getting to 99% is actually relatively easy it’s all about that that last 1% you’re faced with these tough decisions all the time where you’re getting new information in every day and you have to remain totally objective where there are times in every Venture where it almost failed yeah when you’re going for a moonshot you’ve got to be hit with a lot of skepticism you’re asking people the question why why doesn’t this work why doesn’t that make sense and if you’re not getting good answers back if you’re like hm I’m not convinced like you didn’t convince me why this thesis doesn’t work then you know you’ve got something the guts it takes to actually stop and say no no no the data says we have to go here and you know reverse reinvest that’s hard to do when you can create economic value you can do good for world the world at the same time it’s about that that impact that you’re having
[00:01:00] where did you both fly in from you just landed from where um I I just landed yeah I was I was just with um the you know Nvidia leadership over at the GTC up in the Bay Area actually and then uh here and then g off to Florida awesome and Mark yourself New York New York yeah so um I’ve really gotten to know you guys just over the last couple years and so grateful to have you here and your Journeys epitomize uh resilience and risk and so what i’ I’d love to do is just begin so everybody can understand in uh the essence of your story then I’ll go into some of the the key questions so mark would you recount your entrepreneurial Journey real quick from to get to wonder and where you are now and congratulations on $700 million raise last week I think amazing extraordinary so so diapers.com jet.com Wonder please please
[00:02:00] um yeah spent uh both diapers.com and jet.com were e-commerce companies um so I basically started di.com back in 2004 is five 2005 and uh it was basically a website for new parents to buy everything for their baby and then eventually everything for their pet and then eventually everything and sold that to Amazon in 2011 uh worked inside Amazon for a couple years then started another e-commerce company called jet.com and then 2 years later Walmart bought that and how much 3.3 billion not bad yeah two two years later you heard that part yeah yeah the exception not the rule yeah and then uh and then went in and became the CEO of Walmart e-commerce for about four plus years and and then yeah then started wonder and you happen to own a sports team or something like that Minnesota Timberwolves yeah pretty amazing um and uh yeah I guess uh who just came in oh Eric Schmidt came in with you on that Rec recently didn’t he I can’t confirm
[00:03:02] or deny oh okay and and uh Wonder does what because we’ll come back to that in a little bit yeah I think I think the best way to explain it is it we’re creating the super app for meal time but it’s a a next generation of food delivery it’s completely vertically integrated so you know just like a normal delivery aggregator that does the delivery and sells the food via an app we have that but we also own all the restaurants on the platform and we’ve invested hundreds of millions in food science and culinary engineering to be able to cook 30 different Cuisines um out of a 2,800 ft kitchen with only three pieces of electric cooking equipment there’s no hoods there’s no gas no open Flames no waste very lightly skilled lightly trained labor so we’re able to pump out an extraordinary amount of volume in a small space we can locate very close to the customer it’s we don’t deliver more than 6 minutes in the city from the from the physical location and we could deliver very fast hot food really high quality you could order multiple restaurants from a single um check out
[00:04:01] and um and we we have everything from Fast Fine Food like Steakhouse Jose Andreas um you know Michael Simon Mark Murphy and we have barbecue burgers Chinese Japanese Mexican Italian basically anything you could want out of that single location and it’s got a little sit down but mostly pick up and delivery so remember we talked about the 6ds of exponentials right he’s basically digitized and dematerialized demonetizing and democratizing all those restaurants and to a convenient venue um and we’ll come back to that thank you for that quick summary I don’t think I don’t think it you’ve ever done it that quickly let’s chat about your life experience here Austin um for I just heard backstage that you were you were a competitor in one of our early ex prises yeah yeah it’s it’s uh it’s funny I mean uh you know going back I think what back when I was like 16 17 I mean I remember the X prise was like an inspiration there which X prise was it um yeah this is yeah this was actually
[00:05:01] the tricorder there too that was yeah there was like an OG I think there’s still some like o like OG video of me from like 10 years ago as like trying to be like a team lead quter yeah um but uh but yeah know it’s amazing stuff that uh that you guys have and then you know obviously later on building what does luminar what does luminar do yeah so so luminar we create these uh you know laser you know sensing systems a lar and the AI software for major automakers to be able to enable Next Generation Safety Systems and autonomous driving capabilities on production cars so you know whole idea is basically um you know of there’s there’s a lot of companies that have been trying to you know replace drivers with like fully driverless Vehicles Robo taxis anything the whole goal you’ve had is you know enhance drivers you know increase the capabilities and ultimately be able to create sort of the uncrashable car you know so to say by enabling um you know when the car sens is that you’re if you’re going to get into a collision scenario you know take
