20VC: Why Self-Driving Is Still Under-Hyped in The Medium To Long Term, What Will The Ownership Mechanism Be Both In Physical Assets & Data and How To Assemble A World Class Exec Team As A Young Founder with Alex Rodrigues, Founder & CEO @ Embark
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 5 July 2019
⏱️ 34 minutes
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Summary
Alex Rodrigues is the Founder & CEO @ Embark, the world's leading developer of self-driving trucks. Embark operates the longest automated freight route in the world. To date, Alex has raised over $47m in funding for Embark from some of my favourites in the form of Pat Grady @ Sequoia, Matt Ocko @ Data Collective, SV Angel and Y Combinator, just to name a few. As for Alex, it started early with his winning a World Robotics Championship while he was in Middle School (the championship was for adults). Post that incredible achievement he dropped out of Waterloo, became a Thiel Fellow, worked as a software engineer @ Nuance Communications, before joining Khan Academy as a software engineer and also teaching robotics @ Khan Lab School.
In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Alex made his way from winning World Robotics Championships while he was in Middle School to founding the leader developer of autonomous trucks in Embark?
2.) Why does Alex believe in the medium to long term, self-driving is still under-hyped? What is the market analysis to support this? How did his meetings with the world's best public markets investors impact his thinking here? How does Alex think about adoption timelines for self-driving? How do investors think about this when investing?
3.) Does Alex believe that when it comes to self-driving vehicles, they will largely be a public utility? What ownership mechanism does Alex expect to see? What are the pros and cons associated with each? How does Alex think about ownership of the data generated through self-driving? How do we balance privacy and public safety?
4.) With such large milestones and proof points in self-driving, how does Alex think about effective goal setting? What are the core KPIs to be driving for? How can they be broken into more meaningful and achievable wins for the team to get around? What is the core challenge to morale maintenance when the challenge is so long term?
5.) Where does Alex see the commonalities in the biggest mistakes that young founders make? What does Alex know now that he wishes he had known at the start? What have been Alex's biggest lessons on hiring the world's best in their respective fields? What have been Alex's biggest takeaways when it comes to successful board management?
Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:
Alex’s Fave Book: High Output Management
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is Founders Friday on the 20-minute VC with me, Harry Stebbings, and it'd be awesome to welcome you behind the scenes here, |
| 0:05.1 | and the best way to do that is to head over to Instagram and follow at H. Stebbings' 1996 with two Bs. |
| 0:10.5 | But to our episode today, and I really like to have synchronicity between episodes, and if you listen to our fantastic |
| 0:15.7 | discussion with Pat Grady on Monday at Sequoia, he discussed his latest investment, and I couldn't be more excited to have them on the show today. |
| 0:22.2 | So with that in mind, joining me in the hot seat, I'm very, very excited to have Alex Rodriguez, found and CEO at Embark. |
| 0:28.3 | The world's leading developer of self-driving trucks. |
| 0:31.0 | Embark operates the longest automated freight route in the world. To date, Alice has raised over $47 million in funding for Embark from some of |
| 0:38.3 | of my favourites in the form of Pat Grady at Sequoia and the wonderful Matt Ocker at Data Collective, |
| 0:42.9 | also the likes of SV Angel and Y Combinator, just to name a few. As for Alice, it all started |
| 0:47.6 | very early with his winning a World Robotics Championship while he was in middle school. The |
| 0:51.6 | championship was actually for adults, though. Post that incredible achievement, he dropped out of Waterloo, became a Teal Fellow, worked as a software |
| 0:58.2 | engineer at Nuance Communications, before joining Khan Academy as a software engineer and also teaching |
| 1:03.1 | robotics at Khan Lab School. I'd also want to say huge thank you, both to Pat Grady and Madako, |
| 1:08.2 | for some fantastic questions suggestions today. I really do so appreciate that |
| 1:11.8 | and mehito's on me to thank you. But before we dive into our episode today, look at the world's |
| 1:16.4 | tech leaders and high-growth startup CEOs and do you ever wonder how in the world do they |
| 1:20.5 | have that kind of inexhaustible energy to do what they do? The answer will surprise you. The latest |
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