We know what Uber's 2017 was like.

Travis Kanic has stepped down from his role as chief executive.

That wouldn't have gone that way if Ben or Mark was on the board. You're in this hell. You're dealing with the lawsuits.

You worry about the lawsuit >> and you say, "Hey, let's build again." It's not as much about where you start. It's about why you start.

He's one of the very rare guys who made as much money as he did and wanted to keep playing. Also remember I did it stealth.

I know some of the techniques I use very aggressive but that name you can't use that name.

And I remember David Drummond from Google was on our board and he's like no Travis that's not a thing dude. [laughter]

You got to change it. The meaningful thing about [music] Adam's food is can you make the preparation and delivery of a quality meal so efficient that it approaches the cost of going to the grocery store? If it does, you do to the kitchen what Uber did to the car.

A lot of that idea to build [music] a company, a great company. It's always a great entrepreneur.

Travis, this is the I'm back podcast. This is the return of the kingd episode. Um, >> return of the mech. That's [laughter] >> I'm all about we can return. I don't know what the right thing is, but we got to come up with a walk walk-on song for sure.

Return of the Mac. return. >> And it's not just it's not just a return of Travis, but it's also a return of this partnership or or what could have been uh and this relationship with Travis and Ben. So, I want to read a quote from Travis from your launch post. I've known Mark and Ben for a long time and we got oh so close to partnering up at Uber in 2011. I Travis blame Mark. Ben blamed himself, but let's just say it was all on us and it was it was on all of us. And in 2017, Uber suffered the consequences of not having Mark on the board. If you know, you know. Travis, tell the story.

Okay. So, um, this will be interesting because I think Ben and I have maybe discussed this once or twice.

Yeah. Painful >> and and I think that there could >> I'm not sure if there's a difference of opinion on what happened, but I'll tell you what I thought happened. So, I'm in fundraising mode. This is our series B. This is 2011. Uber started 2010, June 2010.

I'm raising our series B. Earlier that year, I did series A with uh VCL Main Remain Nameless. And uh I'm hardcore like it's interesting. I was such I went through such tough times as an entrepreneur pre-Uber that once I'm in Uber and things are working, I'm still acting like I'm not going to eat tomorrow. So I would do everything right up to the line, like be perfect. And so I have this whole fundraising process that I would do just to perfection. And that means I'd run an auction. So met with A16Z guys, met with lots of folks. And it was a what I would call winner takes all auction, meaning there's one major lead. They're going to set the price and then everybody else will fall in. So I'd go to the one guy, you know, I'd tell him what the story was and uh they're like, "Oh, you know, we're interested. He's leaning forward." And I would, they're like, "So, how much you raising? What's the price?" And I would do this thing where I would say, "Um, we don't know what like this is going to be one of the hottest deals in Silicon Valley this year. We don't know where the price is going to be, where it's going to go to, but it's at least blank." And I call this the uncapped anchor. Meaning, I'm never in a place where I'm negotiating with somebody where I'm here and they're here and we meet in the middle. I'm always saying it's at least this and it can go up, but I start low.

So, it all go >> so that everybody's pumped, leaning forward. He's like, "Okay, you can see body language. You can read. It's good." >> You go to the next The next guy literally comes to your office. An hour later, same thing happens. He's fired up. I'm showing all the analytics. It's great. Uh, okay. So, we're interested. What's What are you thinking about price? Whatever. I'm like, it's if the last one was at least 2x our previous round. It just became 3x. I'll say, "We don't know. One of the best deals in Silicon Valley this year, it's going to be one of the top deals in Silicon Valley this year, but it will be at least 3x our last round." And he's like, "Okay." You then go call the guy before and you're like, "Hey, just, hey, look, dude, just went from 2x to 3x." You know, >> we'll see where it goes. I don't know. They start getting nervous. Anyways, you get all the way to the top >> and then you go going once, going twice. And uh it's kind of funny in this particular case, Yuri was almost coming over the top. So, we got to 375 with 3775 million pre with A16Z. Yuri almost came in at 400, but he was like, "No, I can't do it." And so I'm like, "Okay, going once, going twice, sold."

Yeah. >> And it's funny because that's a high momentum deal, and that's how you do it. And at the time, you almost should feel a little shy about doing something like that. And it's a little bit crass, let's just say, but that's how I was wired back in the day. Like just go all the freaking way, all the way.

So we're starting to work. you're going to get a term sheet going, the whole thing. And uh I get an email from Mark. Um and it was like uh hey, let's uh hey Travis like let's go to dinner. I think it was like tomorrow night or something like that. Let's go to dinner. And I said send me the term sheet and then yeah, we can go to dinner. And he responded he said let's go to dinner. And I'm like oh that didn't I didn't like that. So came down south this neck of the woods. >> Yeah. because I was in San Francisco and uh this little sushi place, I don't remember the name of it. And he said, "Look, I know we talked about 375, but went to the partnership. They don't agree or they just didn't think it was the right number. We're the best we're going to be able to do is 210. See that?" So that I'm just telling you how it went down for me.

Yeah. Wow. Well, >> and and so then I'm like >> story was definitely different on the other side, but >> so but I want it be interesting to hear it. >> I've got I've got more than the hour we have scheduled here if we want if we want to take time. But anyways, I had a high momentum deal. It went all the way to the top. I auctioned it, >> cleared the market, >> and the bottom came out from it. And so I had to go back to everybody else and say 210 is the new number. Yeah. Like, "Hey guys, the guy who won backed out. I'm now back at 210. We're starting the auction over." It was super awkward and weird because people you lose credibility in that moment. And I built it back up. And >> uh basically it ended up being Menllo Park. This is how Shervin got involved in Uber.

And at some point I told Shervin to stop negotiating against himself because [laughter] he just kept driving it up without anybody else. I'm like, "Dude, you won, dude. It's fine. I didn't want the same thing to happen again. You know what I'm saying?

Uh, so I'm I am very clear about the 375 and the 210 and the experience I had, but there may be another side of that story. >> Yeah. Well, you know, okay, let me just tell you what I actually remember. Um, and then what I kind of remember. So, I remember you came in for the pitch and I think it was just you. Yeah, that's that's >> which is uh by the way unusual. So normally people don't particularly in those days very rare that entrepreneur would come in with no team members on a deal that size. That was a big deal by the way that wasn't that was a high price deal at now it's like a [__] 375.

Yeah. You'd be like dude preede preede [laughter] pre pre and >> right >> yeah the pitch was super impressive. And then um the other thing I I I recall pretty closely was uh like Travis had definitely like read some of my blogs like I felt like oh we can win this. This is a deal. Um, and we had the discussion and like it was clear like no we

Speaker A: want to do the deal. Uh and at the time I was like I should really do this one but I wasn't the consumer guy. And then I, you know, I had a lot of board seats and a lot of >> I think it was like 16 board seats. It was something crazy.

Speaker B: It was, it was just so I was like, uhh. And so I I gave it to Mark and John O. Ferrell um to do and then all I remember so I remember something different at this point, but I I got it all from them. So I wasn't there. Uh there was something about the employee option pool or some [__] like I I I couldn't but it was one of these things where it's like okay okay but like I just assumed we were doing the deal and then the next thing I knew uh Shervin had the deal and I was like geez and and I regret I can't tell you how long because like so that was the beginning of my torture on on this thing. So I was like, "Fuck, I know we should do that deal. We lost a deal."

Speaker A: And then um meanwhile uh Scott Weissen did a deal uh for the other company in the space, Lyft. Um and by the way, that kind of got off to a very very difficult start, you know, largely because of Uber. Um, so and you know in order to Dave and catch I ended up having to go on the board like I took over that board seat to kind of help them through that.

Speaker B: And just so you understand my experience on the lift thing, it happened I believe a year later. >> Yeah. >> Almost to the day something like this and the deal on 210.

