The Man Who Builds for the Decade Ahead | Founder of Google X, Waymo, and Udacity
Timestamps are as accurate as they can be but may be slightly off. We encourage you to listen to the full context.
Podcast Summary
In this compelling episode of GRYT, Kleiner Perkins partner Juven interviews Sebastian Thrun, the pioneering inventor of the self-driving car at Google and founder of multiple groundbreaking companies. The conversation explores Thrun's remarkable journey from Stanford professor to Silicon Valley innovator, covering his work on autonomous vehicles, flying cars with Larry Page, online education through Udacity, and his current AI shopping platform. (05:30) Thrun shares his philosophy on impact over money, the importance of grit in entrepreneurship, and his unique approach to building world-changing technologies.
- The discussion focuses on Thrun's mission-driven approach to technology, his experience building multiple moonshot projects simultaneously, and his insights on creating meaningful impact through innovation rather than pursuing financial gain.
Speakers
Sebastian Thrun
Sebastian Thrun is a German-American entrepreneur, educator, and computer scientist who has been at the forefront of multiple technological revolutions. He served as a Stanford professor before joining Google, where he invented the self-driving car program that became Waymo and helped launch Google X. (01:21) Thrun founded Udacity, an online education platform that has educated hundreds of thousands of students globally, and co-founded Kitty Hawk, a flying car company with Google's Larry Page. He currently runs Sage AI Labs, developing AI-powered shopping solutions.
Juven
Juven is a partner at Kleiner Perkins and host of the GRYT podcast, where he explores the personal and professional challenges of building history-making companies. Through his interviews, he goes beyond the highlight reel to understand what drives successful entrepreneurs and innovators.
Key Takeaways
Experts Can Be Wrong About the Future
Thrun's most pivotal realization came when Larry Page challenged him to explain why self-driving cars couldn't work in San Francisco. (22:22) Despite being "the godfather of self-driving cars," Thrun realized he had no technical reason why it couldn't be done—only assumptions based on past limitations. This moment taught him that "experts are typically experts of the past" and often struggle to see transformative change coming. The lesson applies broadly: subject matter expertise can become a constraint rather than an asset when approaching revolutionary innovations.
Impact Matters More Than Money
Thrun argues that once basic needs are met, additional wealth doesn't meaningfully improve happiness or motivation. (04:13) He tested this theory by buying a Ferrari, which brought zero days of happiness and actually created social friction in Silicon Valley. His philosophy centers on measuring success through impact—how many lives you improve rather than how much money you make. This perspective enables risk-taking on meaningful problems rather than optimizing for financial returns.
Guilt and Fear Are Counterproductive Emotions
Thrun advocates eliminating guilt and fear from decision-making, calling them "the wrong emotions in life, period." (50:08) He acknowledges that 80% of his work involves mistakes or cleaning up past mistakes, but argues that guilt over these mistakes would prevent innovation and risk-taking. Instead, he focuses on learning from mistakes without emotional punishment, enabling continued experimentation and growth.
Technology Improvement Rate Matters More Than Current Capabilities
When evaluating technology potential, Thrun focuses on the rate of improvement rather than current performance. (27:41) For self-driving cars, he tracked how the rate of critical interventions decreased by 5-10x annually, indicating inevitable success even when current capabilities were insufficient. This framework helped him predict that self-driving cars would be safer than human drivers by the early 2020s, which proved accurate with Waymo's 100+ million miles without injury.
Build Clear Objectives and Empower Great Teams
Thrun's management philosophy involves setting ambitious, clear goals and then "getting out of the way" of talented teams. (46:23) At Google X, this approach enabled simultaneous development of multiple moonshot projects including self-driving cars, Google Brain, and computational photography. He emphasizes that micromanagement kills productivity, while clarity of mission and ownership empowers teams to achieve extraordinary results. This scalable approach allows leaders to multiply their impact across multiple initiatives.
Statistics & Facts
- Waymo has driven more than 100 million miles without ever hurting a person, making it materially safer than human drivers. (24:14) This milestone represents a significant achievement in autonomous vehicle safety and demonstrates the technology's readiness for widespread deployment.
- We lose about 1.2 million people every year in traffic accidents globally. (12:19) This statistic provides context for why Thrun considers self-driving cars a humanitarian mission, with the potential to save hundreds of thousands of lives annually.
- A full highway that appears congested is actually 92% empty space. (36:58) This counterintuitive fact highlights the massive inefficiency in current transportation systems and the potential for improvement through precision autonomous driving that could increase highway capacity significantly.
