Let waypoints guide you, w/Aurora's Chris Urmson

The very best founders I know are brilliant at building systems. They connect teams, they remove bottlenecks, and they eliminate single points of failure. And yet When it comes to their own wealth. Most are running a disconnected stack. A tax accountant here and a state attorney there, a wealth manager who doesn't talk to either one of them.

Creative planning was built to fix exactly that. One integrated team of tax professionals, state planners, investment specialists, all coordinated by a dedicated wealth manager who sees your full financial picture and keeps every piece working together. Proactive tax efficiency, state strategy, investments all under one roof. Creative planning where wealth works together. Learn more at creative planning dot com slash masters of scale.

Global hiring is such a headache when you're building fast, but companies like Eleven Labs are scaling effortlessly with deal. They quadrupled their workforce in twenty twenty five. Without hiring an HR team. Build your global team with deal. Visit deal.com slash MOS and start expanding your business today. That's D E L

dot com. Slash M O S. Hey, folks, Jeff Berman here. I am thrilled to share some of the new names who will be joining us at this year's Masters of Scale summit. This may be our biggest stage yet. Reed Hastings, Meredith Whitaker, Van Jones, Amjad Masad, and more.

Will be there with us October 20th through 22nd in San Francisco. If you're building something great, or you want to build something great, We want you there with us too. Join us at masters of scale dot com slash apply twenty six. That's mastersofscot com slash apply. twenty six.

Differential pressure, some one of the biggest things you have to worry about is the diver. So anywhere there's suction because you don't wanna get stuck. Underwater. That's Mandy Hammerston. recounting just one of the many uncomfortable situations she's plunged herself into during her career.

As a commercial diver. We did one job. There was a water intake system. That helped with the heating and cooling of three of the skyscrapers downtown. And it's this big structure. There are four pumps. We had to keep one pump running and they were gonna have it on low. And in my mind, I had pictured it being about

Five feet maybe ten feet tall and when we get up to it it's like Fifteen closer to twenty feet. You know, as you're getting closer to this dark Army as object. We know to kinda stay away from this.

Area. Being comfortable in uncomfortable situations is what you do. As a diver. One way to be comfortable with that discomfort is planning each dive, whether it's in 30 degree water beneath 18 feet of Arctic ice. A lake.

Filled with poisonous industrial chemicals. Or navigating. around huge suction pipes that can trap you underwater. It's a skill I admire, especially as often even seeing just a few feet ahead is a challenge when you're working underwater. Usually visibility.

isn't that great for commercial divers. Like I've had a lot where you put your hand in front of your faceplate and you see nothing. It's just black and you can't even see changes of shadows. You're like, okay, this is gonna be a good one. That's why it's essential that Mandy gets as familiar as she can with a dive site before going under. Yeah. We talk about the job site, what it look like, what our hazards are, making sure that we're all aware of potentially where they are underwater. Okay, here are my reference points that I need to hit so I know where I'm going. Having kind of that internal m mind map of knowing okay, I know I should have three or four steps and I should hit this marking. If I haven't

Back track. Find my point. And then go from there. For Mandy. Setting clear waypoints can mean the difference.

Between a successful dive And an abort admission. But exactly when and where she hits these waypoints isn't set in stone. She needs to keep them flexible to deal with sudden Unexpected changes in the water around her.

The same is true when you're navigating the ever turbulent season. of scaling a business. That's why I believe. Setting short. Flexible waypoint is a powerful tool for navigating your scale journey.

You gotta have incredible talent at every position. There are fires burning when you're going out. Can you believe it? Such an idiot. And then you go back to this is totally gonna be amazing. There are so many easy ways. I have no idea what to do. Sorry, we made a mistake. But you have to time it right. We haven't made it. Just how you do it. This

is masters of scale. I'm Reed Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, partner at Graylock. And your host. And I believe setting short flexible waypoints is a powerful tool for navigating your scale journey. Imagine you're setting off on a daunting expedition. It could be hiking the Appalachian Trail.

or rafting the Zambezi River in Zambia. Or It could be a cross country drive to see the family. At the height of the holidays. The important thing is your expedition is big.