Speaker A: [snorts and laughter] >> Was that was it really? I I don't >> I know. I'm just saying this is what the entrepreneur is going to remember, dude. You know what I'm saying? Holy cow. But anyway, so so I you know because if a company is in a lot of trouble that that's generally when I get called um you know given given my history with that.

Speaker B: >> Oh man, I was working so hard on that. >> And so [sighs] >> I was working hard on that trouble. >> Oh my god, [snorts] it was a lot of trouble. It [laughter] was a lot of trouble. But anyway, so so I'm living with that. And then by the way, and then I would see Travis, you know, now and again like we had I had him over to my house, CEO barbecue, like all kinds of [__] right? like just cuz like I knew who he was.

Speaker A: >> Yeah. And we were kind of friends. We were like and it was always like a lot of like there was a >> there was a respect there because we knew who each other were. >> Um but like he was winning [laughter] and it was just like he wasn't going to let me [__] not hear it. And it was just horrible. You know, I had to listen. I was like god damn it.

Speaker B: >> There's also all the time like for for a decade. >> There was also this other thing would happen. So this is like 2000 I think this really started 2014 15 etc. is Emil and I would meet up with Mark and Ben at this super undercover restaurant. Ah yes yes >> right next to our office which was in the same building at the time as TW or sorry same building as square right >> by the way me also like a remarkably amazing [__] and currently the CTO of the department of war but um super talented.

Speaker A: >> Yeah. There was no way to cross a deal with him other than if he gave him the company. >> Yeah. and he could just fire everybody instantly. >> So it was, you know, but it was like that is it was it was there was m there was mutual respect with this really kind of cool tension at the same time. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Uh that made it that kind of just was the extra texture on the Uber experience. At least for me.

Speaker B: >> Yeah. It was kind of like uh it felt like well you're a basketball guy. It was felt like the old Larry Bird like [__] Magic Johnson. We're like [laughter] >> okay we'll meet each other. >> We hate you but like wish you were on our team. [laughter] This sucks. So it's the one that got away.

Speaker A: >> Um but fast forward and now there's a there's a new chance at >> Well, what I would say is there's one middle piece to this. >> Sure. which is those who are obviously in the tech industry, like we know what Uber's 2017 was like. >> Uh that wouldn't have gone that way if Ben or Mark was on the board. >> Nope. So, so when Ben and I talk about this, we're like, it was our fault.

Speaker B: >> Yeah. >> Dominating food at the time and it would have also been Door Dash for sure a lead a leader in autonomous. >> Door Dash was 5% market share when I left. Yeah. And um and >> if we lost a tenth of a percent >> in a week, >> yeah, >> we're not going home this weekend.

Speaker A: >> And he's done it. He got it. You got You know what? It's really easy to do the whatifs and the this and the that. The thing that matters most is tail of the tape. >> Yeah. >> And he he got some stuff done. >> He did. He did. He did.

Speaker B: >> You know, respect. No. Amazing. He survived it. Which is, by the way, you know, in entrepreneurship, surviving is a big part of it. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Good stuff. Not that easy. Our [snorts] Tommy program was like second to Whimo, but catching up at the time. And you had the network. We had the network, too. Uh and we just we had the ferocity sort of the fierceness that it takes to catch up.

Speaker A: >> Yeah. It was kind of like uh it felt like well you're a basketball guy. It was felt like the old Larry Bird like [__] Magic Johnson. We're like [laughter] >> okay we'll meet each other. >> We hate you but like wish you were on our team. [laughter] This sucks. So it's the one that got away.

Speaker B: >> Yeah. That's it. So then you can just be like it was a good time. >> Yeah. >> She got a little crazy at the end. [laughter] That's true. That's true. Like the Yeah. The crazy crazy ex. Yeah. So there we go.

Speaker A: >> And um how did you fall in love again or or did it take you how did you handle this the interim period between sort of the >> Well, yeah. I mean you had a really interesting situation. And I think headlines and the neg the negativity in the headlines from that period of time and and you could really say the extreme wokeness that was sort of coming in on on Uber and trying to constrain it if that makes sense. There's this interim period. It was like seven, eight months between when I left and when I started what's now called Adams. And I had to sort of fight for my life because there are just a number of lawsuits, a number of investigations, all these things

Speaker A: where it was just like I continue to stand by every decision I made at Uber. Uh but you know there are a lot of times where you could just make the argument I just got way too close to the line and then yeah I could show that there's no chalk on on the shoe. I could show but you would need a electromagnetic scanning microscope to see that there was no chalk on the shoe. You reverse angle slow-mo and it's just like that's the problem is is the edge of being a what's the word? a hard scrabble small startup kid brought to something that's working and going super big.

Speaker B: Yeah. You don't realize that when you get big there actually are different rules. Yeah. You and they're not just the rules, there's the there's the vibes when the when the pirate becomes the navy. We talk about this at the farm a lot. When you're the upstart and you're battling the man, you can go hard in ways that if you do it when you're the big the big dog, it's not okay. Yeah. It's very that you're viewed entirely differently.

Speaker A: Yeah. And I didn't I hadn't consumed that information. [laughter] It actually helped me because, you know, when we started the firm, we were the upstart and I I talked just [] crazy [] about the other VCs and this and that and you know, call them [__] but like at some point like I could feel it turning. Yeah. And I remembered what happened to him and I was like

Speaker B: and we we actually had a whole thing like we're not the pirates anymore. Don't say that type of stuff. Like be be chill. We had Yeah. We had this thing where um we would against Lyft we would uh we would recruit the drivers on Lyft um to bring them over to Uber so that uh it was hard for Lift to build supply um and we would aggressively do it and we had a program for it internally which we called shoplifting. [laughter]

Speaker A: Okay. ju just that that name by the way like forget about all the I I know some of the techniques they used very [laughter] aggressively but that name you can't use that name it's just not a thing and I remember um you know David Drummond from Google was on our board and he's like you know Travis that's not a thing dude [laughter] you got to change it and then I had of course like antitrust training which are like at the time again I'm like this small startup kid. I'm like, "Any trust? What the hell is that?" Legal people telling me whatever. They're like, "Look," I'm like, "I can't wait to have that problem," you know? And uh they're like they're like, "Look, here's the thing. The way you call projects, it has to be appropriate for like a a a 10-year-old basketball team." So, it went from Shoplift to the National, sorry, the North American Championship Series. We call it the NACS.

Speaker B: [laughter] And we had a whole very heavy duty initiative called the NACS [laughter] to like make sure that the North American Championship Series was won by us. [laughter] That is hilarious. I didn't know about the North American Championship series. [laughter] That's Yeah. Okay. So, you go through this eight-month period. You're in this hell. You're dealing with the lawsuits. You're sort of reflecting back. You're thinking about what's next. and you say, "Hey, let's let's build again."

Speaker A: So, what happened was it's super interesting. Um, so I had a buddy who started a thing right near the end of my Uber tenure. Um, and it was called Cloud Kitchens. And what happened was is he he's a real estate savant. Yeah. That's just thing. And he was looking like real estate like there's got to be an angle in tech and real estate. How do we do this? and he got a property up. Actually, maybe you know what? Let me start even before this. We got Uber, we got Uber Eats up in 2015. We saw the first dark kitchens. I don't know, it was like late 15, early 16. We saw pictures of commercial kitchens in Melbourne that were not restaurants

Speaker B: Oh, wow. Wow. Wow. So, the first dark kitchens were emerging. We're like, this is crazy. That's so interesting. And uh a buddy of mine who is this real estate savant sort of like caught wind of like what's going on and he had this idea which was why don't we have a multi-tenant approach to this. So 30 kitchens on a single property and uh basically lease these kitchens which are 200 square feet as delivery only locations. Anyways he I didn't really I mean I sort of knew what was going on but not really. And then in the fall, like like 3 months after I had left Uber, we meet up and he's telling me about he's like, "Yeah, you know, we got a few tenants. It's kind of working." He's like, "I'm going to do like a few more of these. I think I think I'm going to try to figure out how to do a few more." I'm like, "You mean like a few thousand, right?"

