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

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. CLICK TO PLAY CLICK TO LISTEN ON ITUNES 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 As always you can follow Harry and The Twenty Minute VC on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Harry Stebbings?

  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. And the best way to do that is to head over to Instagram and follow at H Stebbings1996 with two Bs. But to our episode today, and I really like to have synchronicity between episodes. And if you listen to our fantastic 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. So with that in mind, joining me in the hot seat, I'm very, very excited to have Alex Rodriguez, founder and CEO at 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 $47 million in funding for Embark, from some of my favourites in the form of Pat Grady at Sequoia and the wonderful Matt Ocker at Data Collective,

• 0:42Harry Stebbings?

  also the likes of SV Angel and Y Combinator, just to name a few. As for Alex, it all started very early with his winning a World Robotics Championship while he was in middle school. The championship was actually for adults, though. Post that incredible achievement, he dropped out of Waterloo, became a Thiel Fellow, worked as a software engineer at Nuance Communications before joining Khan Academy as a software engineer and also teaching robotics at Khan Lab School. I'd also want to say a huge thank you, both to Pat Grady and Matt Ocker for some fantastic question suggestions today. I really do so appreciate that and mehito's on me to thank you. But before we dive into our episode today, look at the world's tech leaders and high-growth startup CEOs. And do you ever wonder, how in the world do they have that kind of inexhaustible energy to do what they do? The answer will surprise you. The latest trend with top tech leaders is sleep optimization.

• 1:27Harry Stebbings?

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• 2:10Harry Stebbings?

  So good. First Republic's resources, network and expertise allow entrepreneurs to customize a solid foundation for their business across all stages. Why First Republic Bank? Well, you get to leverage their incredible network of VC firms to prepare you for future fundraising events. You get to count on a single point of contact that will be there for you and your employees. And you get to access exclusive events and networking opportunities. But don't trust me on this. Their clients include the likes of Instacart, Carter and Wish, just to name a few. And you can check them out by heading over to firstrepublic.com/innovators. You've heard quite enough from me. So without further ado, I'm delighted to hand over to Alex Rodriguez, founder and CEO at Embark.

• 2:53Speaker 01

  You have now arrived at your destination.

• 2:56Harry Stebbings?

  Alex, it is such a pleasure to have you on the show today. As I just said, I heard so many great things, both from Matt and from Pat at Sequoia. So thank you so much for joining me today, Alex.

• 3:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, thanks for having me.

• 3:06Harry Stebbings?

  Not at all, but I want to kick off today with a little bit about you. So tell me, how does one make their way from the University of Waterloo to founding a company that's arguably the global leader in semi-autonomous trucking in the form of Embark? And what was that aha moment?

• 3:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think the story there, first I have to acknowledge that I was very fortunate. I didn't have a long-term plan when I first got into robotics, like, oh, I'll spend a decade building robots and then they'll become useful and people will start doing self-driving. I just liked doing robotics and I'd been working on it for a long time before there was any obvious use, to be frank. Things sort of fell into place where for close to a decade before we started Embark, I'd been building competitive robots and not just building robots, but running teams of 20 to 40 people that were working on time constrained, budget constrained, outcome oriented robotics projects. And obviously, when you hear that, it sounds almost exactly what we ended up doing at Embark. And so when the opportunity to start working in self-driving came out,

• 3:59Speaker 02

  I already had a lot of background in place that frankly, I didn't come as a result of some great plan. It was just what I enjoyed doing. And then I think the step from actually being at Waterloo to running Embark sort of proceeded a bit at a time. So the first step is, oh, it wouldn't be cool if we went and built a self-driving vehicle. I think that we have enough knowledge from all this background to be able to do it. So. Go out and do that. The next piece, okay, build this vehicle. It was the first self-driving vehicle in the country. Maybe we should go do Y Combinator. I think that could be fun. Sort of step by step. Almost maybe a year from when we first finished what would end up being one of my last terms at Waterloo. And when Embark got started and it was sort of one step at a time, taking advantage of that super lucky context that we had of being in the right place in the right time.