Maybe even audacious. And doing it all in one go. Would be foolhardy. That's why an experienced guide across difficult terrain will tell you to set achievable incremental goals that get you to your endpoint. Otherwise, your expedition is doomed.

These incremental goals are called waypoints. The further your destination. the more waypoints you'll need. And the more consideration we need to give each one. and the role it plays in moving you toward your end goal.

This is why waypoints are also vital when you're embarking on the daunting expedition scaling a business. I wanted to speak to Chris Earmstein about this because as a pioneer of developing. and deploying autonomous vehicles. Chris knows all about setting achievable waypoints to reach an incredibly ambitious goal. In fact, I like to call Chris the Henry Ford of Autonomous Vehicles. Because he's so far ahead of anyone else in his understanding of self driving tech.

And how to scale it. I know the story intimately because I've been tracking Chris's journey closely since before he founded Aurora. I was so struck by his vision, his mission, and his plan to bring it to scale that I helped lead Aurora's first round of funding and then its listing on the Nasdaq in 2021. I also Sit on its board.

but by far the best person to tell you about Aurora's incredibly ambitious goal. And the waypoints. It's aiming to hit along the way is Chris himself. The mission is to deliver the benefits of self-driving technology safely, quickly, and broadly. And for all of us, getting around is important. For those of us who don't have the privilege of driving.

having that access and freedom that the rest of us take for granted. That is super meaningful. And if you think about the forty thousand plus people who die on our roads in the US every year. The vast majority of those are due to Personal vehicles. Those are just the headline benefits of a technology I firmly believe will be as transformative to society, the economy.

and our daily lives as the internal combustion engine. The transistor and the internet. And like any revolutionary technology, many of the benefits are yet to be imagined. But I'm getting ahead of myself here. Time to pull back.

And set some shorter way points as we chart our way through Chris's story. The Atacama Desert in Chile was an unlikely early waypoint for Chris in his journey. And there wasn't a single paved road in sight. At the time, I was working at Carny Bell as a graduate student, and we were working with this robot down in the Atacama Desert. Mm.

That was a really neat four wheel thing, but this robot drove at between 15 and 30 centimeters a second. So if you imagine a little old lady with a walker Moving across the Atacama Desert. That's what this was like. The ultimate destination for this robot.

Or at least its descendants. Was Mars. The Atacama Desert. Was just a stand in.

for the extraterrestrial terrain it would eventually face. Although the distance between each of that robot's waypoints was measured in centimeters, it marked a huge leap in developing the technology. It meant that Chris and his team soon had their eyes on their next waypoint. The DARPA Grand Challenge. A race for autonomous vehicles set by the US government's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

The idea was to get a vehicle to drive from Los Angeles to Las Vegas and to do it at 50 miles an hour and going across the desert. And that just sounded cool and exciting. But there was far more to it than just showcasing technology. In the Iraq war and in Afghanistan, we were losing more of our young men and women on the supply lines. than we were on the front lines. And that this was a way that we could automate moving material around on the battlefield so that those soldiers

could better defend themselves. It seemed like a worthwhile important mission, and so I jumped into it. This time the robot was substantially faster. However The terrain.

And the conditions of the competition set things disastrously off course. We watched this thing head out in the desert and it was doing forty miles an hour, which was amazing, right? You saw this giant tail fin off the top of the robot over the shrubs and bushes out in the desert, but it went about seven and a half miles out of what was supposed to be 150 miles and you know kind of ended up high centered on a berm. Wheels spinning, smoke coming out of it, and It was heartbreaking to see it end that way. Undeterred, Chris and his team re-entered the competition two years later.

And one. This attracted the attention of Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Bryn. I was at Carnegie Mellon and I just joined the faculty. And Google reached out. So Sebastian Thrun, who is friend from The DARPA Challenges Days had kind of gone to Google to help start what is now Street View and been talking with Larry and and Sergey and

They wanted to do self-driving cars. And so Sebastian and I had been talking about doing something together before he went to Google. And Larry said basically why don't we do that here? And so I just become faculty. And this crazy, you know, little search engine company that had nothing to do with anything that I was doing.

was interested in having me come out and help start this thing. Okay, this was two thousand nine. So while Google may have seemed crazy to Chris It certainly wasn't little. It had firmly established itself as a leader in search.