Speaker A: And so then we partnered up. Um I acquired it. Uh I think they they'd sort they've done like their uh they just done their series A and uh so I acquired it and then we just went to town, right? And so it's really interesting because sometimes you start a thing and sometimes you're involved in a thing and then you come in like I think this is interesting story about like

Speaker B: Elon was involved like obviously involved in Tesla from the beginning was an investor at first but then went all the way in. Um, and it's interesting how these ideas come. So I like to say that sometimes I you you have ideas sometimes ideas come to you. Yeah. But if it's an idea that's meant to be if it's your it's meant to be your soulmate, you know it when you see it, right? And and you just and sometimes you just it's like a love affair. You just go for it. Some people have these long list.

Speaker A: Important distinction because there's a real difference between that and like what's known as the professional CEO, right? where nobody would ever consider nobody smart other than like a few like weird political people would ever consider Elon a professional CEO. It yeah it's like oh that's an idea [laughter] that I I didn't start the company but it's mine that's mine like it is me and I know how to do it and these guys did a great job in starting it but there's no way they can do it and that's that that's a different a very different animal. Yeah. So, you know, you fall in love with something and it's meant to be for you at that time and you just you just go for it. And for me, it was like ah man um complexity is interesting to me. uh things that are naturally not they're not sexy on the surface is also weirdly interesting. Um and then how like especially if you can see that it's sexy but people don't understand yet. That's where the sparkle in your eye you kind of go ah you don't see what I see and I'm pretty sure I'm right and that's the fun part.

Speaker B: Yeah. But this was a very complex thing because we're buying property. We're doing construction. We are uh then have a sales team that's selling to restaurants a delivery only location. So they're expanding the restaurant chain. This isn't like I'm just getting into a a vendor flow. I'm actually we are we're making a strategic cell which is you should expand. You should expand your business and you should expand it in a new way, which is two strategic moves at the same time. Yeah. And uh by the way, you like complexity. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which makes it Exactly. Yeah. So then they're like, you're also, okay, so we've woven technology through this whole real estate thing. We have a software stack that of course we'll sell will work in this facility, but we'll also sell it to all your brick and mortars everywhere. And [__] let's just get some robotics going at the same time because [snorts] like labor is your biggest problem if you're a restaurant tour.

Speaker A: If you solve that, it's really big. I can get into the strategy of why that is the whole thing, but but just the brass tax of the complexity of the project was interesting to me. So it was more kind of emergent or iterative than hey, I've got this master vision for what it's all going to turn into. No, I I think at that time I like I if it if I don't see how it it's big and meaningful then

Speaker A: the complexity for like complexity complexity sake's not a thing there there has to be you know maybe somebody would say a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow it has to be something meaningful the the meaningful thing about Adam's food or what folks know as cloud kitchens is can you make the preparation and delivery of a meal a quality meal so efficient that it approaches the cost of going to the grocery store?

Speaker B: If it does, you do to the kitchen what Uber did to the car and you go, "Okay, that's kind of a big deal." But then you say, "What do you need to do to get there?"

Speaker A: Okay. Well, you need to do e-commerce for online food delivery, >> which means I need warehouses like Amazon style.

Speaker B: Yeah. >> Except they're not just for logistics. It's not just picking, packing, sorting, and then putting in a car. You also have to have manufacturing there, too.

Speaker A: Manufacturing also known as a restaurant. People don't think of that, but you go to the labor statistics, Bureau of Labor Statistics, restaurants are manufacturers. Okay? So you have to have manufacturing and logistics infrastructure in the same place. That's real estate. Then you actually have to have automated production. That's the manufacturing. So robotic food robots essentially food robotics. And then you need to have robotic couriers. And you do those three things and then all of a sudden you are getting super high quality meals. Everything you could ever imagine. We call it the internet food court. and it gets to you at the price of going to the grocery store.

Speaker B: So you go, okay, nice. That's a nice story. You go, well, in 20 years, will robotics I start with a really easy question. In 20 years, will people be cooking food regularly? And there will be a suite of robotics that basically will make higher quality meals. Uh like there just they will be doing a better job than any of us could do. And I think most people especially those in the robotics space be like of course that's obvious that that's going to happen. And you're like in 20 years are we going to have I call them autonomous burritos like boxes on wheels that hold food at temperature that come to your house? Yes. Everybody will say yes absolutely. We see Whimos cruising around all the already. We just need a very cheap a much cheaper version of that. So 20 years is like the easy one.

Speaker A: Then you go well what about what about 10? What about seven? What about five? And so that's when you're bending you're bending it towards now. So everybody would agree that this is going to happen and now it's about when and who and then you say LFG.

Speaker B: Now sometimes you're a little bit early and I would say on the >> we were a bit early on cloud kitchens but but you build those bricks all those things I talked about >> we have hundreds of facilities in 30 countries many hundreds of facilities in 30 countries restaurants because the online delivery market keeps growing the restaurants are doing better and better so success is happening. Yeah,

Speaker A: >> right. Well, restaurant world has high churn. Your churn starts coming down because volume's going up. We have applications that guarantee volume into these restaurants so that we can have successful tenants, which means I'm a successful real estate guy from a from a business model perspective. The robotics start to work. You know, you we're getting a manufacturing line for our robots up this uh in Q4. So, like the pieces start to come together. You're like, production is now 50% cheaper. Once we get the couriers, the robotic couriers, you go from $12 a drop for each meal to 50 cents, a dollar of distribution cost per meal. And now you're taking now you're taking,

Speaker B: >> okay, $6 out in labor. you're taking, let's call it, $10 or $11 out on the courier um on the real estate because you're going to get higher value volume because you're driving the prices down. Uh you probably save a few bucks, maybe let's call it two or three bucks on occupancy per meal and all of a sudden you've got like a eight or $10 >> meal that's delivered to you all in. Plus, you don't have to recruit drivers, you know, and get shoplifted. [laughter]

Speaker A: >> That's true. So that's right. You can't shoplift a a rob a robotic courier. >> Yeah. >> Yes. >> So we need to stop using this [laughter] term. >> So wrong. Okay. 100 facilities in 30 countries, thousands of employees in over 8ear period and you're in stealth. >> Yeah, dude. >> Yeah. That's just super hard mode.

Speaker B: >> Yeah. And the thing is is like look coming out of 17 things were it was 150 articles a day of negative you know negativity and so I wanted to be able to build without bringing that negativity into the system and I wanted the team to be able to build without worrying about what the New York Times was writing tomorrow. >> Yeah. Simple as that. And it was the right thing to do. Now we had to do hard mode is we had to recruit cold And it was always from a recruiter who has a stealth thing in LinkedIn and on their signature.

Speaker A: >> Yeah. You don't really I don't you know but eventually there's this break in your narrative like there was this story arc and it was going going and then it's discontinuous. It stops and there's this Whoops. Sorry about that guys. There's this long period of time now where nothing is filling in. And what happens then is the media doesn't want to cover a story because they it's so hard to discuss a thing that has a gap a few years before it. So it's too hard to do the story and it's too hard to cover it. So you get to this place where it becomes self-fulfilling. >> Yeah. Where it's easier to be stealth over time because even if somebody tries to leak, nobody even knows what to do with it.