• 4:42Speaker 02

  And having the technology I spent my whole life working on suddenly becomes sort of one of the forefront technologies of the technology ecosystem.

• 4:49Harry Stebbings?

  Listen, I love the milestone-based approach, but I do have to ask, because as I said, I spoke to both Pat and Matt before the show. And they said about your earlier years. And so when we chatted before, you said to me that First Robotics was perhaps more useful preparation for Embark than university. So why was that, Alex? And what did you learn from First Robotics?

• 5:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, I stand by that a hundred percent. I think First Robotics was by far the most useful preparation for running Embark. And to understand why, I guess you can understand particularly what my experience in First was, which is even a little bit unique. So I initially just was a was a part of a team, really enjoyed it. For those who don't know, First is a program that runs competitive robotics competitions for students in high school and below. But these teams are usually run by adults. So they have a bunch of adult mentors. One of the top teams here in California is mentored by a bunch of the NASA engineers. And then they have these engineers running the teams and kids who come in and do the do the bulk of the work. I got into it starting in grade seven, but my experience was also fairly unique because the first few years I had a really excellent coach.

• 5:49Speaker 02

  But then at some point, because I'm from Calgary, Calgary, Canada, where there isn't a lot of First or wasn't at the time, we were kind of out on our own. And so I also had the experience of really running the team that eventually won the world championships. And then I actually founded a team completely from scratch. They didn't actually have any adult mentors. And so at fifteen, I basically took on the role of all the adult mentors of the team. So I wasn't just building stuff, but I was also scheduling the meetings and managing the budget and figuring out how to get this thirty-person group of people, group of what were essentially young engineers to coordinate around the mechanical and programming and all the other aspects of putting together a successful robot to then take to international level competition. And that team that I founded was the Most successful rookie team in history despite not having a single adult involved in its deployment.

• 6:34Speaker 02

  So all of that sort of experience ended up being incredibly useful, right? I think you learn a lot of useful stuff as an engineer on a team. Oh, we actually have to go out and build a system and it has to work and be reliable. You learn more about mechanical engineering doing that than you do reading textbooks about how other people built reliable systems. Especially in the later years when I was really taking on the responsibility of being sort of the CEO of the team. I ended up learning a lot of these skills about how do you manage a 20, 30 person engineering team? And so that ended up being obviously incredibly transferable to when we got started at Embark.

• 7:06Harry Stebbings?

  Of course, I guess my subsequent question is, having enjoyed the benefits of such an incredible program, how do you advise maybe parents to think about activities to engage the children as you were so engaged in those early days?

• 7:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think when I get the opportunity to chat with parents who are thinking about how to get their kids into STEM, I'm always speak of first as being really head and shoulders above everything else. Because I do think kids love learning by doing. I certainly know that I love learning by doing. And a lot of kids who are passionate about science and engineering really enjoy actually building things and seeing the results of those things. And kids love competition. They enjoy not just building for the sake of it, but building with a very specific goal in mind. And I think there's really nothing like it in terms of having a program that you actually build a full on robot over the course of a year. And it's largely being done by the students themselves and they're learning as they're doing this from all these professional experienced engineers. So I think it's an amazing program.

• 7:57Speaker 02

  I think if it's something that your kid has an interest in, I very strongly recommend doing whatever it takes to make it possible for them to participate. Obviously, not everyone loves the program. Different people have different ways of learning, but for those who like to learn by doing, it's pretty amazing that there's a whole program out there that lets high schoolers do what is very high end engineering work and often maybe more interesting than what people do in their first few years out of school.

• 8:19Harry Stebbings?

  Yeah, it is indeed amazing and especially that mentorship element. And it's also fascinating to hear how it helped you really prepare yourself for Embark. And I want to start today really on the space behind Embark itself. Because you said to me before that I think in the medium to long term, self-driving is still underhyped. So I guess kind of starting on that, why do you believe this, Alex? And what Really leads that thinking on it being underhyped still in the medium to long term.

