
Driverless Startup Zoox Suddenly Removes CEO - kuusisto
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-22/driverless-startup-zoox-said-to-remove-ceo-in-sudden-move
======
dawhizkid
The story that came out earlier this summer in Bloomberg was pure HBO Silicon
Valley-esque hyperbole ->
[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-07-17/robot-
tax...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-07-17/robot-taxi-startup-
zoox-has-800-million-and-a-wild-pitch)

The degree I take a company seriously is inversely related to the hype spewed
by these articles (see pre 10/2015 Theranos press)

~~~
KKKKkkkk1
But hype is part of the culture. I mean, there's a company whose motto was "do
no evil".

~~~
zamfi
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.

~~~
Piskvorrr
Glad that worked out, right? *this post best viewed in Google Chrome

~~~
zamfi
Companies change over time. Microsoft also isn't the same "evil empire" it was
in the late '90s and early '00s.

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theCricketer
"Without a warning, cause or right of reply the board fired me".. There is
more from Tim Kentley's twitter:
[https://twitter.com/TimKentleyKlay](https://twitter.com/TimKentleyKlay)

He just posted a bunch of messages he got from his team at Zoox. Seems like a
lot of employees really liked him and his leadership.

~~~
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...](https://www.forbes.com/feature/zoox-autonomous-cars-
taxis/#13a46f515755)

"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...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-07-17/robot-taxi-startup-
zoox-has-800-million-and-a-wild-pitch)

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).

~~~
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...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2018-07-17/zoox-and-
its-800-million-robo-taxi-dream-video)

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...](https://thelastdriverlicenseholder.com/2018/08/21/unidentified-
suv-spotted-in-dogpatch-neighborhood-in-san-francisco/)

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sambroner
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.

* Self driving is hard.

(^^ Copied from a duped post)

~~~
ben_jones
* 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.

~~~
maym86
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.

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okonomiyaki3000
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.

~~~
tim333
>It’s an abbreviation of zooxanthellae, the algae that helps fuel coral reef
growth

For what it's worth

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I think I'd have gone with Zooxa ("zuza"). How do they pronounce Zoox,
"zooks"?

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shriver
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.

~~~
lbriner
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.

This is the cold hard world of business which is why founders should keep some
decent equity to make sure they don't get stiffed like the guys at Fanduel:
[http://uk.businessinsider.com/fanduel-founders-likely-to-
los...](http://uk.businessinsider.com/fanduel-founders-likely-to-lose-out-
from-paddy-power-acquisition-2018-7)

~~~
shriver
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.

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artemisyna
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.

~~~
edshiro
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.

~~~
shriver
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.

------
hendzen
post-Theranos the attitude towards "fake it 'till you make it" is a bit
different.

~~~
maxerickson
Just as likely that ye olde skeleton has come a-knocking.

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ikeboy
You might say the startup is now without its ... driver.

Sorry.

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asadlionpk
Truly driverless.