[00:06:00] over the braking system take over steering wheel get you out of that and that’s enabled by this uh breakthrough lar technology that we created and um the software that automakers have really started uh adopting in mass now lar is it I I think remember it’s like laser Imaging radar type of is that what roughly means yeah yeah B basically it’s uh you know using uh these custom lasers we build to measure the exact distance to different objects out in the field of view so I remember when the first Google autonomous car came out it had a vadine liar on the roof that was a spinning thing it cost about $150,000 and weighed like was like coffee can size what what does one of your Liars cost now or look like now no no it’s a great great question because you know it’s it’s funny I mean I’m sure you guys have all seen like the autonomous test cars and other things that are that are out there and this is a huge problem from a cost an economic standpoint you know they’ve historically been like these huge roof racks full of sensor and a supercomputer in the trunk that’s required to run the thing so the whole point of what we were doing is is
[00:07:01] creating um you know something from the ground out from the chip level up that could have significantly improved performance and get the cost down from $1,000 down to under sorry from $100,000 down to under $1,000 and that that’s exactly what we did so you know that basically we’ve sort of transformed that from those you know Kentucky Fried Chicken you know bucket looking things to uh you know a seamlessly integrated you know sensor on production cars and now that’s getting to go out in amazing Brands like you know ranging from Volvo to Mercedes to Beyond so yeah um and congrats to both of you for your extraordinary success on these um I want to talk about an underlying theme that I spoke to you both both of you about here which is when you’re when you’re going for a moonshot whether it’s building luminar or building your multiple companies Mark and uh TSA which is your vision of a city of the future
[00:08:00] you you’ve got to be hit with a lot of skepticism like you’re you’re crazy for a 20-year- old or for somebody who’s you know uh not had restaurant experience and and so can you talk one second I named this theme the theme um after our conversation Mark embracing risk and resilience in moonshot Ventures uh I think that’s probably one of the most important elements we can we can talk about here how do you think about that I mean first I think it starts with having a a you know I think I’ve been in e-commerce a long time I sort of know too much it’s hard to have that clean Blank Slate to rethink uh a completely new vision you kind of know too much and your brain gets programmed to think a certain way and so when people bring me e-commerce ideas I have a really hard time I can point out why it’s not going to work and see it very clearly it’s hard to have that clean slate to like rethink without any information and I think that’s one of the things entrepreneurs do really well is when you
[00:09:00] don’t know and it’s true didn’t know anything about the restaurant industry specifically um but can rethink from a clean slate like what might a step change look like um and then really think about that vision and then do all the things to work backwards from that vision and then start knocking down all the barriers along the way but it it you have to have that navite to to sort of rethink I don’t know if yeah absolutely same way right same same thing I mean you weren’t in the automotive industry you weren’t in the restaurant business and I mean but the reality is most disruptions and industries occur from people who are not in the industry yeah in fact I know a very few companies that have gone from one generation of technology to lead the next generation of technology I don’t think like anybody MH um and so how what’s your advice for entrepreneurs um to embrace that kind of I mean when people tell them you’re crazy this you have no background H how did you how did you develop
[00:10:01] sufficient confidence in yourself we did by the way we did see this as well with Elon had no rocket business no car business before as well I mean just starting with something simple like diapers for example so when started diapers.com the the thinking was you know I had a baby at the time and you couldn’t get diapers delivered to your door at normal prices if you went online to Amazon whatever they were like $10 more a box and I just thought that was strange like it makes like parents are busy you want to have diapers delivered um and so when I started asking people and said yeah I want to start an e-commerce company where we deliver diapers overnight to people at Walmart prices that was sort of the original like vision and people in the industry said that’s not going to work that’s crazy it’s too heavy it’s too expensive to ship it’s already a loss leader in Walmart now it’s going to be a bigger loss leader the math doesn’t work and so everyone just kind of rule rulle it out Park and Gamble and Kimberly Clark the diaper manufacturers wouldn’t sell Us diapers for years because they kept saying it doesn’t it’s never going to