And other services. It was also branching out into mobile with Android. Google's autonomous vehicle research had just started as an offshoot. And Google had the same long term goal as Chris.

To make autonomous vehicles. An everyday reality. However. The waypoints that Google set to reach that goal. were more ambitious than the ones Chris had seen in academia.

The objectives at a university are very different than the objectives at a company. And that has a lot of ripple effects. And that kind of difference in incentive structure, that difference in mental alignment means conversations went very differently. Instead of No, that sounds too risky or too scary. It was

Okay, there's some risk and some scary stuff here. This is how we're going to work around it, right? And that mindset of Okay, let's go make this happen. from this part of the world that you normally think of as a blockade, was like, oh, this is interesting. This difference in attitude to risk highlights an important point about waypoints. Waypoints aren't simply about eliminating risk. They are about maximizing your potential.

For success at speed. Setting the correct waypoints will help you avoid false starts. And wasteful backtracking. But if you weigh them too heavily to avoid risk. Those waypoints can become an infinite set of steps that get you.

Nowhere. As a leader, you also need to take account of the environment you're operating in. This is why Chris took the decision to leave the prospect of faculty tenure. And embrace Google's offer. And then got to work with amazing people and we got to push the ball forward. We started to see like, oh, this can be a thing, right? That this technology is.

meaningful and It's ready to come out of the university. It's ready to be a business. And we're going to have a chance to change the world with this. And so that combination of an environment that was excited to make this happen. people that were amazing and an opportunity was just too compelling. In 2009, Chris made the jump to Google.

When he got there. Google's founders Larry and Sergey. already had some waypoints mapped out. Larry and Sergey set a goal for us to drive 50,000 miles on public roads and then to drive 100,000 miles on public roads. Then it drive these thousand miles of really interesting roads. And it was actually really cleverly constructed because

The first two were really about getting a volume of data. And then the third one was about How do we understand the breadth of the problem, make sure we're not kind of overly narrowly solving the problem. This gets to the heart of how carefully planning your waypoints from the start can be a valuable gift.

to future you. Waypoints shouldn't just be linear points that you mark off on your journey. Each. Should build towards the next. By giving you more experience, more data.

or more options down the road. That's exactly what these early waypoints at Google did. They help test iterate. and prove out the product. They also

Gave vital direction. And what future waypoints the set. We wanted to drive between Santa Cruz And Monterey Bay. right along the coastline and

It's a narrow road, two directional traffic. And we at the time had problems where the way that the radar would track objects, it would generate these virtual erroneous cars that it thought were gonna crash into us. And so then the self-driving car would swerve. And you can imagine driving down the Pacific Coast Highway, swerving away from oncoming cars. Would be Terrifying.

So Chris set another waypoint to avoid any more terror on that highway. Before I let the team go and try and run that, we set this goal of driving up and down old highway. one oh one because that's a long stretch of head on traffic and we had to do that 10 times.

Once they hit this new way point. They were confident they were still on the right course. I think we knew it was gonna be solvable when we finished that thousand miles of driving. We drove down the Pacific Coast highway to Los Angeles.

We drove through downtown San Francisco and down Lombard Street. And so the breadth of the things we had to tackle meant that we were exposed to Pedestrians in the roadway and people cutting you off and making left turns across traffic and merging at high speed and zipper merges and all of those interesting traffic problems that are like, Oh, geez, you can't solve that. You can't solve that. Notice how when Chris and his team encountered an unexpected problem, they said a shorter, but not easier.

Waypoint. This is something to keep in mind. Resetting your waypoints. Isn't always about avoiding difficult terrain. Sometimes you want to take that train.

Head on. but in a way that lets you learn and adapt. As quickly as possible. In the case of Chris's team at Google, they were still a long way from fulving a lot of problems they faced. But by setting realistic yet ambitious waypoints, they were discovering a clear route toward eventually overcoming them.

Well, we hadn't solved them in a truly durable broadly applicable way, like, okay, we've kind of understand this problem. We know that there's ways we can improve on what we are, but we will get there from here. Yeah, within the first couple of years of being there. It's like, okay, it is hard work in front of us. Getting to reliability here is gonna be a real effort. Robustness here is going to be a real effort.