Speaker B: >> But it's casinos in Latin America. >> And we have different names. That means like magical kitchens essentially. Uh we have like kitchen valley in Korea. We have Flash Kitchen and three other names in China. We have I mean food stars in London like go it goes you know >> you know I think it's uh Kitchen Park in Middle East. We were going to go with Yala kitchens like you know it's like a bunch of things like this. So it was very hard to connect the dots.

Speaker A: >> Yeah. [snorts] And you had satellite view. You're watching this car come to you. That was crazy. Now it's just like whatever. Okay. But it was crazy at the time. Everybody's first Uber experience was a magical moment. So we I you know digitizing the physical world was the thing. And this idea of what I would call an atomsbased computer was something I sort of was working on in terms of her framework at the end of Uber, which is CPU manipulates bits, storage stores bits, network moves bits from point A to point B. Okay. Well, CPU manipulates bits. What manipulates atoms? That's manufacturing. Storage stores bits. What stores atoms? That's real estate. Network moves bits from point A to point B. What moves atoms? Well, that's transport, logistics, and those now are your three core computing resources in an atomsbased computer. And you know what? Everything you learn in your computer science curriculum, everything you learn in

engineering, it plays in the atoms world. Same frameworks, all the data structures, all the algorithms, it works exactly the same. And I >> routing algorithms.

Oh, totally, totally. In fact, we use we use TCP. We use TCP saw to basically manage how much demand to send to certain kitchens based on capacity and reliability as an example.

But like we look at when I go and I I'm messing around like when I'm pitching this to a tech person who wants to understand that 10,000 foot facility I call a 10,000 foot semiconductor >> and it's a 30 core processor 30 kitchens. They're computing atoms, not bits. The corridors where the food moves, that's a network bus. The processing center is like an L1 cache or something similar.

He's taking this analogy very far. >> The cold cold storage where you have ice cream and juice. Okay, that's precomputed items that sit on the edge. Those are your Okami servers. [snorts]

The courier who comes and picks up the food and goes on the road and brings the meal to you, he that's a TCP packet. This [__] goes forever.

[laughter] It's excellent.

Okay. So, the vision started at Uber. >> So, the point is is that Adamsbased computation is a thing and honestly it's always been a thing. And the idea that oh, okay, Uber was network for the physical world, digitized transportation. And by the way, almost done. Why almost done? Because it's almost fully software.

Yeah. Right? Whimos are cruising. It's almost fully software. But what about what about uh CPU for the physical world and storage for the physical world? Basically digitized manufacturing and digitized real estate. There's just so much to do there. It's crazy. And so there's a huge amount of innovation there. Not just with what Adams is doing, but like there's going to be lots of stuff even beyond what we we're doing. It's a portfolio strategy really if you're investing.

It's very interesting because you kind of got to the conclusion that we've now all learned from AI which is you can model just about anything with computation >> and you basically were ahead of that in modeling this physical world even metaphorically computation and now kind of manifesting that >> it's you know probably entirely with AI on top of your computational. Funny because the framework started near the end of my Uber time really when we were getting deep we were going into deep learning and heavy duty ML and I was you know we would go after some of the best AI we had an AI lab that was probably one of the best in the world as well and I was always pitching that the physical world is more interesting >> for this stuff than the digital one >> and you look I'm selling my book like that's what we do right But it's you have a way way many more uh variables axes of stochastic distribution.

Yeah. >> Which then problem >> which which then means you're not going to solve it with an algorithm. You're going to solve it by empirically understanding how it works.

Yeah. Right. So let's fast forward to how the bigger vision for atoms comes together in terms of the >> Yeah. combination of the companies. [laughter] >> I keep stopping you. I know. Yeah. >> Um and then I also want to get to the partnership because it also ties together.

Yeah, it's all good. So, okay. You've got to have your manufacturing logistics hub. That's the real estate. You've got to have your automated production. And you've got to have your autonomous burritos. The minute about a year ago, I started looking into autonomous burritos [snorts] and I went to China and checked out all of the autonomy guys. Was here in the US talking to a lot of the autonomy guys. Word got out. They're like, Travis is looking at autonomy again. People started going, "What's going on?"

Yeah. >> Yeah. And you know, folks like, you know, folks like Uber, other partners across different categories were like we're interested like for one reason or another because it's like you could even be do you could be like supply chain guy on food. You're also saying I need to have I I for business continuity and just like peace of mind. I need to have another alternative for how these freight uh how these trucks heavy transport are going to move and um I need an alternative and I'd love to have a partner as an example this kind of stuff. And so, okay, so partnered with a couple folks, actually created a new company to do it because funding autonomy through a sort of a core food company just wasn't going to work at first. And the reason why is because it's like these are just different profiles. A real estate company. This is like heavy duty software. Big big money going after it.

It's like a computer company trying to build a network company off of the side. [laughter] >> you got to you got to buy a networking company. So So we just got and these partners wanted a pure play and so we created that sort of near the end of last year. But what happened is it's like you got to get okay well now I need to get my team together. I need to get my guys from way back when 2016 when we were 2017 we were we were running hardcore at autonomy. We need to get that going because if you're going to be in the specialized robotics game, you have to have autonomy for yourself. You have to your robots are act are moving and acting in the physical world and you cannot depend of on only one company that has an existence proof. Now, of course, Tesla's going to get there, you know, sometime soon or maybe some amount of time. We don't know exactly. Um, you got to you you can't be dependent in that way. And so, okay, get your team together. Uh, Eric Myhoffer, who ran ATG, is already running my food robotics division. Um, that's Uber's advanced technology group, uh, is is working for us. Uh, and then uh Anthony Lewendowski who was one of my top leads uh on autonomy in back at Uber was running pronto which was an autonomous mining company. Let's call it off-road autonomy but in a workflow or category where it's like much more than just like this thing needs to move. It's like how does it move? What is the context for which it's moving? It's like a very specialized thing. Yeah. I was the biggest investor in Pronto. I'm like, let's go. So, uh acquired Pronto and now I'm in the mining business. But it's not like I didn't know about it. I was the biggest investor in it to begin with for a good reason.

It's one of the most beautiful and interesting autonomy categories or use cases. And on our mining business, we, you know, we have our mission statement is more productive mines to power Earth's industries. We can go to a gold a gold mine CEO right now and and say, "Would you like to get 20% more gold per year?" We don't get no [laughter] >> right now. He says, "Prove it." He says, "Prove it." And we're like, "Let's go."

But that's what's happened is so separately, Pronto is working on mining for eight years on their own. Seven, eight years on their own. Go ahead. Also a great a great target for autonomy because you know maybe the worst job for humans there is is the mining jobs, right? And we have so our mining customers because we're operating in a bunch of mines around the world. Our mining customers have existential safety problems or let's call it safety issues, safety concerns.

Yeah. like where bad things can happen on any given day and you've got real people that are putting their lives on the line when they're on when they're at these mines. And so when you automate certain parts of mining, you dramatically improve safety and you I mean in a real way. Uh that's like when you look at the work that's being done and how it's being done, it's uh a little bit heart-wrenching when you are exposed to it and you see how minds work. It's it's not the mind's fault. It's just the nature of the work and um there's a massive safety upside that goes along with the productivity upside which is really special. Um >> yeah. So, so what happened is is that Pronto just now is coming past human productivity. So, it's like you do it's like any enterprise software company. Yeah.

You do some cool pilots with big companies, you got stuff and you're like, "Dude, I've got like I've got like eight seats at this 10,000 person

Speaker A: company and you're like, "Okay, maybe." And then all of a sudden it's better. In the autonomy world, it's about it's better than human productivity. That means your minds and the queries and it's like it's like exactly go time. That's when you hit the gas. So we're gonna see super exponential. We're seeing it. We're in the middle of it right now. Super exponential growth on the mining side, which is super special. These guys ran a very lean startup for a long time. And now I'm going to their customers who are begging us to move faster and get more out there. We have to manufacture kits. Sorry. We have to do supply chain and manufacturer kits. We have to install these kits on these machines that are in the middle of the Amazon or on the border of Saudi and Iraq or like in these crazy wild places. Um, and do it fast and then do the change management at every one of these mines. So, they're like, "It's time to go. Let's go." And they're pushing us. And so, our, you know, how we talk to them is like, "Look, we were a lean startup and we're going to be muscular."