[00:11:01] work so we’re not we don’t want to be caught up in this and selling you that but to answer your question you ask all the people in the industry um questions and you keep questioning and see if if they’ve got an answer to the sort of original thesis and the thesis was yes it’s a loss leader um and it’s going to be a bigger loss leader but you also have many more products online to monetize the loss over and when you start hitting people and say yeah I know it’s loss but there’s a reason why it’s a loss for Walmart it drives traffic and they buy everything else so what if we use it as a loss a bigger loss albe it to sell them everything online there’s millions of products we can sell them online um for anyone who’s there to buy diapers they’re likely needing the other things as well yeah and buy everything and now you know it’s pretty commonplace now that online people will sell Diapers at a huge loss because it’s a great way to attract and retain new parents which are Big Spenders online and all the math works out um but but you’re asking
[00:12:00] people the question why why doesn’t this work why doesn’t that make sense what and if you’re not getting good answers back if you’re like hm I’m not convinced you didn’t convince me why this thesis doesn’t work then you know you’ve got something so so it’s good to have you have to stand by your conviction conviction question and not fool yourself as well um Austin you I know your first investor um yeah yeah yeah there it’s uh no I mean it’s amazing amazing journey mus you know what what what’s funny um and what’s even even true like in the early stages of of what we had to do is that it’s that same kind of situation where when how old St luminar you know it was what like 16 you know turning 17 at the time so you know and and your V and your vision was what what did you say when you like did you have a PowerPoint deck um more like a lab more of a lab yeah you know than than a power Hardware walk
[00:13:01] you Hardware talks walk yeah exactly exactly it’s much easier to create the power point than it is to do so but um but yeah know it’s the same exact kind of situation there too of where you know you have uh you have all the naysayers you have the folks so like you know there’s hey there’s no way you’re going to do this much less like as a 16 17 yearold like trying to create some new liar system to like you know beat out the Googles and apples and every major automaker to deling technology so you you have to you have to bet on yourself obviously you have to be very well researched and really know what you’re talking about and have the conviction to do it but you know it’s um yeah it’s it’s the same kind of situation and you encounter those same kind of Cycles all throughout the journey that’s not something that’s even just necessarily unique just very different forms right and and so it I get do you are you constantly just like rechecking your premises and heading out with greater conviction and finding evidence to support yourself yeah yeah
[00:14:00] no absolutely and and that’s where you know we deal with the same kind of stuff today there and I I think in in this case like for example for the broader you know autonomous vehicle industry it’s sort of gone through um this whole transition you know in that broader like in this case now it’s the you know the Gartner cycle you know you could call it it’s uh you know gone up you have the peak of inflated expectations it’s probably at the bottom of the trough of disillusionment phase and now like onto the enlightenment phase and that and that’s you know probably rightfully uh Justified because you know most of the stuff in the abroader autonomous vehicle industry of these promise of all these self-driving cars you know taking over cities you know doing everything didn’t quite quite materialize right remember do you remember our conversation with Elon yes yes I so we’re at we’re at a a friend’s birthday party and elon’s there and Austin is there and I pull Elon over I say or I pulled e Austin over I said okay Elon Meet Austin Austin meet Elon Austin makes lar and elon’s like nope no
[00:15:00] he’s if a human driver can see with visual Eyes Only then autonomous cars only need visual eyes he’s very convinced yeah yeah no I mean and and I think that absolutely unquestionably was the what he was right on was in 2015 when he had to make the decision for that around like hey what kind of systems we use like what are you going to do use that $100,000 like spinning bucket and put it on every car like that’s that’s that’s not going to happen so I think you know part of the whole point is is that now for the first time there actually is a solution that can enable the next generation of safety and autonomy and the reality is that like our bet is is that it was going to be like way more difficult than what people were anticipating to do this and that um you know the existing systems were just not going to be there enough to to solve the problem and that’s part of the whole point is with the lar it’s not just guessing what’s going on you actually know with ground truth exactly where it is because for you know Safety Systems and self-driving and all that it’s it’s not about the 9% getting to 99% is