But this will be solvable. And that was exciting. By two thousand sixteen. Chris's team at Google had achieved 1.8 million miles of autonomous driving. It was a huge achievement, but that year. Chris decided it was time for him to part ways with Google.

I'd been there at that point for seven and a half years and it was an amazing experience, right? I I can't thank Google, Larry, Sergey enough for the opportunity to be part of that and the team that I worked with as well, right? Amazing people. And At some point I kind of lost confidence that we were going to get there on the business side. that we could build the partnerships we needed to to be able to scale and deliver the product in a way that was going to have a huge impact in the world.

Google still shared Chris's grand vision. However Kristen C how he could set and reach the waypoints he thought were needed to complete the journey. As a person who was kind of responsible for that team.

If I'm not bought in, I felt like it was gonna be very hard to lead that team because these are amazing people and they deserve better. And so I say there's three things you do in life when you have a business problem, right? You Try and fix it, you get in line or you you get out of the way. And I worked hard to try and fix it and then ultimately decided it was time to get out of the way.

Once word got out that Chris was parting ways with Google, he wasn't short on offers from other companies looking to chart their own route in the autonomous vehicle industry. You know, I had the opportunity to go to a number of different tech companies, had the opportunity to go to a number of different automotive companies. These are all amazing companies, but we would have been You know, the side bet, right? We would have been the thing that wasn't core to the business at all of these places. You know, if you look at the automotive companies, These companies have been around for a century. They're good at what they do.

But what they do is not figure out how to make the car drive itself. It's not motivate software engineers and hardware engineers to work together to build kind of a brand new technology. You think about the tech companies, again, incredible companies. trillions of dollars of value, but this is going to be something on the side that, you know, when times get tough. May not be a focus. Instead.

Chris wanted to be somewhere that he could set his own waypoints and reset them often and rapidly. So Chris set up to build his own team. but shared not just his vision, but his views about how to get there. It felt like there's this moment where If I got the right core together.

we could build something special because it was clear that we were still very early in the development cycle of this technology. And so if we could hit the round running with the right people, the right philosophy, we could go have these huge social benefits, huge economic impact. Build a hell of a company. This is the same. would also let him set waypoints that would motivate his team to get to their ambitious goal. One of the biggest challenges we have is that it is one of these kind of grand problems, which means

you don't get the easy dopamine hit of I ship the thing today, right? And I shipped it again today and again, right? And so it's how do we break it into parts where people can have the victories on this long journey, right? You know, if it's a marathon, you want to celebrate each mile, not have to wait till the end of the 26 miles. Where can we create internal milestones? How do you create these discrete moments on something that is really a continuous progress of robustness and reliability? Because you're getting a self driving car today and it mostly works. And it's the rub is getting from mostly works to works all the time. So I think that's kind of the challenge and that's the way we've been tackling it is creating what we can of milestones along the journey. This is another important component of waypoint setting. When you do it right.

It will become a natural motivating force for your team. Hitting waypoints together will give a clear sense of progress and shared achievement and keep everyone engaged with the mission. In two thousand seventeen. Chris founded Aurora Innovation with Sterling Anderson. The former director of Tesla Autopilot and Drew Bagnell.

Uber's former autonomy and perception lead. Together, they had the expertise and the shared vision to get them to their destination. Building a car is really hard. These are multi billion dollar investments and they've been figuring out how to do this well for a century. So to think that, you know, we're gonna solve the self driving problem

And the build a car problem and you know, and in some cases like we're gonna build Uber as well, right? That feels like a three miracle problem to solve. Of course, Aurora was starting from scratch, while its competitors like Google and Tesla were already dots on the horizon. It posed the question. How could they set smart Flexible waypoints that would get them into a position to overtake.

Faced. By this daunting challenge, it was time for Chris and his team to decide upon their First waypoint. When you build substantial wealth through your business, it's often tied up in a single equity position. The upside is real, but so is the risk, and knowing when to act isn't always obvious.

Creative planning works with business owners to build a strategy around concentrated equity. When to diversify, how to manage tax risk, and how to protect what you've spent years building. Creative planning where wealth works together. Learn more at creative planning dot com slash masters of scale. Humans will never be more intelligent than AI.

