I often begin calls with founders by asking why they're willing to bet their livelihoods on an idea that will most likely fail. It's a small hack that lets me see how vulnerable a founder is, and how much conviction they have behind their ideas. Sometimes, if they answer, it's the lede of my story. And sometimes, if they don't answer, it's the reason I don't write the story. As blunt as the question sounds, it can spark the best answers — especially when the founder is working on an idea that is a moonshot in and of itself. Speaking of wild bets, our own Kirsten Korosec caught up with Zoox co-founder and CTO Jesse Levinson about his electric robotaxi, a six-year effort that was unveiled this week, outpacing competitors. Levinson was heads down on an idea that wasn't just likely to fail, it almost did: Zoox's Series C fell apart in March due to the pandemic. Korosec: What was your trick or how did you remain focused for six years on something that is futuristic, expensive and possibly could fail? What did you personally do to keep that focus? Levinson: Well, doing something like this is definitely challenging and it requires patience. I think the advice I would give is first to convince yourself that what you're doing makes sense and is important and worth doing. If you're starting a company because your goal is to make as much money as possible, if it turns out to be hard it's going to be really difficult to convince yourself and your team and investors to stick with the idea. One of the great things about Zoox is that the idea itself just makes a lot of sense. From first principles, there's really a compelling reason to solve the problem the way we've been solving it and the market opportunity is unquestionably enormous. So armed with those facts and a team of wonderful employees and investors who strongly believed in that, we were able to weather some of the ups and downs of the industry, even though it's not always been an easy ride. It didn't hurt that Amazon saved Zoox after its failed Series C, considering deep pockets and futuristic technology go well together. Still, Zoox's ability to turn failure into focus is impressive and part of what makes startups successful. Before we jump into the rest of the newsletter, I wanted to formally introduce myself as your new Startups Weekly author. Thanks in advance for reading along and trusting me to bring you startup-relevant news each week. This should be fun, and the absolute expected dose of existential. Send me your tips and thoughts to natasha.mascarenhas@techcrunch.com or tweet me @nmasc_. On that note, TechCrunch also launched a secure and anonymous way to submit tips. Some of our best stories come from readers like you. |
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