[00:16:00] actually relatively easy it’s all about that that last 1% you know it’s you can’t run over one out of every 100 people that you see for example so you know it’s like a it’s very very real folks so you know yeah breakr so that’s that’s what it takes everybody I want to take a short break from our episode to talk about a company that’s very important to me and could actually save your life or the life of someone that you love company is called Fountain life and it’s it’s a company I started years ago with Tony Robbins and a group of very talented Physicians you know most of us don’t actually know what’s going on inside our body we’re all optimists until that day when you have a pain in your side you go to the physician or the emergency room and they say listen I’m sorry to tell you this but you have this stage three or four going on and you know it didn’t start that morning it probably was a problem that’s been going on for some time but because we never look we don’t find out so what we built at Fountain
[00:17:02] life was the world’s most advanced diagnostic Centers we have four across the us today and we’re building 20 around the world these centers give you a full body MRI a brain a brain vasculature an AI enabled coronary CT looking for soft plaque dexa scan a Grail blood cancer test a full executive blood workup it’s the most advanced workup you’ll ever receive 150 GB of dat that then go to our AIS and our physicians to find any disease at the very beginning when it’s solvable you’re going to find out eventually might as well find out when you can take action Fountain life also has an entire side of Therapeutics we look around the world for the most Advanced Therapeutics that can add 10 20 healthy years to your life and we provide them to you at our centers so if this is of interest to you please go and check it out go to Fountain life ./ Peter when Tony and I wrote Our New
[00:18:03] York Times bestseller life force we had 30,000 people reached out to us for Fountain life memberships if you go to Fountain life.com Peter we’ll put you to the top of the list really it’s something that is um for me one of the most important things I offer my entire family the CEOs of my companies my friends it’s a chance to really add decades onto our healthy lifespans go to Fountain life.com back/ Peter it’s one of the most important things I can offer to you as one of my listeners all right let’s go back to our episode Mark um you could have you know you sold your companies you had uh you know what is that uh many many many commas in the bank uh worth of capital from your successes you could have sat back um you didn’t what what was the creative process of getting to wonder what were you were you a just a junkie about
[00:19:01] creating something new what was it that that Lit you on fire to go and and why that industry yeah I think you know like most entrepreneurs you you sort of can’t you love to build I love to build stuff from nothing um but then you see a problem and and you think you have maybe a possible solution to it and then it just starts to build and build and build and then it has to be so what was the problem that you saw I think I think while I was watching food delivery explode in the US where 100 billion now uh in food delivery in the US expected to go to 500 billion by 2036 was this during Co was it the situation before before before um and was just you know watching what was happening in food delivery people were paying a a incredible premium for convenience and they were tolerating you know slow delivery cold food um you know inaccurate orders bad customer service like it just didn’t feel like that was the future it reminded me of the early days of e-commerce where you had marketplaces and things and then Amazon comes along with this vertically integrated first party elevated customer
[00:20:01] experience I just felt like that was the next generation of of food delivery somebody was going to come and vertically integrate and take the value proposition to a whole of the level and be able to deliver food fast hot with great customer service and and all the things that weren’t happening and that was through the original thinking but that’s the way the idea started then it was but but let’s talk about what your original original idea there because you did a major pivot yeah which is I want to talk about that pivot as well so your original idea was you were going to build these uh these Kitchens on Wheels right yeah yeah so the the the vision was to vertically integrate and take the customer value prop to a whole the level and the thinking was why do we cook and then deliver what if we delivered then cooked and so we basically uh in the back of our Mercedes Sprinter band U had one piece of technology and we were able to cook really high quality food really fast under like 10 minutes where the driver who drove there was actually able to cook because it was so simple and