Those were great at AI and those that went out of business because they weren't how do we build a future. That is human centered. I'm Rana El Calyubi. And on my podcast Pioneers of AI, we answer that question and so many more. As an AI scientist, entrepreneur, and investor, I know what it takes to build AI that works for everyone. Every week, I sit down with the pioneers shaping our future. And we take you behind the scenes of the AI that's transforming our lives.

Find pioneers of AI wherever you tune in. Hey listeners, Bob here. If you listen to Rapid Response on Masters of Scale, you may be missing half the show because every Friday we release a second Rapid Response exclusively in the Rapid Response feed. The guests and topics are just as compelling and timely for From Ford CEO to NASA's administrator to the lessons from The Devil Wears Prada. It takes about 10 seconds to find, just search rapid response wherever you listen to podcasts and hit follow to make sure you never miss an episode. I hope to see you there. We're back.

With a roar's Chris Ermson. If you're enjoying this episode on the importance of setting waypoints, be sure to bring your friends and colleagues along for the ride. You can do that right now. Just hit the share button. In your podcast app.

and to listen to my full conversation with Chris, become a Masterscale member at masterthescale.com. Slash membership. you'll be able to hear some things we couldn't fit into this episode, like Chris's early adventures in the Olympics of Mind. A deep dive into sensor technology. And keeping safety.

at the core of their mission. You won't want to miss it. Where we left off. Chris had just co founded Aurora. His goal was still the same, to make safe autonomous vehicles a part of our daily lives.

Chris could now start setting waypoints. Draw on his previous experience. Creating self driving tech. And he could do it. From a fresh foundation.

Previously. A lot of the development. Have been tied up in the trial and error of unforeseen hurdles that every new tech faces. Now. Chris could take those learnings, plus advances in technology.

To set more effective waypoints. But the challenge ahead. was still daunting. Let's recap how Chris puts it. To think that, you know, we're gonna solve the self-driving problem and the build a car problem and you know, and in some cases like we're gonna build Uber as well, right? That feels like a three miracle problem to solve.

Chris recognized that the challenge of making autonomous vehicles a part of our everyday lives was huge. Maybe even. Miraculous. So it was time to start charting waypoints that led to making one. Of those miracles of reality.

As a startup, I think if you're going to create outside value, you probably have to shoot for a miracle somewhere. But one miracle seems like the right amount. And so that comes back to focus again for us. So let's focus on what we do best in the world. Let's make the self-driving system. It was around this time that I was drawn deeper into Chris's story and led Greylock in series A funding. One of the things that drew me to Chris and Aurora was the clarity of Chris's vision and the waypoints he had set to achieve it. They gave me a clear line of sight on how this ambitious mission could be achieved. and what each step along the way would entail.

And this is another advantage of clear, achievable waypoints. They reveal your vision. and just how you'll get there to others. This can be the deciding factor in securing financing. Forging essential partnerships.

And winning customers. Focusing on the AI system that would drive the vehicles and form the next waypoints for Chris. Well, driving miles on the road, you have to do that. But it turns out that If somebody dies in a car accident every 85 million miles,

Trying to, you know, exclusively use onroad driving to convince yourself you're sufficiently safe is not actually going to get there. It's going to be part of the toolkit. But we're gonna have to invest in simulation. Like any person. More miles driven by the AI. made it a better driver.

But driving. Millions of miles. Isn't very practical. Even for artificial drivers. That

Where software comes in. Aurora developed advanced simulation software. They could repeatedly test the AI in extreme situations. The kind of situations that only crop up rarely in the real world. By partnering with others in the auto, transport, and tech industries, Aurora could get access to increasingly large pools of real world data.

But they needed more. than on the road experience. Deep learning hadn't been a thing five, six years before Aurora started, and now it's such a powerful tool. That we need to be able to fold that into our architecture. Let's think about how high definition maps.

We can leverage that technology and Move on from the challenges of having giant monolithic maps to, you know, using sharded maps that allow us to update them more quickly. All this really interesting technological insights that create a foundation for us to build something that'll scale. This was a critical insight that may feel like adding miles to their journey.