• 8:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I think this is a super interesting conversation because there's been all sorts of disagreement in the short term about the details, right? You have people sort of going back and forth about is this going to be 24 months or is it going to be 48 months? People going back and forth about is this going to be cars first or trucks first? How are these things actually going to roll out? Which cities will first see self-driving? And I think those are all very interesting conversations, but I also think they somewhat lose the forest for the tree. There can be a lot of conversations about exactly what things will look like 24 months from now or 48 months from now. But I think some of the most intelligent, I've had the pleasure in the last year or so of getting to meet some public markets investors. And some of the most intelligent public markets investors I've met have sort of taught me that what you need to be looking at when you're thinking about a company.

• 9:27Speaker 02

  There's all these, obviously they're used to all these jitters day to day in the stock price. But at the end of the day, it's about if you look out into the future, do you see a world where this is creating a lot of value? And at the end of the day, if the answer is yes, then a lot of the day-to-day jitters aren't too important. If the answer is no, then it doesn't matter what you're driving on the hype side. If you can't see a world where it's creating tons of value in the future, then what's the point? And so I kind of took that and think about self-driving in that context. So let's ignore sort of the day-to-day disagreements about the application or geography or timeline. But let's sit back and say, in the long term, is this going to create a lot of value? So I think everyone agrees 10 to 15 years, we'll see widely deployed self-driving vehicles. Even your conservative skeptics will say, yeah, that's the fairly realistic timeline.

• 10:10Speaker 02

  And so in that case, once you have widely deployed self-driving vehicles, how much value does that create? And we can do like some back of the envelope calculation. It's obviously impossible to know the exact number. But if we look at, for example, on the trucking side, we think about, well, how much enterprise value does this create? $3.8 trillion of trucking revenue worldwide. New next-generation self-driving-powered trucking fleet are able to earn even 10% margin and get even like a conservative 16x PE ratio. You run those numbers together and we're talking about $6 trillion of enterprise value for self-driving truck fleets. Or we could look at how much time is self-driving going to save people? So the average American spends 48 minutes a day driving, so 300 million Americans, 360 Fifty five days, we're talking about eighty eight billion hours a year just sitting behind the wheel of a car.

• 10:54Speaker 02

  Multiply that by the average wage on an hourly basis and sort of expand it out to the world. And we're talking about eight trillion dollars of time that are wasted every year sitting behind a car. Or we can look at car accidents. So worldwide car accidents cause about four trillion dollars worth of damage. And so obviously, these are just ballpark numbers, but we're talking about six trillion dollars of enterprise value, eight trillion dollars of people's time, four trillion dollars of accidents and damage. We're talking about a huge number ten, fifteen years from now.

• 11:22Harry Stebbings?

  Can I dive in and ask, is that value creation or is it value transferal from the existing incumbents to the new generation of semi-autonomous? And then my question subsequently is like, how do we think about that transferal versus creation?

• 11:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of this is creation, right? If you look at the second and third methodologies that we're using there, we're talking about taking eight trillion dollars worth of time that people spend holding a steering wheel and giving that back to people. So this is new value that is being unlocked where the average American spends five to 10% of their waking life, driving. And that's insane and we're giving that back to people. And so I think, or we look at four trillion dollars of damage, right? Uh, one point three five million people a year who die in car accidents and we're giving those people back their lives. And so we're creating a lot of value with that. There's obviously going to be a value transfer component as well. But I actually think a lot of this is coming out of thin air in terms of we've created a technology that can unlock huge amounts of value that that were previously locked up.

• 12:20Harry Stebbings?

  I totally agree with you and I think that is insanely exciting when you think about that five to 10% of time that's unlocked. I guess the question that I have to ask, and it's a selfish one, but while I have the chance, I have to ask it. The real question for me lies around ownership in terms of that medium to long term. Do you share my thinking that actually semi-autonomous and autonomous will largely be a public utility? How do you think about ownership mechanisms in the medium to long term, taking that kind of public markets mindset?