[00:21:01] that was the original thinking and um it worked customers absolutely loved it um you rolled this out where in New Jersey was it in New Jersey suburbs yeah we had 400 trucks on the road um customer scores repeat rates were incredible customers loved it um we got to unit economic positive things were going were going really well but um but this is where the butt comes in yeah I I um um wasn’t the CEO at the time so I was the executive ch chman um but we had tested a doing the same thing out of a brick and mortar you know with um a couple seats in the front and pick up and delivery and the thinking was if we set a really tight delivery radius can we get the same scores that we got on the trucks we also would be able to have multi restaurant ordering which you couldn’t do on the truck because each truck had one or two restaurants but if you get all 30 restaurants and you can get them all delivered together um that was on the customer side we Prov that we can deliver it with the same quality as the truck if we keep the Rus but we had the ability to scale it worked in urban
[00:22:01] Suburban rural area the brick and mortar trucks really more of a Suburban play and uh the unit economics were better because we were able to distribute the um the the labor across many more orders so we were able to to do a better job there so what’s interesting here what I’m hearing is the fact that you were testing along the way you were getting data it wasn’t an opinion it was actually the numbers and you weren’t trying to take this to scale you were you were doing this on unit economics and and on a square kilometer basis yeah this this is where risk comes into play though I think because you know I like to say we were we were digging for silver when we found gold and as an entrepreneur you know you’re you’re faced with these tough decisions all the time where you’re getting new information in every day and you have to remain totally objective um and and you can’t get wed or hung up on what you told investors what you told customers what you told anyone um if there’s a better opportunity can you guys reflect on that one second right yeah it’s let’s hear it for that because
[00:23:00] the guts it takes to actually stop and say no no no the data says we have to go here and you know reverse reinvest that’s that’s hard to do yeah the CEO and he’ll say this he couldn’t do it he the trucks were working in his mind it was profitable customers loved it and my recommendation was yeah but this is so much better you were the principal owner right was it all Capital at this point or almost no we still had we said we had a significant amount of venture in at that point um but but you had enough capital of your own to be able to say no we have to go this direction yeah and that’s that is so important not to get stuck in a local uh a local Maxima when you see the evidence that just over the other Hill there is something much better and to know that if you don’t do it eventually you’re going to get disrupted by this better idea yeah every everything you’ve done up to that point is a sun cost you can’t count it most people though they just can’t get over that it’s sunk well I
[00:24:01] already said this I already did that doesn’t mean anything from today forward what’s the best you know investment you could possibly make with with with investors money and it it took a lot to basically say we’re going to take Revenue to zero we’re going to stop the trucks we’re going to sell the trucks we’re going to take a loss on the trucks and we’re going to start over with brick and mortar um and the investors you know got comfortable and bought into it but I think we’re still skeptical this is going back 18 months ago um and now I mean people don’t even know how to say that don’t look back no Austin have you had a similar experience at all actually yeah you know it’s it’s funny we had some um a few of them maybe maybe not quite as like you know dramatic in terms of you know pivot anything for the for the business but I would say probably the main one was uh you know going back to the you know uh driverless Vehicles you know versus enhancing safety and the safety focus on that was was a big thing of where like I said pretty much um you know I I mean I what three four years ago um it was actually
[00:25:02] funnily enough like considered extremely contrarian to try and do what we were doing to put our technology onto production Vehicles it was almost you know unheard of to be able to to try and do that and the thought process was is that ride hailing and other things were you know the way that it was going to go you know the Ubers this world were going to take over with uh it was a lot of confidence it was just a few years away yeah yeah was few years away and and that was where um you know really saying hey guys know we’re going to bet the company on this by really just going all in on you know the safety Focus work on production vehicles um don’t you know invest a ton in the you know driverless side and but frankly even more today like I’ve actually even more recently as we kind of you know focus in on cost and and really really drive that for okay what are the things that aren’t going to drive those kind of near-term returns is is that even less so and kind of on the U for the remaining stuff that we had on the autonomous vehicle side which um sa saves a decent amount just really Focus all in on how you improve safety how you