But this waypoint. would actually help them form a solid basis. to prove out the tech. and attested to rigorous standards of safety and reliability. Then, when the time came,

They could roll it out at mass scale. Aurora set about working towards these waypoints. With trusted partners in the automobile, transport, and tech industries. Progress was good. But then in twenty twenty

They decided to focus on autonomous trucks. This may sound like a narrowing of vision. And a sudden change in waypoints until you hear Chris explain. The reasons behind the shift. The trucking industry today in the US is about a$700 billion industry, whereas right hailing is about a$35 billion industry. So it's 20 times bigger.

The unit economics are stronger. And you have to go less places to make it useful. you can focus on driving freeways and the highways and that ability to have you know have a bigger market, to have easier scaling, we expected. To have better economics. That meant that this was the right place to start.

Trucks drive set routes. Repeatedly on large roads. So setting up self-driving trucks would be faster and generate revenue sooner. Sometimes setting realistic waypoints that build towards your goal means you need to take stock of your grand journey. Like Chris, you may well realize that your ultimate goal

can itself be broken down into separate waypoints. So while Aurora's immediate focus turned to trucks. Passenger vehicles and the ride healing market remained a waypoint. Just a more distant one. Because we'd architected the system the right way, we knew we'd be able to go and enter the right Haley market afterwards. And so it was really strategy tactics on how to build the business and how to scale the business in the right way.

This wasn't a pivot. It was a change of waypoint that would drive scale and allow Aurora to get to the overall destination far faster. Way points. Can take you on all kinds of side quests. And that's fine.

You may discover unexpected new ideas or shortcuts to your main goal. The important thing is not to get lost. For Chris and his team, developing self-driving tech for trucks will be a major achievement, as well as an important waypoint on their overall goal of deploying safe, Robust.

Self driving tech. To all vehicles. It's the same sensors, it's the same computer, it's the same software. And you know, there are differences, right? A a big truck bends in the middle in a way that a car doesn't. The cab moves relative to the frame of the truck in a way that a car doesn't. But if you architect the system in the right way, you can be encompassing of both of these.

We've already seen how a waypoint is not necessarily a shortcut. A good illustration of this in the Aurora story. is the decision to use a mix of different sensors. Cameras. radar and LIR to feed information.

into the autonomous driving system. I asked Chris. To expand on this decision. I think it's worth to linger on having many different sensors and sensor fusion, because obviously You know, Elon, who we enormously respect, and part of what he's doing with Tesla say, I only need essentially equivalent of cell phone cameras and a few of them, because the human eye is good enough.

And The Aurora thesis is No no action deck it's much better. To have every possible sensor with sensor fusion. You know, even as I drive through the world, you see something and you're confused by it. You can't tell exactly how far away it is.

And that's after, you know, millions of years of very focused evolution on the brain that became the human brain. And so by using different types of sensors. We're able to Compliment them. Right. We're able to take, okay, the camera is really high resolution and gives me very good color.

The lidar allows me to instantly measure how far away things are and get the true three D structure. Radar allows me to see through weather conditions that both cameras and LIDARs might have challenges with and allows, you know, instantaneous measure how fast things are moving. What I want to focus on here is how perfecting these different types of sensors at an extra cost. Time and complexity. It's another clear example of how adding waypoints

Can slow you down in the short term. But it's absolutely the right call for your long-term journey. With these new waypoints set. Chris and his team could map out exactly where to go.

But building the tech was one thing. They also needed to map out the waypoints for the business model. That would bring it to scale. Aurora built partnerships with trucking companies, gaining unmatched insight into the on the ground issues. Faced by their future customers.

They also forge powerful, strategic, and mutually beneficial relationships with automakers and regulators to build the right kind of business to get self-driving technology deployed at scale. Now It was time to build a partnership. that would move them closer to passenger vehicles. So Chris reach out to Uber CEO, Dara Koswashahi, about uniting Aurora.

An Uber self driving car team. From my lens, it made a lot of sense that together we could sort through the best technology, build a best of breed stack, and have critical mass talent while also putting in place a partnership with the world's number one ride hailing platform. while putting in place a partnership with the world's number one car manufacturer, Toyota, which had just invested and was working with ATG, that this would be a a win all around. From Uber's standpoint. The decision also made a lot of sense.