Speaker A: Yeah. And that's how I talk to the team, too, because you don't want them to get fat. Yeah. It's like lean muscle, you know. Yes. Um, but we need some protein shakes, you know, and creatine and things like that. And it's about process, professionalizing a lot of this stuff. But it's in some ways the growth there is almost deterministic as long as you do the professional things to like get all that stuff in mind. But what it means is that existing minds are going to be producing more and they're going to be able to go much further and getting more and new minds are going to emerge that couldn't that were not viable before and what that means for AI what that means for progress here and everywhere super big deal.

Speaker A: Yeah. And so to to continue, we'll get to the partnership conversation. [laughter] At what at what point does this become sort of a are you thinking from the beginning this is a conglomerate or at what point does this become all wrapped up in the in the atoms?

Speaker A: Well, so this I mean the the fund raise was part of it. So what happened is is we started the fund raise and you know Ben remembers this because I gave him a preview at first at at in Vegas actually and I'm like uh I was like the guy with a trench coat that's got like 20 watches. I'm like, "Which watch do you want?" I got a I got all kinds of watches. And he's like, "Dude, I just want the whole freaking trench coat, dude. Like I you know, the the idea being I don't want to invest in mining or transport or food. I want the things that you're doing and let's be partners for all the things you do." And so that's that was the impetus for um bringing the companies together

Speaker A: creation of and the funding itself. Yeah. The creation of atoms and the funding itself uh being at what we would call topco level. Yeah. Right. And so now it's just one entity. I mean there's sub entities there all over the place but but it's one equity structure uh which is great for the employees and great for me because managing I honestly I don't know how Elon does it or did it slash does it. It's pretty wild and I'm really glad I don't have that headache to be honest. Yeah.

Speaker A: Yeah. And so it's very complicated alignment. Um but you know it it's a kind of an interesting point because it's very obvious to you know when we talked about it here the way it should work and I and I think the narrative of how these things get built is um mistold constantly by the industry by the press which is you know if you hear about how did Facebook come about how did Google come about how did you know Tesla come oh they had this idea Yeah. And the idea was to do this. Um, but that's not really what happened. A lot of [__] had that idea. You know, there's a lot of those ideas out there. And like if you look at Tesla, there was a very famous documentary called Who Killed the Electric Car that came out before Tesla. And if you were an entrepreneur watching that, what you would see is big oil, big auto, big government.

Speaker A: We're never going to let that happen. They would kill you. Um, but then the reality is, oh, Elon Musk, that [__] is hard to kill, right? Like, so he by himself kind of decarbonized American auto industry, which is, you know, really unbelievable in retrospect, but then it gets told, right? Like if you listen to the politicians now, they're like, "Oh, he didn't build Tesla. [snorts] He just like struck a gold mine and is just pulling the gold out." Like all those people built it. Yeah. But why didn't all those people build another Tesla? Like there's only one because there's only one nonfgeible very rare person in that equation

Speaker A: And same and that's why there's only one SpaceX. Uh, and that's why you know that's why Meta is Meta and Fster Fster and all that kind of thing. That's a good one. I haven't heard that one for a long time. Yeah, [laughter]. it's good. And so to build, you know, to build a company, you know, a great company, it's always a great entrepreneur. And so when we looked at it, we're like there's a very few entrepreneurs, you know, in the history of the valley that built something like Uber. Uh, and that Uber basically it survived and is still a very valuable company without him, which almost, you know, like that never happens without the founder. I mean, it it's usually turns to crap very fast. And so that was what we like, yes, the idea is great, the ambition is amazing, it's going to be amazing for the world if he pulls it off, but like we want to invest in the guy who could pull it off. And and that's kind of what drove drove the whole thing

Speaker A: And there's a fun thing. I I realized this at Uber too is that I think I in many ways maybe maybe Bezos was the guy to sort of really go there which is uh the only constraint to your imagination is management capacity because like look at all the things that Amazon started doing. They were earlier than everybody else starting to do lots of things, right?

Speaker A: And so I'm like oh by the way another good one. How many [__] had the idea for an online bookstore, online retailer, online any of that? There we [snorts]. And how many Amazons? Yeah, totally. You know, and and by the way, Jeff, like everybody who knows Jeff, everybody's heard him talk, you're like, "Oh, he's very special. That's a special CEO right there." And and that look and that's our business is to invest in that kind of very very special individual. And they're super rare. And so I think in many ways Bezos may have been I always want to say the OG on something but then you find out a hundred years earlier somebody else did that

Speaker A: of our time where it's like how did AWS happen? It literally had nothing to do with a bookstore really. Nothing. I mean there's there's some fun stories they tell but it's like this is just a whole new thing. Yeah. But yeah, by the way it wasn't like the [__] that was running Amazon. Yeah. No, totally. That's my point. Yeah. So once you get the foothold, the beach head, whatever, and it's working you can start going, you Uber rides, then it's Uber Eats, then it's Uber autonomy, then it was Uber Freight, then it's like Uber AI labs. Like, you can start letting your imagination with constraints start to do really interesting things. And so where you start matters.

Speaker A: You're right. And it has to be like you need knowledge. Yeah. Right. Like the the thing that Amazon did have on AWS is they had knowledge of what it meant to run these things at scale because they were the first to get to or one of the first like five to get to that kind of scale. And so they had that knowledge. Totally different business totally but they had the knowledge about what the product should be. Yeah. And because he's a customer of these things, right, at Uber, he all of a sudden he knows what the network is. He knows how to do that. And although it's a totally different business, that knowledge is transferable if you if you can scale and execute and expand

管理与创业的视角：从边缘到核心

Speaker A: 有时候你可能会发现，那些相邻的类别比全新的东西更容易处理。

Speaker B: 哦，是的。

Speaker A: 是的。而且我指的是AWS最神奇的地方是，它是少数几个让人觉得亚马逊上买的东西会是计算云服务之一的扩展中，当时根本没人会这么想。

Speaker B: 是的。不。

Speaker A: 你知道，总会有人想说，哦，我应该卖给他们更多他们想从我这里买的东西。

Speaker B: 但那是一个完全另一个……

Speaker A: 但是，如果你具备那种在组织设计、文化连续性方面达到Jeff Bezos水平的技能，那这个人是……

Speaker B: 非常好。

Speaker A: 是的。所以，你从哪里开始非常重要。

Speaker B: 是的。不要让他过着他最好的生活。

Speaker A: 他会因为那而招来很多糟糕的公关评价。我想问你，Travis，你本可以过一种“最好的生活”的版本，只是说，“嘿，这是我所做的事情，你知道吗？或者我是要一直做下去的，或者我是追逐了承诺的土地。我走得很远了，但我本可以走得更远。我下次会到达那里。” 这种动机是什么？

Speaker B: 只是我喜欢在竞技场里战斗。而且，他是一个非常罕见的人，他赚了那么多钱，还想继续玩下去。我的意思是，基本上是重新开始。不是完全的，而是几乎完全的，对吧？

Speaker A: 所以，是的，你真的想做到这一点，因为还记得我当时是秘密进行的。是的。所以，秘密意味着什么？就是从底层开始，对吧？比如亲手做，对吧？比如我走进一家公司，收购了这家公司……

Speaker B: 图表，你知道吗？比如这里发生了什么。我们知道，让我们滚动吧。让我们做这件事。然后这些我只是走进来的家伙，他们会说：“这……到底发生了什么？” 他们在那个六人初创公司工作了一个早上，一个小时后，Uber的创始人就成了CEO。