• 12:45Speaker 02

  So actually, I I just want to finish the end piece of this thought here, right? Is, okay, we talked about how much value is created, but then to like tie that back and make the claim, oh, this is actually underhyped. On what basis do I say that? And I think the basis there is you say venture investors are looking to make a 10x return. On a real home run win, right? And so if we're talking six trillion dollars of enterprise value in ten to fifteen years, even divide that by ten, you have six hundred billion dollars of value of the current investments that would allow you to still be making a ten X return. And like Cruise is worth nineteen billion, Uber ATG is valued at seven, Zoots is valued at two. And so it's like huge, huge amounts of money, but not actually close to the six hundred that you could sort of support when you look at what the long term value will be. That's sort of the tieback on how would you think about the present value?

• 13:29Speaker 02

  I'm gonna say like the other sanity check that we can do, that I always love to see people's faces when you ask them this. So I mentioned that the annual revenue of trucking in the world is three point eight trillion. Do you want to hazard a guess for comparison what the annual value of worldwide advertising of all types, both digital and traditional is?

• 13:48Harry Stebbings?

  Oh, that's really unfair of you. I'm gonna put it at like eight point four trillion.

• 13:53Speaker 02

  So it's actually five hundred billion. So we like put that in context. When technology came for advertising, it created two almost trillion dollar companies. And when we're talking about self-driving, we're talking about technology coming for an industry that's an order of magnitude bigger. And so what kind of companies will you get in the long term out of that?

• 14:09Harry Stebbings?

  I mean, that is insane. I had no idea. And as a comparable, that is fascinating. So thank you for shaming me on that one, Alex. So if we project ourselves out to kind of that medium to long term, the big question for me is always around the ownership itself, the structures. Do you share my thinking that it'll largely be a public utility? And how do you think about those very different ownership mechanisms in the medium to long term?

• 14:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I think that's definitely right. This will take a bit of time, right? Again, medium to long term, we're talking about changing people's behaviors such that people aren't using private cars in the same way anymore. And I think that that's right, that the people who will own this will be fleets and they'll be available sort of on the push of a button of whatever kind of vehicle you want, right? And day to day, you use a one person vehicle when you're commuting, which will be a huge step up, for example, in our environmental impact as a species. But then when you want to go out to the backwoods, you can get a bigger vehicle and bring all your stuff and all your family. There's so much flexibility this enables and so much more efficiency that it enables, that it just makes sense to have it be a service that's available. As a push of a button instead of having it sit parked in each individual house or each individual parking spot by the office.

• 15:16Harry Stebbings?

  Can I ask a real question for me that fascinates and intrigues me is Uber and Tesla and the kind of merging towards each other's markets that I think we'll see over the coming years. How do you think about Uber moving into Teslas and Tesla moving into Ubers and how we'll see that play out?

• 15:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, I guess I wouldn't say that Uber is really moving into Tesla. I guess maybe insofar as they're going to own more of the vehicles.

• 15:39Harry Stebbings?

  Yeah.

• 15:39Speaker 02

  They is that makes sense. I think that we'll see that sort of middle ground where you obviously want to have a fleet owning and maintaining the vehicles. At the same time as you have those vehicles being marketed to the public so that they can use them effectively. So I definitely think that's something you're going to see. Whether or not you're able to see a traditional OEM come in and do that role, it's certainly something that a lot of them are interested in. I guess it's to be seen yet whether or not any of them will actually be able to succeed in that new role, but it's certainly something a lot of people are working on.

• 16:06Harry Stebbings?

  Can I ask, with the proliferation of their usage, how do you think about the data that's generated and the ownership and permissions around the data itself generated through self-driving? Is it a balance of personal privacy and public safety? How do you think about that?

• 16:19Speaker 02

  I think that we're in a nice spot as an industry where self-driving generates a huge amount of value that's got nothing to do with spying on you. And so I think that you'll see a lot more privacy in this next wave of technical development. Because maybe in similar to how hardware businesses have an easier time where they're selling you a product and so they don't need to also get your data. I think that's what we'll see, right? Where people go is obviously sensitive information. There'll be useful aspects that need to be identified where like a near collision event happens. We want to be able to train the models to make everyone's cars safer. But I think that the overall bent will be towards private data ownership and a lot more privacy.