What matter to Uber? was not owning the unit that developed the tech. but rather that it had access to the best technology for deploying self-driving tech at scale. And its fleet. In short.

Uber was flexible in the waypoints he was following. To get self driving technology. into its vehicles. Aurora absorbed Uber's autonomous driving unit, ATG. In twenty twenty.

The merger highlights how sinking waypoints isn't just important between partners. It's important within companies. This is particularly challenging. when you're trying to merge two different teams. It is, generally speaking.

Super difficult to make a merger work. Really important thing is the ATG people quickly feeling like they're Aurorians, feeling like they also have their hands on the steering wheel. They're participant in the construction of the journey, which they totally are. What were some of the things that you did in navigating that very difficult challenge that other Technologists Executives, et cetera. You know, might keep in mind if they find themselves in a similar challenge.

Trying to be open, trying to have humility, try to make sure that we're approaching this as equals. We took the teams that had been at Aurora, we took the teams that had been at ATG, and we said, Okay you both work on the same problem. Write a six pager each. Explaining what you've been doing, teach each other what was good, what was bad, what you do differently, what the limitations are. So that we understand the scope because there was an awful lot of technology overlap. And then we said, Okay, we're not gonna call anybody's baby ugly, right?

is we integrate the technology, we're gonna say Here's what matters. The first priority is shipping a product and trucking. Right behind that is shipping a product in ride hailing. getting both teams together to reevaluate their waypoints as early as possible. meant that they could move forward quickly with a shared sense of purpose.

However Like all scale mergers. The integration of Aurora and ATG Didn't go. Totally smoothly.

In fact. By trying to keep everyone's waypoints in line. They actually knocked. Some of course. There were places where we out of respect for leaders and people on both sides, we tried to create maybe in some cases unnatural breaks in the organization so that leaders from both sides could be leaders.

And it turns out that was a mistake because people notice it's unnatural. And then you you have two leaders that are frustrated. Instead of perhaps one leader who's disappointed. And so we had situations where, you know, those two leaders would kinda knock each other out and, you know, we might have lost the person from both sides. You know, if I were to do it again, that's something where I might work a little harder for simplicity and clarity in the organization. It's not enough for everyone to have clear sight of the waypoints and why they're important to pursuing your mission. People also need to feel like they have input in setting those waypoints and in flagging when a waypoint needs to be changed. It can be the difference between feeling like a valued member of a ship's crew.

And a stowaway. It's also important to set clear waypoints for your customers. Failing to do so. can leave them confused or even angry. This is something Stacey Brown Philpot learned the hard way.

When she took over as CEO of Task Rabbit. The platform for hiring people to help with tasks like running errands, moving house, or fixing a gate. Stacey brought in a sweeping reorganization of the platform that meant service providers or taskers got more bookings and users got a far more reliable service. We tested it in London. Because

They don't know what Task Rabbit is and how it works. They've heard of it. lots of people were in London and wanted TaskGrabbit to be there, but they didn't know what the product was. The assignment rate went up, our close rate went up to over eighty percent, not fifty percent anymore. And we knew that we were on to something, and then we brought it back. To the US. We told them the same day.

That we told TechCrunch and USA Today and all of our clients and everybody. And that was a mistake because they revolted and they were upset. And mostly because we didn't tell them that we were going to do this. Some because some people weren't gonna have work anymore. and they were gonna have to work it in a different way.

Eventually, that new system was embraced by TaskRabbit users. But if Stacey had clearly signposted this new waypoint. She would have avoided some serious pain. Clearly signposting your waypoints is especially important. If you're asking people to get on board with a world changing product,

like autonomous vehicles. Aurora. has covered a lot of ground in the five years since it was founded. That's because they've stayed committed to setting short, flexible waypoints. And continue to do so.

Chris sees such waypoints as essential to framing and addressing the challenges and opportunities facing Aurora. And the entire field of autonomous driving. Remember how Chris laid out his vision for a world transformed by autonomous vehicles at the start of this episode? Now Listen to how he clearly lays out.