[00:26:01] improve um systems with drivers and yeah like I said it was It was kind of radical at the time but um I think step by step being uh being proven right and um soon be validated with these upcoming major vehicle launches that we have Mark you able to talk about your financing publicly yeah yeah it’s publicly how much should you raise it what valuation curious we raise we just completed a $700 million round uh Safe Note not priced okay yeah and it basically converts in at IPO not not 7 trillion we just we were just talking about that backstage yeah but the 7 trillion dollar raise no no exactly exactly Sam Alman sucked all the sucked all the uh bravado out of the room said he was going to raise $7 trillion I I tried to add in AI at the end of Wonder it didn’t work yeah yeah yeah yeah exactly exactly well you know it’s funny we were talking about it was it went through for the early phases you know we also did a bunch of like you know safe notes he was all about doubling down yourself betting on yourself like that’s the thing if if you
[00:27:00] really believe you know what you’re going to do and is going to be successful and more valuable it’s a really smart way to um to build that and to do it so you don’t have to get like hugely diluted at times where you know there’s there’s always Cycles in the business and and and it’s funny even through the you know 12 years we’ve had with with luminar there’s always Cycles where it’s like there’s this huge dislocation or misalignment between like perceived value like actual value and that’s where you know bet on yourself you do that you know where it realizes and that how you can end up you know owning a huge stake of the company and then you know not not deluding the folks that ride along the journey with you so Austin last year this time you were in the back of the room I had Tony Robbins on stage here yeah yeah and you were on the verge of becoming the owner and chairman of Forbes yeah yeah yeah that was a that was a whole journey and uh yeah I’m not even sure it was public at the times that was an a thing of where I had a vision for the whole next generation of capitalism excited to ultimately have see that through I mean
[00:28:00] are you able to share maybe some lessons learned uh in general out of that cuz I mean it I I know it was a wild roller coaster ride and I don’t know you said you’d be open to talk about it some but I don’t know what is comfortable or not oh yeah yeah no I mean I mean it’s um and ultimately P pass pass this at this point but it’s uh it’s relatively straightforward I mean had had the vision around you the next generation of capitalism but uh at the at the end of the day I think we you know I signed up to sort of a fully funded deal you know for that there too with some uh with some Partners but you know ultimately didn’t end up uh you know delivering on the um obligations that were had so you know that’s uh kind of how things were you know you take risks with uh with these things but uh at the end of the day um yeah I I think what I’m absolutely still very much uh excited to see and and what the whole I would say origination of kind of that that concept was all comes back to the luminar and the journey that I that I’ve had you know personally through this of showing
[00:29:01] how when you can create economic value um you can do good for world the world at the same time and that’s sort of what I mean by the whole next generation of capitalism is that being able to make an impact on the world and that’s in the case of like luminar for example we have this uh broad Vision around saving as many as you know 100 million lives and 100 trillion hours of uh people’s time out on the road and that over the next 100 years and that’s where everything that we do at luminar rolls up to that Vision because if we’re able to solve or the majority of vehicle accidents you know in the industry that’s the magnitude and level of impact that you have and of course yet you can create you know hundreds of billions of dollars of value in that at at the same time as you do that but it’s about that that impact that you’re having and I think um that’s personally what’s inspiring me and and as I um luminar is and always will be that’s my my my passion and drive and what what I spend the time on to be able to help uh realize that vision and make it happen did you see the movie Oppenheimer if you did did you
[00:30:03] know that besides building the atomic bomb at Los Alamos National Labs that they spent billions on biod defense weapons the ability to accurately detect viruses and microbes by reading their RNA well a company called viome exclusively licensed the technology from Los Alamos labs to build a platform that can measure your microbiome and the RNA in your blood now has a product that I’ve personally used for years called full body intelligence which collects a few drops of your blood spit and stool and can tell you so much about your health they’ve tested over 700,000 individuals and used their AI models to deliver members critical Health guidance like what foods you should eat what foods you shouldn’t eat as well as your supplements and probiotics your biological age and other deep Health insights and the results of the recommendations are nothing short of Stellar you know as reported in the American American Journal of Lifestyle medicine after just 6 months of