• 16:57Harry Stebbings?

  I do agree with you and I think that's a much more exciting. I do have to ask, and maybe from the more societal perspective, and this is very unlike me because Brits hate conflict. But I do have to ask, Uber and Lyft went to war with incumbent taxi drivers. Will Embark be the destruction or the salvation of the existing truckers?

• 17:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I think something that maybe a lot of your listeners don't know is that America has a huge driver shortage. Right now. And so we're in a very different position in our relationship with sort of the existing industry. Because the existing industry is currently facing this huge shortage. And this is really being driven by the fact that younger people aren't getting into trucking. Because they don't want to spend weeks away from home. And so there's this huge problem, whereas our economy continues to grow and hopefully our manufacturing continues to grow. The demand for trucking continues to rise. And at that same time, the number of truckers entering the industry has never been lower on a percentage basis. And so that's.

• 17:50Harry Stebbings?

  This is fascinating. You've got manufacturing increase, generational transition, meaning decreasing supply. And then you're left with the perfect storm for you now.

• 17:58Speaker 02

  Right. And so what we can do, we can help solve this in two ways, right? Obviously, one of those ways is that driverless trucks are able to do big chunks of long haul mileage. Without needing a person inside the vehicle. The other way, though, and this is where we really are able to collaborate effectively with the existing industry. Is that our truck don't do the entire route, they don't go from end to end. Instead, they stop outside the city at a transfer hub and they drop the trailer. And then you have a local driver who comes and does all the hard urban driving, all the hard customer interaction. And they're responsible for getting the trailer that last mile to and from the customer. And so what you do is you're actually combining driverless trucks that are doing a lot of this intercity, long distance driving.

• 18:40Speaker 02

  But at the same time, you're also creating a bunch of jobs of a new kind of trucking job. Where people are able to work in one city and sleep in their own bed at the end of the night. And so you're actually creating the kind of job that will attract the next generation of truckers. And hopefully bring that number of people entering the industry back up. So you're able to help solve the problem from both sides. And I'm, I'm under no illusions that this is going to be a hundred percent smooth, right? New changes always cause disruption. But I think the unique factor about the trucking industry is the trucking industry is presently in a state of disruption. Where there's this huge problem in terms of the shortage. And bringing driverless trucks into the mix will start to allow us to move to a more sustainable, long-term trucking industry. That will be better for truckers and obviously allow the economy to continue growing.

• 19:24Harry Stebbings?

  So unfair of me to go off schedule, but I have to ask, you said there about the awareness and realization that it may not be this. Smooth transition and smooth ride that it never is. What do you think are the most potential probabilistic barriers or challenges that will arise in this transition to the future we're discussing?

• 19:40Speaker 02

  Interesting. So I think that a lot of this is really in not necessarily what's happening on the ground, but what's happening in people's mindset. And so the big challenge is going to be that there will certainly be people who are worried and who are concerned and who have to change over a long time horizon. We'll see the way that this trucking industry is structured changing. What I don't think we'll actually see is individual truckers having to make significant changes just when you understand the scale of the industry and you understand the fact that the average trucker is fifty five today. I think you'll see a lot of things able to line up where we're coming in and filling roles that are presently empty instead of roles that are presently full. That's a narrative that makes sense when you run the numbers, but it's not necessarily one that'll speak to every individual person.

• 20:23Speaker 02

  I think the big thing that I'm aware of is that we have to be sort of constantly on the lookout to make sure that what we're doing is thoughtful about how it's impacting existing truckers and to make sure that we're actually educating people. Because everyone's default reaction is sort of what you asked, right? Like, how is this going to completely alter the existing industry? And say, well, actually, the existing industry has a problem and we're coming in with a solution.

• 20:43Harry Stebbings?

