Andrew Crowell

Waymo's recent doubling of its paid ride volume is an impressive business result. But what does the feat say about the state of the self-driving industry? And how does Waymo stack up against self-driving rivals like Tesla, and ride-hailing giants like Uber? We dive into these questions on the latest episode of TWIST

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This is 100% aligned with how I see AI making the most impact business operations. Revenue/profit per employee increases. Costs decrease. Business models will be transformed by those first to market/embrace the wave of AI agents & automation.

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I call BS on this one. This is likely less about #AI and more about a market manipulation / hype train with an upcoming IPO. AI doesn't (yet) solve these complex workflows with an intuitive UI that #SalesForce and #Workday offer. What does everyone think? #cto #saas

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🚀 Innovation AND execution exemplified....but why did Tesla succeed and so many others struggle?? EV's are everywhere and there is so much demand. There is Rivian, Lucid and multiple others competing with great products! But.... At the end of the day, this is why many great ideas in VC ultimately fail...execution and lack to a path of profitability. Here is why Tesla succeeded vs Ford but many others may not make it: 1️⃣ First Mover Advantage: Tesla has been producing EVs at scale for over a decade, giving it a head start in refining manufacturing processes, supply chain management, and cost reduction. - Economies of Scale: With a significantly larger production volume than newer competitors, Tesla benefits from lower per-unit costs. 2️⃣ Control Over Supply Chain: Tesla designs and produces many of its components in-house, including batteries and software. This reduces reliance on third parties and allows better cost control and faster innovation. 3️⃣ Manufacturing Innovations: Gigafactories: Tesla’s Gigafactories are designed for scale and efficiency, incorporating automation, innovative production lines, and co-location of battery production. Gigapress: Tesla uses massive casting machines (Gigapresses) to produce large, single-piece components, reducing assembly complexity and costs. Focus on Simplicity: Tesla's designs emphasize simplicity, using fewer components and standardizing across models, which reduces manufacturing complexity. 4️⃣ Scale: Lucid and Rivian are producing at much lower volumes, leading to higher per-unit costs. 🤑 At the end of day, Tesla makes $9,264 per vehicle (profit) while Rivian loses $38,784 per vehicle and Lucid loses $137,150 per vehicle. 💡 Same idea, right? Just done very differently... #venturecapital #endowments #familyoffices

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All-In Podcast Summit Recap (part 4): Driverless Cars: Waymo has already completed 1 million rides while operating in only 3 cities; SF, LA, and Phoenix. We are well beyond proof of concept. Product Market Fit has been achieved and regulation is the only limiting factor to nationwide availability. I'm not sure how this will affect the current rideshare companies, but its either wildly bullish or completely existential. As of today, Waymo is partnering with existing rideshare co’s which makes sense since they already have users and distribution. Whether or not Waymo will want to own the market entirely remains to be seen. Waymo is owned and backed by Google, so they definitely have the capital required to pursue any strategy they choose. Data has shown that driverless cars are safer than human-operated vehicles, and early adopters report a better user experience. Flying Cars: Eclectic Vertical Takeoff and Landing (EVTOL) vehicles are operational today. The CEOs of Joby and Archer Aviation spoke about their plans to bring the service to market as early as next year. Unfortunately, due to regulations, the first flights will take place in the UAE and not the U.S.  The vehicles are safer than helicopters with better fuel efficiency (they are electric) and faster travel times. I first-hand experienced the launch and growth of Blade, a luxury helicopter service providing trips from NYC to the Hamptons. It is wildly popular and ultra convenient. With traffic in major cities now crippling mobility and thus productivity, I think demand for short-haul EVTOL flights will be robust.  Human-piloted vehicles will launch first, followed by fully autonomous vehicles shortly after. We are finally getting the flying cars we were promised!

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WAYMO -- WAYCOOL or GHOST RIDER? If you preside in San Francisco, Santa Monica or Phoenix you are now seeing driverless Waymo taxies making their way through town on an ever-increasing basis. The network is expanding, and I can honestly say that in the Santa Monica / West Los Angeles area I have not driven anywhere in the last two months without seeing one of them on the road every time. In fact, sometimes they are so prevalent that there might be three in a row waiting at a stop light. It still is kind of spooky seeing cars moving around with no driver, or anyone for that matter, in the front seat. It's not exactly the same as the Headless Horseman but it does conjure up that image in my imagination. I have not taken a ride in one, but several family members have and report their satisfaction. Waymo is a division of Alphabet (GOOGL). I have not seen any visible evidence of General Motors (GM) Cruise vehicles which I understand are still being road tested, while Tesla (TSLA) has been projecting their autonomous vehicle vision for some time. For now, Tesla seems to be behind but that could change quickly. GM is likely to use their own branded vehicles, and it would seem that Tesla will likely do the same. However, Waymo technology could be outfitted on any cars. That seems like a big advantage, staying out of the car business and just being like the "Intel/Microsoft" inside personal computers which is a much higher margin business. There has been a lot of noise in the business journals and chat rooms about a Waymo initial public offering but nothing from Alphabet itself. They recently concluded a $5.6 billion investment round; see TechCrunch post below. The autonomous race is on, and it will be expanding rapidly from here on out. I just wonder if we will ever see an autonomous police vehicle stop a wayward autonomous taxi and write it up for some violation as yet unknown. Will traffic school be an option? #waymo, #autonomousvehicles, #selfdrivingcars, #GM, #Generalmotors, #tesla, #Investing, #business,