Aurora's current waypoints and how they will lead to the ultimate vision of making self-driving vehicles apart. Of our everyday lives. Initially, the focus will be on long haul driving. But over time we'll expand that into more and more kind of urban driving. So

First it'll go between two terminals, then it'll go between terminals and depot, and ultimately it'll go between a warehouse. And a store delivering the goods where they need to go. as well as setting waypoints for the development of the tech, Chris sets out waypoints for how this will improve the trucking industry. It'll be safer because they have this variety of sensors, because they have software that doesn't get distracted, doesn't get frustrated, doesn't get angry, is constantly paying attention. Our trucks are going to drive at 65 miles an hour instead of 75 miles an hour. That means a twenty five percent improvement in fuel efficiency. So that's like a huge win for the environment right there. It'll make it easier for people to get goods. So instead of it taking

Two days for something to ship from Houston to LA, it'll take a day. Chris is also clear about the waypoints for a group of people who might understandably be concerned about how this will impact them. Truck drivers. It's important to understand that we are dramatically short truck drivers today. something like 80,000 drivers short today and expect to be 160,000 drivers short by the end of the decade. And so my expectation is that if you are a truck driver today,

And you would like to finish your career as a truck driver. you will likely be able to because is technology going to fill a need that is unmet by the labor supply pool. I think the other part of it, though, is that we're going to create a whole bunch of new interesting jobs. So there will be displacement over time. That is one of the things that I I worry about. But the more I understand about the labor situation and the market here, the more I have

confidence this will be a softer transition than many. And Chris also. has the waypoint set for rolling the tech out beyond trucking. what you'll see is transit get better eventually because

Instead of having these fifty person modules, buses that are driving down the road, you'll be able to have tailored transit that's four or six people. And so it'll be much easier to get where you're going and it'll raise the level of accessibility for folks at the lowest parts of our economic spectrum and stratum. And I think that will be magical. I want to highlight here. Not just how Aurora has hit the waypoints it has set so far. But also

How it hasn't hesitated. To alter them in service of reaching its goal. Chris started with a focus on cars, then switched that focus to trucks when he saw how it would move them more quickly. to the general roll out. Of self driving tech.

Then When the Uber partnership Chris once again adjusted his waypoints to take account of that huge opportunity. This highlights another key advantage of having clear, yet flexible waypoints.

You can rapidly steer toward new opportunity. without hurtling hopelessly off track. You can also Just changing circumstances in the market.

And the economy. In short. Flexible waypoints. Let you adapt quickly without losing momentum. That's why Chris is leaving room.

To set new waypoints once the unseen possibilities of the tech become clear. And the dream. Remains clear. and achievable. I think the most exciting thing though is that we don't

really know what all the impact's gonna be. It was the horse. And then the steam engine, then the combustion engine And now automation, right? It's gonna be Incredible to see what happens.

This is perhaps the most powerful thing about waypoints. They let us map out our dreams for ourselves and for others. And this is one huge step toward making those dreams. A reality. I'm Reid Hoffman. Thanks for listening.

Masters of Scale is a Wait What original. Our executive producers are June Cohen, Darren Triff, and Jordan McLeod. Our head of content and production is Lori Hoffman. Our producers are Adam Skew's Catherine Clark Bray. Alex Morris.

Tucker Legurski. And Chris Gautier, our editor at large is Bob Safian. Our music director is Ryan Holiday. Original music and sound design by Eduardo Rivera. Audio editing by Keith J. Nelson. Stephen Davies.

Andrew Knoll and Brad Warrell. Mixing and Mastering by Brian Pugh. Special thanks. Créchate. Lisa Schreiber.

Power your finger. Say it is happy ever. Greg Beato. Adam Heiner Alfonso Bravo.

Callin Howard. Willem Krolls. Tim Cronin Kelsey Capitano. Samuel Putta.

And a Pazana. Sarah Tarder. Lia Sermedis. Charlie Manessus. Chineme Azuquina.

Emily McManus. Hali Bondi. And Sierra Black. Become a member of Masters of Scale to get access to a year's worth of courses and content on the Masters of Scale Courses app. Find out more at masterscale.com slash membership.

What you see above is a preview of the first minutes. One unlock costs 3 credits and covers this episode forever: full segment and word-level timestamps on this page, plus .txt, .srt, .vtt and word-level JSON downloads, as many times as you like.