  Listen, I totally agree, and that's why you should never listen to podcasters or take their questions. That was kind of the macro and the meta. I guess if we drill a couple of layers down to more operational efficiency and really kind of scaling and bought to that meta. When we chatted before, you said about the challenges in terms of kind of setting and achieving milestones and kind of really doing that in the frontier tech environment. So I guess my question to you is, how do you think about effective goal setting in frontier tech, whereas maybe not as easy, tangible or visible as, say, an enterprise software company?

• 21:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think this is one of the things that's very unique and different and that we really had to figure out from first principles at Embark. And this is an area where all of my experience building robotics projects, which were not at the time frontier tech, or certainly frontier to everyone who was involved tech, came in very useful. The key here, realizing that you don't know what you don't know. Unlike in like when you're building a SaaS company, there is an expert that you can go to to ask for the answer. And you can just say, How do they build these at Google and okay, let's just copy that versus here. This is something that this is the first time humanity will have achieved this. We have to really think about this in a much more nuanced way if we're going to succeed. Because we can't, we don't have something to copy.

• 21:53Speaker 02

  The way that we approach this problem is by having two sort of parallel sets of goals at different scales. And then making sure that everyone is on the same page about what we're trying to do for that. So we have one big long term goal. That's very, very specific about having this many trucks in this location, doing this thing. That allows us to say like every single person at Embark, I would hope you could ask them. What is Embark trying to do and they would give you the same answer. I think that's really key. Step one, just having that same animating multi-year, two, three-year goal. That everyone is aligned on trying to do. And so everyone knows what does success look like? Because there are lots of versions of a self-driving vehicle, certainly even lots of versions of a self-driving truck.

• 22:34Speaker 02

  And so spending a lot of time saying this specifically is what success looks like to us in the long term. And then the second thing is realizing that you can't actually prioritize against that in the short term. But for all of our short-term goals, we have these like mini milestones that go in between. And mini milestones are usually between four and eight months apart. And what they do is we basically look at what do we know about the challenges that we're facing? What do we look when we run the trucks on the road? What things actually cause disengagements? When we look at the new capabilities we want to add? What challenges are obviously sitting there? And then we sort of sit down and we think about what is something specific, clear? And within the realm of the data that we already have, that we can make our next goal. And then we set that and we work over four to eight months to deliver that specific thing.

• 23:18Speaker 02

  And then, once we get there, we have a bunch of new data. We have a bunch more trucks on the road, more miles, more experience, new scenarios. And we're able to look out a bit further and pick a new milestone. One that we have data about. And so I think we think about two different granularity of how we set objectives. One is having a very firm sense of what success looks like at the end. And then the second one, having a sense of how far we actually know what we don't know? How far out does our data go? And being able to set mini milestones at the edge of our data. Align together in that same direction over time.

• 23:52Harry Stebbings?

  No, I totally get you. And that answers my question in terms of my question was, how do you keep a team engaged and morale high with such long term milestones? So I absolutely love that breakdown into the more time rigid four to eight months elements. I do want to move into the team behind those milestones themselves, though. Obviously, before I did this interview, I spoke to Pat and Matt and the board and the investors had this incredible respect and belief in you, the founder. And you're a young founder. And so I'm interested to hear your thoughts. Where do you see the biggest commonalities in terms of the mistakes that young founders make? I'm sure you get asked for a lot of advice from young founders. Where do you see the biggest mistakes that they make?

• 24:26Speaker 02

  I think that the actual thing in my mind is really a question of what are the mistakes that immature founders make? And so maybe it's a bit self-serving of me to reframe it this way. But I think that the mistakes that you see young founders make and the mistakes that you can see potentially much more experienced founders make often look the same insofar as they come from a place of not being super mature. And so what do I mean by that? I think the challenge for me is that there's a bunch of stuff that I don't know. In order to be able to be successful, you have to be constantly trying to learn, constantly trying to challenge your assumptions and being able to flex and do new things. And I think that immaturity that can really prevent you from being able to learn and build up effectively is sometimes on the, as a young founder, it can be from naivete.