[00:31:01] following biomes recommendations members reported the following a 36% reduction in depression a 40% reduction in anxiety a 30% reduction in diabetes and a 48% reduction in IBS listen I’ve been using viome for 3 years I know that my oral and gut health is one of my highest priorities best of all viome is Affordable which is part of my mission to democratize health if you want to join me on this journey go to vi.com Peter I’ve asked naven Jane a friend of mine who’s the founder and CEO of viome to give my listeners a special discount you’ll find it at vom.com Peter Mark um I want you to reach deep on this home what are the hardest things you had to do as a as an entrepreneur because that’s where we one really you know your your steel and your soul and your what have those been over because you’ve had such a incredible success story on success after success
[00:32:01] I’m sure there’s a lot of hard stuff along the way a lot of hard stuff no I tell people all the time that want to be entrepreneurs it’s it’s hard it’s hard I mean you’re you’re working you’re giving up a lot you’re working 100 hours a week um I like to say it’s like you’re you’re eating glass every day and you’re hoping you don’t get cut on the way down that’s the way it feels in the early stages I believe me I and and people don’t get it you know they see all the the the success and things but it’s really hard it’s hard um it’s always hard raising money um and it’s hard um to execute against a vision that people aren’t are skeptical of which which is which is harder they’re raising money the executing the vision the hiring people who know what the hell they’re doing what do the what do the help me give distill them for a second because people look at you and say oh my God you know success success success success and then I know it’s hard to pick which one you know it’s it’s it’s all hard um I think at different stages different parts are harder than others I think
[00:33:00] early on easier to raise money harder to recruit great talent later it’s easier to get great talent harder to raise money and then ultimately when you get more mature it’s a mix of everything you know where there where there are times on every Venture where it almost failed yeah yes I mean you’re doing what kept you from failing in those in those almost failure moments I think um I think you just being relentless I think it is at the end of the day it’s being relentless You You Believe In The Vision you believe in in in the model and you have to just put the hard work and time in and find a way and so it involves you know thinking about it 247 and trying to figure out there has to be a way that you know this vision is is it makes sense um and it’s usually the the the hard part though is always um
[00:34:00] getting that balance between how much Capital it’s going to take to to realize div Vision um and whether that’s going to offer investors a good return relative to the risk and so either you have to reduce risk or increase the probability of getting there and getting that right balance right and just thinking about all the possible things you can do to either reduce risk or increase probability and many times ironically the best way to increase the probability of getting there is actually to take risk yes and and sometimes not most times many times it’s taking personal risk as well um and that builds more conviction and because you’re you basically jumped and you got to build your parachute in the way down yeah pretty much same for you Austin oh yeah no absolutely I mean there’s there’s um you know times where throughout the early days of um of luminar where you know we put everything on the line you know for to make sure and ensure the company success and I I I think that’s just where um you you have to have the
[00:35:00] conviction you know obviously um yourself I mean reality checked of course but um as is the case like I said you go you go through the cycles there and and and it’s so funny because it uh you know it’s like it’s like history repeats itself o over and over again where you you do the right things you have to go you know build out the systems you know do what you say say what you do prove it out get to that next step do what you say say what you do prove it out get to that next step step and um you know in our case it’s like it’s this uh you know big launch that we have ahead there to to you know for um uh you know for the first uh major Global automaker and that’s what you know really really excited about there too and proving that out to show how for example at a kind of industry level how this there the kinds of capabilities that can be realized and the benefits of autonomy are real it can happen it actually can go into cars that you know you can buy it’s it’s not just some theoretical concept the same kinds
[00:36:00] of of principles obviously it’s on a different scale now than it was you know in the early days but um but yeah you know and you see like the examples um you know I’ve had some you know great lessons from other entrepreneurs throughout throughout the the years everything you know mentioned when we uh we said uh met Elon back uh back in the day I mean Tesla has had their own uh very uh you know crazy moment along the way for example in our industry and pretty much everyone every entrepreneur you know has some crazy story right exact the way just the way it is it’s always you haven’t you haven’t heard the ones who didn’t succeed because they gave up along the way the passionate and persistent human mind ladies and gentlemen give it up for Mark Laur and Austin Russell [Music]