Speaker A: 是的。是的，是的。那太疯狂了。然后顺便说一下，我们见过太多次有人到了顶层公寓，他们会想，“哦，我想做一件新事情。” 但他们不想走到底层去从零开始，把大楼盖起来。好吧，你现在在一个……

Speaker B: 是的。他们想跳到……这从来都不行。你不能从顶端开始。

Speaker A: 是的。但是，底层的部分也是关于谦逊的一种东西。

Speaker B: 是的。而且有一种反名声的东西。我的意思是，想象一下你从底层开始做，你也秘密进行。这意味着你和公司里的每个人都从他们每天做的工作中获得了满足感。不是因为他们会出名。

Speaker A: 是的。但是因为他们喜欢和他们一起工作的人，以及他们每天做的事情。顺便说一下，如果你能做到这一点，那是一个非常重要的文化优势，因为一旦公司感觉自己在为外部地位做某事，就变得很危险了。

Speaker B: 是的。这是一个不稳定的……情况。

Speaker A: 对了。你开始根据外部验证和内部正确性来做决策。是的。你会失去真正的北极星。是的。这也是秘密的优势的一部分，也是我当时在做的事情的一部分，因为我记得我想在不担心《纽约时报》会说什么的情况下建立东西。

Speaker B: 是的。所以，它始于内部正确性与外部验证之间的对比。是的。一旦公司开始这样做，就很难……你已经看到了这一点，比如那些大实验室。人们会一直问，为什么大实验室会把自己砸在脸上？嗯，是因为他们需要这种外部验证来让他们的员工上瘾。我想做一个好人。我想成为一个好的AI研究员。所以，让他们去告诉他们我们要做所有工作。真的吗？

Speaker A: 而且，很容易滑入那种状态。很多公司都会滑入那种状态，而且……难点在于一旦它脱离了袋子，拥有一份骄傲感，想要让你的妈妈为你的工作感到骄傲，以及你整个社区的骄傲。是的。所以存在一种人性方面的东西，而我因为秘密进行而变得营养不良了。

Speaker B: 是的。但是它迫使了一种情感智能，现在当我们摆脱秘密时，这种能力非常强大了。是的。而且看看未来几年会发生什么会很有趣。是的。这将是一个非常有趣的文化案例研究。看看公司在长时间内是什么样的。是的。

Speaker A: 是的。是的。是的。所以，我们谈到了亚马逊，你知道，食物是……在“你从哪里开始”这个意义上，它在哪里开始非常重要。为什么你从食物开始很重要？就可推广性而言？就像……对。

Speaker B: 所以，这里是重点。所以云厨房是……我看到的方式就是这样，而我带给派对的是这个，但它就像这是数字化制造和数字化房地产。我当时把它叫做“云厨房”，因为我们向餐厅客户推销的是那个东西，但公司的名字是City Storage Systems。啊好吧，物理世界的存储。这就是数字化房地产。是的，这是一个基于房地产存储的食品计算机。

Speaker A: 好吧。这意味着一个网络。是的。所以，这从一开始就是公司的名字。是的。或者在我进来之后。好吧，它是故意枯燥的，因为我当时在秘密进行。想象一下卖一个叫做City Storage Systems的东西。人们会问：“那是什么？” 他们在你和他们谈完20分钟后就会忘记。他们会说，“City CSS。”他们会想HTML。他们会很困惑。他们不知道发生了什么。所以，对我来说，框架已经存在了。我已经在思考这作为数字化制造和房地产、基于原子计算机的食品计算机，这就是为什么我兴奋。这个想法抓住了我，因为它是因为那个。

Speaker B: 所以，为什么从食物开始？不是因为我看到了与甚至可能最初团队在做的事情不同。他们看到了它，但我看到了它的方向。而且以我刚才描述的方式，这就是浪漫所在。是的，有很多数字化制造问题在那里。是的。比如采矿……比如采矿，还有一堆其他事情。嗯，但这个想法在我当时抓住了我。你知道，我当时坐在酒吧里，有人走过来，我们进行了一次很棒的谈话。你知道，下周末去了卡博，然后就戴上戒指，就像，“走吧。”

Speaker A: 巧合，伙计。是的。那确实是真实存在的。所以……

关于创业的起点与持续发展

Speaker A: 好的。因为事情是，如果你相信你可以找到某样东西，让它运转起来，只要你把它磨出来，让它工作，它就会变成能工作的。你的想象力可以一直保持下去。所以，对我来说，这并不是关于你从哪里开始有多重要。而是关于确保你对你开始的地方充满热情。然后，你下一步该往哪里去，你就没有头绪了。这非常符合贝佐斯（Bezos）的风格，也就是你的想象力会不断产生新的、酷的想法。

Speaker B: 所以，这不关乎你从哪里开始。它关乎你为什么开始，以及如何建立一种文化，让你能够在一段时间内不断进入新的领域，让你的想象力在正确的时候蓬勃发展。

Speaker A: 是的，我就是这样。它不是一个想法，而是一个想法迷宫。你对这个想法和所有事情学得越多，而且你不知道一些东西，比如来自外部的人来说，有些东西很难理解，当你开始时你就知道很少的东西了，就像他甚至没有告诉我他开始一样，他不知道……

Speaker B: 他对云厨房会遇到的问题，只有不到1%的。

Speaker A: 是的，当然了。因为你得真正深入了解技术专家对房地产知晓什么。

Speaker B: 是的。

Speaker A: 0.0。是的，这整个过程就是一个学习过程，然后最好的企业家可以把这些学习应用起来，然后扩大应用范围，你知道，像埃隆（Elon）把SpaceX变成了Starlink，数据中心在太空，这非常罕见，就像没人会从那里开始……

Speaker B: 或者想过这个。嗯，第一个Roadster。现在是Optimus。

Speaker A: 好的。谈到……是的，是的。让想象力蓬勃发展是一件美好的事情。

Speaker B: 理解核心原则。

Speaker A: 是的，然后应用它们。所以话虽如此，让我们再描绘一下原子未来的图景，或者更多地谈谈指导原则，这些原则将决定你下一步进入哪些行业，或者你思考从哪里去的方式。

Speaker B: 我还有很多事情还没做。比如，我现在很受限。但它又回到了我之前说的那个东西：你必须找到那个突破口，让它蓬勃发展，建立管理能力来解决98%正在发生的问题，然后你才有空间去做新事情。说实话，我被指责过度使用马拉松的比喻了。

Speaker A: 是的。我将做到这一点，也就是在某个时候你可能正在做生意，它就会开始运转起来。我是在Uber上看到这种情况，我在不同的地理区域有我的客户，我会打电话给他们，因为我们不会把想法堆在一起，然后硬着头皮去……我们没什么可说的。

Speaker B: 是的，因为……它运转了。他们会说：“特拉维斯，我们搞定了。我不知道你现在为什么给我打电话。”

Speaker A: 你知道。所以，实际上这引出了他最擅长做的一件事之一，在Uber上处理这些家伙时……如果你看看大多数公司，大多数那些在21世纪和2000年代出现的真正的大科技公司，他们的管理团队都是专业的中间管理者等等。他有很多你可能会去招募的创始人，你知道，在那里，那是一个真正的企业家，而且他没有建立自己的公司，因为他是在为特拉维斯工作，但这使得他们能够接触到无数的想法。你需要一个像这样的团队……

Speaker B: 嗯，而且能建立那种团队的人可不多。要吸引和维持那种水平的能力是非常困难的，因为那些家伙除非你在构建绝对惊人的东西，你知道，否则他们不会成为那样，即使你做到了，你也得管理好它。