• 25:07Speaker 02

  Obviously, there's a trope that young people sometimes are very idealistic and just believe things can happen and they know the right way. And obviously that exists for a reason. So that that naivete can certainly lead you to not learning and not being open to new ideas. Of course, I think you can also have the inverse, where you have someone who's been around for 25 years and they feel that because I've seen this all before, there's nothing left for me to learn. And so you can have sort of the same problem, but coming from a totally different place. If I had to pick like specific things that I think young founders frequently don't understand how to do, I would say hiring and firing are probably the top of the list.

• 25:39Harry Stebbings?

  I mean, I'm pleased you said that because my subsequent question was, I obviously know the rock star team that you've assembled. In terms of kind of the biggest hiring lessons from assembling a team of A star talents that exists, what have been the biggest learnings for you in terms of what works? And what advice would you give to those who are looking to scale that learning curve and really getting that premium A grade talent?

• 25:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think. It's certainly an especially interesting challenge going out and hiring people who are world-class experts in their different areas. And as a result, are often fifteen, twenty years older than I am. And I think there's a few things that go into being able to do that successfully, right? One is being able to provide evidence through what we've built that we're a competent leadership team. And I think that's the very basis of being able to go out and hire people who are much more experienced than yourself. Is being able to show them that, listen, I don't know as much as you do about your area. That's why I'm looking to bring you on as an expert. What I have been able to do is bring the right values and the right strategies to create a technology that is world-class.

• 26:40Speaker 02

  And so we always, for example, when people come and do on-sites with Embark, they will always get the opportunity to actually ride in our self-driving truck. I think, to the best of my knowledge, we're the only company that does this. But we think it's a really key part of, people come in, they want to know that what we're building is real. And so we just put them in the truck. And then the second thing is finding people who have the right combination of amazing skill in a certain area, but also humility and willingness to continue learning in other areas. And actually, I think maybe I get a little bit of an advantage here, where people who think that they're too good to learn from anybody don't even come and interview. And people who understand that they know a lot, but who are also open to learning new things, obviously much more open to working with a diverse team of people with different experiences.

• 27:21Harry Stebbings?

  Yeah, no, I love that. And it's, as you said, quite self-selecting there. I do want to dive into my favorite element there, Alex. It's the quickfire round. So I say a short statement and then you give me your immediate thoughts in sixty seconds or less per one. Does that sound okay?

• 27:34Speaker 02

  Sounds good.

• 27:35Harry Stebbings?

  Okay, so your favorite book and why? What must I read, Alex?

• 27:38Speaker 02

  To pick non-fiction, I'd pick High Output Management by Andy Grove, because he put a bunch of work into putting a ton of good ideas, but in a very, very short form. He's not wasting our time. He wrote this for people who actually need to get things done. But otherwise, I would pick Game of Thrones, because the world that George R.R. Martin has built is just so much more rich and so much more real than the vast majority of fantasy you get to read these days.

• 28:00Harry Stebbings?

  I have not seen the book or the TV show, so that is one that's still left on my arm to do. What would you most like to see change about tech in Silicon Valley, Alex?

• 28:10Speaker 02

  This is Silicon Valley's fault, but if I was to point to one change that I think would make a huge impact, I would say immigration here in the valley. And this is something I've experienced as a founder who's Canadian, but it's also something I experience every day in just trying to bring people in. And all the time, we will meet people who are world-class or really, really excellent, whether they're in Europe, or they're in India, or they're in China, or they're in South America. And we aren't even able to consider hiring them. Or if we are able to, because they have the right degree or they have the right things to make the government happy, we have this huge challenge of needing to spend months to get them on site. So I think if Silicon Valley was to be far more successful, the one biggest change would just be to allow the best of the world's talent, will desperately want to come here, to just come here and help build these amazing companies.

• 28:54Harry Stebbings?

  Sensors, compute, actuation. What's the most interesting non-transport application of autonomous technology that you've seen?

• 29:01Speaker 02

  I think that a lot of the technology that's been developed in terms of localization will then end up working in the home. You have all these cool perception pieces that we've built, allowing us to move around and allowing us to see and interact with things. And I think you'll see some really, really cool applications of that, not in the next 10 years, but in the 10 years after, where we start to see robots coming into the home, and that'll be very, very cool.