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Autonomous Vehicle (AV) funding is surging, according to PitchBook with Q2 2024 seeing $2.9 billion invested in AV startups - the highest since Q3 2021. While self-driving cars grab headlines, innovative startups are finding unique applications beyond passenger vehicles. Key developments: - Supply chain optimization: Outrider is revolutionizing yard operations with autonomous electric vehicles, addressing a $60 billion market. - Specialized transport: Pyka's autonomous planes for cargo and Gatik's local distribution trucks are gaining traction. - Safety & efficiency: Evitado Technologies automates airside operations, mitigating airport collision risks. Of course, more established companies such as Lyft & Uber are working on AV rideshare integration via partnerships with Waymo, BYD, Zoox, and others. The AV sector is focusing on gradual integration and specific use cases. While concerns about job displacement exist, proponents argue that automation could shift human capital to higher-value roles. What those roles are remains to be seen. As the AV landscape evolves, it's clear that the future of transportation extends far beyond just self-driving cars on city streets. Check out the full article by Nadine Manske here: https://lnkd.in/g3HJXZHc? And access the PitchBook Mobility Tech Report here: https://lnkd.in/g4_xP5pr #VentureCapital #AutonomousDriving #FrontierTech #FutureMobility

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Economies thrive with automation, and Formic is accelerating state-of-the-art robotics & AI across our factories and warehouses:

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Want to know what the California Air Resources Board had to say about #ACFR implementation last night? Cloverleaf AI monitors these hearings distills insights, so your team can stay focused on doing their job. Reach out for a free customized summary! #cleanfleet #Advancedcleanfleet #Fleetelectrification #EVfleet #Hydrogenfleet

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Been reflecting on how AI has transformed my daily coding workflow since starting my own venture. The impact has been fascinating: 🤖 GitHub Copilot's sweet spot? Those small, repetitive completions. While I skip the big code block suggestions, it's incredibly accurate for one-liners, function calls, and iterator contents. You can tab complete your way through a lot of mundaneness. 🔄 My Stack Overflow habit has been largely replaced by LLMs (ChatGPT-4 & Claude). Think of them as your always-available coding buddy that you bounce ideas off. They excel at: 1) Generating example code when learning new libraries - and unlike generic docs, they tailor examples to your specific use case (those fiddly plotting configurations are a breeze now!) 2) Real-time debugging suggestions that are often faster than searching forums 3) Smart refactoring existing code based on design principles The key? AI is a co-pilot, not an autopilot. Its a tool an Engineer uses within their workflow - suggestions get reviewed, and the final decisions always stay with the developer. Just like you wouldn't (hopefully wouldn't?! 😅) just copy/paste directly from your Google searches either. But the time savings and efficiency gains are remarkable. ❓Curious: How has AI changed your dev workflow? Are you seeing similar patterns? What's working (or not working) for you? As a bit of fun the image below was generated by ChatGPT DALL-E. #SoftwareEngineering #AITools #DeveloperProductivity #TechStartup #CodingWorkflow #ResponsibleAI

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JB Straubel & Elon Musk... THE most significant partnership in the Tesla story - particularly in how the company got going...survived EVen! 🕺 "We've gone through multiple cycles of Republican Administrations, Democrat Administrations - this is a bipartisan issue if there ever was one...energy security, jobs"... Within those few words - and what the Redwood Materials Founder & CEO went on to say - are some very useful pointers in my opinion. 🤔 I've got that FOMO sensation watching this and not being with Simon & Andrew and the rest of the Benchmark Mineral Intelligence team over in the 🇺🇸 right now. Specifically in considering what the next 48 months might be like from January 2025 onwards... Thanks for sharing this clip Simon - as a subscriber, I'm now looking forward to catching up with the full monty of LA Benchmark Week...sadly minus all the inevitable and essential in-person live event happenstance moments of course! A closing thought...mixing red and blue together makes purple. #energy #innovation #batteries #engineering #tesla #redwoodmaterials

