown out a significant part of what you invested in. It also calls in to question your own judgement as an investor. And it reduces your standing in the eye of companies looking for investment.

Overall, unless something really really bad happens you don't want to throw out the founder...

If you just don't have confidence? You either let the investment go, or you try and pump it and get someone to buy you out in a subsequent round.

The only possibility I can see if that someone wants to buy Zoox, they made a really generous offer... but the Zoox CEO blocked the sale. Acquiring company is willing to take Zoox without the CEO to get Zoox out of the market, and acquire the team for their own projects...

[jstandard]

Ideally yes, likely, no. From the sparse details we do have it sounds like there were some fundamental disagreements between the board and CEO. The board may have seen firing the CEO as the path of least resistance. It seems harsh, but without extensive insider details, it's hard to know whether it was the right call.

[Fricken]

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.

[askafriend]

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.

[Fricken]

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.

[Qworg]

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".

[Fricken]

Zoox did several years of closed course testing and started on public roads in San Fransisco about 1 year ago with just 10 cars. Last fall they did a press event and took a few dozen journalists around for rides and everyone had good things to say about the performance of their vehicles. Their first set of disengagement reports for 2017 had them at 1 every 430 miles, which is worse than Waymo or Cruise, but way ahead of everyone else, and especially impressive given how few test miles they had racked up at the time. It lends credibility to the claims some have made that Jesse Levinson is the brightest guy in the industry.

Ashley Vance for Bloomberg did a big puff piece on Zoox a month ago, the video is pretty interesting, it's the first we've been able to see of their prototypes in action, and I had been waiting years to see if they were actually following through with their original vision:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2018-07-17/zoox-and-it...

A couple days ago some pics of an unidentified av test vehicle was spotted, and one of the smart guys in my subreddit called it out as a zooxmobile with an new sensor configuration arranged to match the configuration of their protoypes:

https://thelastdriverlicenseholder.com/2018/08/21/unidentifi...

[vonseel]

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.

[ratacat]

So... Are you in any relationships with them?

[Fricken]

I know a programmer who worked for BioWare in my home city who has been with Zoox for about a year. I met him once, years before he left for SF, because we have a mutual ex-girlfriend. So yeah, I'm right up in there.

[mcherm]

Hey, as someone who is just observing this and doesn't have a dog in the fight -- thanks. (I am assuming that -- although you didn't say it -- this is a full disclosure of ALL your conflicts of interest.)

I am not quite sure what I believe about when it is appropriate to accuse someone of having undisclosed conflicts of interest. But I am certain that the best way to respond to such an accusation is with a full disclosure of all conflicts of interest. Regardless of whether the accusation was appropriate, the disclosure ends the issue. And conflicts of interest (to one degree or another) are perfectly normal and do not invalidate a person's opinions or eliminate them as a useful contributor to the discussion.

[pxtail]

Here we go. Gotcha! Mutual interest

[throwawaymath]

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.

[askafriend]

Fair - and feedback noted. I would have chosen different words but I don't regret delivering the message of caution.

The author chose phrasing that seemed to carry an authoritative tone and it begged questioning into the author's background/history.

[sofon]

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).