• 29:22Harry Stebbings?

  And the beauty of both of us being young, Alex. But what do you know now that you wish you could tell yourself, fresh coming out of the University of Waterloo?

• 29:29Speaker 02

  I think that it would have been amazingly reassuring to know as past me that it's actually possible to build world-class companies as somebody who's pretty young and that there isn't like a ceiling anywhere in Silicon Valley. At the same time, I think maybe that was being nervous about that ceiling, being afraid makes you work harder. And I don't know that that would have like made me perform better, it just would have made me more reassured, so. I'll have to think a little more on whether or not I actually want to tell myself that.

• 29:55Harry Stebbings?

  Well, I would tell myself there's two things, like work fucking hard, one, and then make friends and be nice. That's it.

• 30:03Speaker 02

  Two excellent pieces of advice.

• 30:05Harry Stebbings?

  That is mine. But tell me, okay, part of our development is kind of mentorship. Who's the biggest mentor to you? And what's the biggest takeaway from that relationship for you?

• 30:15Speaker 02

  I think the biggest mentor for me would definitely be my dad, who is also a CEO of a very different kind of business. He founded and runs an advertising business in Canada with about about 70 people that work for them there. And he did this starting when I was single digits. I was pretty young, like eight or nine. And it's been like amazing for me to to be able to see the company come up from nothing and be able to model a lot of things about how I approached this from seeing him run that company and being able to ask him how he made decisions there. And I think sort of maybe the single biggest takeaway was I came into tech with a bit of an advantage. So for a little context, my dad's company makes these bars that go in grocery stores filled with ads. And I'd seen them like putting the first boxes, putting the ads in in our basement.

• 30:59Speaker 02

  And so I knew that just like all companies at the end of the day were just started by regular people. And I think that was a huge advantage to realize it wasn't like magic. It was just regular people and then you build up from there. And obviously, it's a fairly big company today.

• 31:12Harry Stebbings?

  And all companies also have shit hit the fan moments, Alex. Tell me, how do you deal with yours?

• 31:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think it's easy to get wrapped up in the emotions of it. But I try to step outside myself and think if this was a friend of mine who was having this problem and they came to me and said, hey, here's the situation. What do you think? And sometimes we'll even go through that explicit process. What would I say to my friend? Okay, what would I respond? And it's much easier when you step outside of your tie to the situation to just know what's the right thing to do here. I'll try and step outside myself, think about what would I tell a friend who is in this situation? And then just go and do the right thing once you know what you think you should be doing.

• 31:47Harry Stebbings?

  No, I love that one. I like the detachment from the issue and then kind of the analysis. I will use it next time. You should invoice me for the counselling, Alex. But I want to finish though with the most exciting of all, really. What is the next five years for you and for Embark? And just how big could this get, Alex?

• 32:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, the next five years, I want to see our technology powering the first self-driving trucking fleets in the world. So call me up in five years and we'll be doing something that humanity's never done before. I think that's pretty exciting.

• 32:13Harry Stebbings?

  Well, I look very forward to doing a round two then before that. But Alex, listen, it's been such a pleasure. As I said, I heard so many great things from Matt and from Pat. So thank you so much for joining me today.

• 32:22Speaker 02

  Thanks for having me. It's been really fun.

• 32:26Harry Stebbings?

  I mean, what an incredible founder and my mind is still blown by those TAM figures. And if you'd like to see more from us, you can on Instagram at H Stabbings 1996 with two Bs. I really do love to see that. But before we leave you today, look at the world's tech leaders and high-growth startup CEOs. And do you ever wonder how in the world do they have that kind of inexhaustible energy to do what they do? The answer will surprise you. The latest trend with top tech leaders is sleep optimization. The first step, the Pod by Eight Sleep, the ultimate sleep machine. The Pod is the first and only high-tech bed designed to help you achieve peak mind and body performance. The Pod dynamically adjusts the temperature on each side of the bed, so you're comfortable all night. Plus, if you're a total data nerd like me, well, the Pod tracks your biometrics while you sleep

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