Speaker A: 嗯，那么发生的事情是，管理它变成了一个赋权难题。

Speaker B: 是的。是的。好的。顺便说一句，不像这里一样，我本来想说，你已经有……是的，我正在运营Uber。假设我同时在任何给定时间管理着五个大洲。你有一个跨越金融团队、跨越产品团队的多职能工程团队。有很多事情在发生，唯一运作的方式是好的，你有那个企业家在那里，但他们必须基本上通过对齐来实现赋权，而对齐始于战略上：我们是否就它达成一致？

Speaker A: 那就是挑战，赋权加上对齐。所以前端是问责制，后端是对齐。我们称之为让构建者去构建……但是，也有对齐，但对齐是多维的，因为它涉及到对目标、对宗旨以及文化的一致性。比如，是的，你们在那里做出的行为会影响我们这里和我们那儿，所以我们不能稀释文化，因为我们给了你们自主权，我们必须拥有那种组合。这是一种非常高层次的管理技能……

Speaker B: 而且那个领导者必须足够好才能做到这一点。然后那个领导者还需要和CFO以及CFO的人、产品、产品主管和产品人员、工程人员和工程师一起工作，以确保它能运转起来，因为如果我是一个单点故障，在24个时区规模化是不可能的。

Speaker A: 没有办法。我认为这正是我们在Uber所做和我们看到许多其他公司如何进行国际扩张之间的区别。他们是在购买东西。我当时想，好吧，我买。我们可以直接把这个城市变成一个城市。走吧。然后如果你买了它，你猜怎么着？你带来了另一种文化。

Speaker B: 是的。好的。现在你有了另一种声誉。然后那种声誉会渗透回来。然后，好吧，你没有文化了。因为在韩国我们能做到这一点吗？而我们在美国不能做到这一点？像所有那些事情。而且你的产品、你的技术反映了你的文化。所以发生的事情是，你只是让文化体现在技术和构建技术的方式中。所做出的产品决策，然后现在你必须将这些产品和技术融合在一起，这非常困难。两年后，也许吧。

Speaker A: 是的。是的。超级有趣。你现在被三个不同的行业所限制了。你要不断地……

Speaker B: 是的，是那个突破口的问题。我把马拉松的比喻再用一遍：如果变得容易了，你必须再次让它变难。因为……但你得把它弄得容易。你得开始。这是一种氛围。它就像一种感觉，你基本上在不断地创造问题。

Speaker A: 是的。所以我有一个框架，我称之为元问题，它是你问题创造的衍生品……必须小于衍生品……

问题解决与能力边界

Speaker A: or equal to the derivative of your problem solving dt. And if it's not you have a real [__] problem. Yeah. Well then then then you're underwater. Yeah, then you're underwater and then you can you can drown and if you have yeah if you have multiples of those you're really underwater.

Speaker B: That's right. So when you make when you create a problem you're guessing at what your capacity is to solve problems and you're guessing 6 months 12 18 months ahead with only a certain understanding of what the nature of the problem is. And when you get it really wrong you're underwater and then you must stop all problem creation so that you can get back above water. And then when you go from your neck and then you're like at your waist in terms of how underwater you are with your problem solving. When you're at your waist, you're like, "Oh, I could get I could get to here."

Speaker A: You create more problems. You let the problem creation spot open. And by the way, when you talk about capacity, um, a lot of it in this case is he's talking about his personal capacity because he's got to be able if he's creating a new large problem, he's got to be able to not pay attention in nearly the level of detail to the other parts of his business. does have to be working because if he's solving problems over there and created a big new problem then that one gets in trouble like then so it's not just like capacity of the team it's also personal capacity

Speaker B: and that >> it's a little bit of both it's a little bit of both and >> so it's a real >> I never felt like >> I never felt like rid share was solved because what happened oh it's time for autonomy

Speaker A: okay all right let's go by the way you were right about that Yeah. Yeah. Just despite uh Yeah. I'm not going to even mention names. And so if you if you had still been running Uber um you know in this other universe or some of the vision that you have here with Adams, would that have been you know could you have gone to mining with Uber? Like

Speaker B: it's a continuation of the same vision. Right. So the digitizing the physical world the atomsbased computation that was already set. Yeah. And so if the future of food is about uh infrastructure, automated production, automated logistics, that's the future of Uber Eats, too. Now, it doesn't mean when you're an OEM and you make a food computer, it doesn't mean you have to make all the parts, right? And so but but it the future is the same.

Speaker A: Yeah. And so um so that's my point is that is that once you have that framework why is the framework important? It's because it tells you what the future's going to be.

Speaker B: Yeah. It's correct and it also it's also compelling. Like it's interesting once you start seeing things like by the way I built with my team like 500 cloud kitchens facilities around the world. Like you could just look at it as like why are you building kitchens which of course I would I sort of would go around all the time and tell people I'm just your local humble k uh I'm just your local humble kitchen builder you know just sort of messing around.

Speaker A: But like when you're hiring it's like why does this matter? Yeah. Oh, that's right. It's a food computer. Yeah. But once So, it's a mix of it's telling you where the future's going and it's pointing the way towards where the interesting things are and it's helping you describe this in a way to really top quality talent who now can see what you see and can get excited about it.

Speaker B: Yeah. And and there are there's another kind of interesting thing which uh we went through when we were understanding the business which is unlike in a computer where you have storage and that storage kind of becomes obsolete over time in the physical storage world in real estate if you have the computer optimizing the storage the storage becomes more valuable. So you build the food computer and the storage is essential to deliver the end service, you know, particularly before there's OEMs and everybody knows there's a food computer available, but that food computer multiplies the value of the real estate. So it's it's weird. Imagine a computer that multiplied the value of its storage. Uh I I guess it's a little like in AI, like if you've got data, all of a sudden data be has become valuable.

Speaker A: Yeah. Uh in a way that it wasn't really before. Well, or you think of it this way. We could go to a data center. That's real estate. Yeah, right. How much h how many how many tops are now happening at a data center today versus 20 years ago?

Speaker B: So, and how much value is coming out of those tops, right? So, the value of a data center in terms of what it provides society is going up over time dramatically. And there's a lot of happy data center owners right now because of it. No doubt. Yeah. No doubt. my friend Rob Roy.

Speaker A: Yeah, shout out to Rob. Yeah, we'll get him on soon. So, speaking of, you know, painting this vision to talent and just talking about where the future is going, talk more about the emerging category that Adams sits within you're calling industrial AI.

Speaker B: Yeah. So look, I I did a a vision letter when we launched Adams that outlined sort of vision for like physical AI, where we sit in it. um and even went into like what a physical AI stack is and it's really in some ways I it was like it was philosophy about where the technology world in the in the in the tech industry in the physical world where it's going to go. But what I didn't do was get to the brass tax and sort of when you look at okay well there's software there's bits that are affecting how atoms what happens to atoms like how they're assembled where they go what function do they do in the physical world um we basically we started I'm all over the place right now cut edit But um we wanted to create we wanted to create an easy way to understand what it means. And I would I said okay Adam's mission physical automation to transform industries. You're like okay okay kind of gets me there but what does that mean exactly? Well, it means we take entire industries and that are ripe for automation and AI and in doing so that these are physical industries and in doing so just completely transforms them

Speaker A: in a sense you've had one idea like the Uber and Adams Adams is the evolution of Uber in a sense in that you kind of said okay we're the Cisco of the physical world. Um, and then you're like, well, what about the other parts of the physical world?

Speaker B: And you built that that you extended that vision into the computer and now you're adding the parts. Um but the computer is around an industry. Yes. So we make computers for industries. Yeah. Those computers are right. That's a that's an important kind of distinction. They're industry specific computers, but generalized networks in some sense. Yes. So you go, okay, why are we doing transport? Well, because you've got to have wheelbase for robots.