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"Stop impressing the geek next to you." That line from Tony Fadell hit hard. As a young engineer, he'd build things just because they were technically impressive. His fellow engineers would nod in approval. But here's the thing: Those head nods don't pay the bills. Real success comes from obsessing over your customer's pain, not your technical brilliance. When founders pitch me, I often ask: "Who loses sleep over this problem?" If the answer is "other engineers will think it's cool," that's a red flag. The best founders I've backed? They're haunted by the problem they're solving. They can name their customers. They know their sleepless nights. They're not building to impress their peers. They're building to change lives. The tech is just the means to an end. --- Video source: Startup Archive --- Check out my Newsletter - TheFoundersCorner via the Link on my profile page or the Link at the top of the page ☝️ Jam Packed with Actionable Insights Every Week 💙

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Early this morning I took a 20-minute drive on I-5. I passed over 40 trucks. Of these exactly 100% of them were burning diesel fuel and 0% were electric. Almost all of these were short-haul trucks moving containers to and from the Seattle port—onward to local distribution centers. I find this deeply frustrating. We have all of the “hard” tech problems solved here—dense batteries, multiple truck manufacturers selling fully electrified trucks, high speed chargers. So why is everyone still burning diesel? Why are we spewing not just CO2, but also major localized pollution around the ports and nearby communities? It turns out that despite the hard physics problems being solved, the soft problems of coordinating, financing, and routing EV trucks remains. The traditional owner-operator model of short-haul trucking won’t be able to quickly transition to EV truck ownership. We need to optimize routes with charging, train drivers on new vehicles, and finance trucks in new ways. Enter Nevoya, a recent Stepchange investment. Anay and I met Sami Khan, John Verdon, and Thomas Atwood over the summer and were blown away by their grasp of the industry and how to unlock massive scale of EV trucking now and not in 10 years. This can't happen fast enough.

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Waymo's market share is now equal to Lyft within SF. Incredible. Network effects is one of the best sources of defensibility. But it's proven to be not that important in ridesharing. When Waymo launched in August 2023, Uber and Lyft were at 66% and 34% share in SF. 15 months later in November 2024, Waymo is at 22% - the same as Lyft - with Uber at 55%. Note: stats from a partner at a16z. #ridesharing #Waymo #Lyft #Uber #a16z

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Dev agencies, if you don’t want to be treated as a commodity, stop acting like one. - Learn the business context for engineering needs - Stop squeezing your clients every opportunity you get - Prioritize transparency, communication, and accountability In short, position yourself as a partner that uses tech to solve business problems. You really can’t complain about being seen as a commodity if you treat everything as a transaction.

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I'm not sure why when I post this YouTube video it doesn't auto play on LinkedIn, but if anyone wants a peak at what we were up to in South Korea, here it is: https://lnkd.in/eecUeRH2 And if you know how to correctly post YouTube videos on LinkedIn, that would be helpful too #founders #venturecapital Antler

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"Falling costs of building new software companies are a mirage, and the reason for that is this thing in economics called the Jevon's paradox... ...the Jevon's paradox occurs when technological progress increases the efficiency with which a resource is used (reducing the amount necessary for any one use), but the falling cost induces increases in demand enough that resource use overall is increased, rather than reduced." Marc Andreessen with a counterintuitive take on what the future could hold for the software industry. #tech #technology #innovation #software #deeptech #startups #entrepreneurs #entrepreneurship #ai #artificialintelligence #vc #venturecapital #money #business

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WAYMO: THE BIGGEST SUPPLY CHAIN TECH INVESTMENT OF THE YEAR The supply chain technology markets are heating up. In the biggest transportation tech investment of the year, Waymo just announced a $5.6 billion financing. The investment, led by Alphabet Inc. (which owns the majority already), also included Andreessen Horowitz, Fidelity Investments, Perry Creek Capital, Silver Lake, Tiger Global Management and T. Rowe Price. Waymo will use the capital to pursue leadership in the autonomous vehicle arena, with a focus on its Waymo One robotaxi offering. Would you get in a self-driving taxi? Most people don't realize this, but there are already 100,000 weekly trips in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Atlanta and Austin. I predict robotaxis will be in most major markets within 3 years. What other winners are you seeing in the autonomous transportation arena? #supplychain #transportation #tech #autonomous https://lnkd.in/e8HAhReY

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Good morning from San Francisco! Sending love and support to all who are affected by the Los Angeles fires this past week, and a huge 🫡 to the work of the firefighters. Here are a few great things to read/watch this week: 💡💡💡: 💰 11 Silicon Valley Startups Raised $676 Million 🤯 Jensen is the Biggest Stock KOL 💰 Anthropic to Raise $2B via Tanay Jaipuria ⚡ Buckle up Washington DC via Chris Neumann 👓 What is Spatial Intelligence? via Fei-Fei Li 🤖 A Chinese Robot Walks Around Shenzhen 🖼 Getty Images & Shutterstock Merger Read more on my Substack 👉 👉 👉 https://lnkd.in/gKw-pKEy #venture #funding #M&A #AI #IPOs #exits #startups #venturecapital #databricks #OpenAI #anthropic #getty #shutterstock #shenzhen #spatialintelligence #DC #Nvidia #JensenKOL #founders #merger Read more on my Substack 👉 👉 👉

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