Speaker A: Okay, cool. But like actually what it means is every industry is moving things. There's some movement of things eventually and you must have wheelbase as part of what they do if you want to automate full stack that industry as an example. But transport itself is an industry too. Yeah. But maybe a horizontal one versus a vertical, right?

Speaker B: Yeah. Peter Teal a decade ago, you know, famously, you know, sort of talked about how we've had so much progress in bits, but not in atoms and because of regulation or for whatever reason, it was just easier in bits and Yeah. Here we are and we're finally yeah get into it in a real way.

Speaker A: Well, and it's like I think the entrepreneurs that are coming up since the Uber time are not scared of regulation the way the bits Yeah. Well, that was a breakthrough in a large sense that you made. Yeah. And so what it means well, then they've been trying to regulate bits lately. [laughter] Yeah. Totally. But these go together because it's like once the bits start controlling atoms in the physical world, then the regulators are in the game big time. Yeah. And because that's generally how regulation works.

对物理世界的思考与工业革命的平行性

Speaker A: 这关乎我们的物理世界。而且这几千年以来就是这样。真的，当然是几百年。所以嗯，一旦你进入了物理世界，你就觉得监管是个东西，然后你说好吧，在过去我们见过类似的东西，如果你开始研究第二次工业革命，那么卡内基、洛克菲勒、弗里克这些人之间有很多平行之处，你只需要看这个列表>>福特>>福特那些家伙在那巨大的快速变化时刻要面对的。

Speaker B: 政治气候非常相似。是的。新经销商和现在的那些对工业家的完全仇恨并没有区别 [笑声]。

Speaker C: 比如弗里克，我记得他是我认为卡内基的伴侣，这关乎钢铁以及如何大规模加工钢铁。我相信这个故事是准确的。我们姑且说这是神话，可能是真的，但我相信它是真的。他一个无政府主义者在工作时闯进了他的办公室。这发生在大概二十世纪初或十八世纪末。

Speaker A: 是啊。他闯进办公室，枪击了他脖子。哇。他缝好了伤口，那天又回去工作了 [笑声]。有人会去查一下吗？我相信它是真的。但有人应该核实一下事实。但你会感受到正在发生什么以及那些家伙是如何应对的。想想今天的一些企业家以那种方式运作的人。不是所有人都那样做。

Speaker B: 那些家伙不一定都是那样运作的。埃隆·马斯克，但亚当斯那帮人是那样运作的。绝对是吧？所以第二次工业革命，如果你看看那些人物以及他们要面对和经历的逆境。

Speaker A: 嗯，顺便说一句，他们也不是耶稣。所以他们也有自己的缺点。嗯，他们很了不起。但有一个国家。是的。对于现在即将到来的工业时代有什么非常有趣的平行之处？如果我们把我们自己的书卖出去，我们会称之为亚当斯时代。

Speaker B: 是啊。是的。有一个书实际上非常有趣，关于工业家如何建造战争机器并赢得我们第二次世界大战的，没有疑问。还有他们得到的抵抗。它叫做《自由锻造》（Freedoms Forge）。你知道，就是那个比尔·纳德森，他是个完全的狠角色，弄明白了福特的大规模生产，然后和亨利·福特争论过，去了雪佛兰或者去通用汽车，然后像那样>>建造了雪佛兰之类的东西。然后又去为政府工作拿一美元>>并工业化这个国家。而他们被媒体和所有人一样，在最基本的事情上被战斗起来。比如，如果我们告诉他们关闭汽车制造，而且当时美国雇用了20%的人口>>如果我们告诉他们关闭汽车制造来制造坦克和其他东西，那么我们就得给他们一些钱。所以我们可以给他们成本加7%。而你知道，这听起来非常合理，读到书上就会知道他们会在战争中获利，就像在每一位埃莉诺·罗斯福那里一样，每个人都只是为了杀死这个家伙。

Speaker A: 但那种抵抗与我们今天数据中心的情况非常相似，以及那种情况，我认为纽约州州长刚刚禁止该州的的数据中心。政治上有很多平行之处，我只会称那为改变的抵抗。是的。而且自然变化非常快。是的，没错。所以你知道，我有点认为最重要的事情是寻求有价值的未知真理。但如果你擅长找到有价值的未知真理，你就在创造改变。那么你就知道别人不知道的事情，这意味着你可以做别人做不了的事情。你在这方面做得越好，变化就越快。而变化越快，自然就会做什么。这被称为对变革的抵抗。是的。所以你必须弄清楚如何让巨大的时间进步来压倒对变革的抵抗。你还必须尽可能地建立信任，这样你就有更多的倡导者而不是对手。

Speaker B: 这就是这种动态。我希望在工业方面说的一件事，非常难做到。每个人都喜欢进步。他们无法忍受变化。是的。这两者是同时发生的。所以嗯，关于工业人工智能，我的整个愿景笔记是物理AI和理论的东西，它非常学术和理论，我想说我想要得到一些实际的、砖头税的东西。工业AI基本上就是这个软件、传感器、机器人、机械的堆栈，它自动化了一个行业，我们一次一个行业地把它拿过来，它就变得更加真实和清晰了。你进入物理AI，你会想：“哦，所以你在做人形机器人。”我可能会想，“不，不，我们是那些非人形的人。我没有问题，但那不是我们做的。”你会想，“哦，你做一些军事方面的吗？”我会说，“不，[哼声] 那也不是我的事。”你知道，这感觉非常清晰地说明了我们是谁，以及我们正在追求什么。

Speaker A: 说到这一点，一个非常有趣的点是，我们完全忘记了如何做某件事。在很大程度上，我们曾经是世界上最好的。我们教会了世界如何制造。而现在我们基本上已经忘记了作为另一个国家（比如埃隆·马斯克）之外的国家如何做到这一点。如果你需要一个知道如何制造的人，你字面上必须从埃隆那里弄来他们。是的。我们要重新学习那件事。实际上，那的开端就是数据中心。从很大程度上说，这是一个制造业问题，你知道，涉及到冷却和电力，而且你需要建立自己的电力以及所有那种东西。

Speaker B: 而且，有那么多的抵抗来自那些多年来一直抱怨所有制造业工作都在消失的那些人。嗯，他们回来了 [笑声]，但我们不想要他们。所以这就是这个故事之所以如此艰难的原因，以及这种叙事。是的。感谢上帝，仍然有一些地方欢迎数据中心。是的。

Speaker A: 是的。联邦系统不是一件很棒的事情，因为它有某种竞争。州之间。是的。这真的很有趣，这种运作方式。否则我们就会变成欧洲。是的。

Speaker B: 好了。所以我们是私下谈论的，你提到当你开始做Uber的时候，你知道你和那些选择与你合作的人一起工作。现在你处于一个不同的位置了。你有更多的选择。你一直在潜行发展。是的。现在你正在这个你的故事出来。告诉我们你在这里建立什么样的团队。人们如何提供帮助？

Speaker A: 嗯，听着，我们只是把我们追求的行业数量乘以了三。所以 [哼声]，这有点像一个东西。而每一个都是数万亿美元的机会。你知道，你看，我以前有一些很棒的人。你知道，说这个有点好笑，但当你让某个人赚取几亿美金的时候，很难再雇他们了。所以，嗯，我从来没有成功雇过有钱人。是的。所以，就这样吧。你知道，但是，但是你知道，团队就像埃米尔·迈克尔现在国防部副秘书长，但他是我在做史诗级交易和战略举措方面最右手的。如果这有意义的话，我需要下一个埃米尔·迈克尔，比如一个企业发展、商业开发主管，一个可以建立一个鼓舞人心团队的团队，一个激励人心的团队作为例子。嗯 [清了清嗓子]，我们正在为总法律顾问的市场做准备。

寻找合适的领导者和行业机遇

Speaker A: 我们正在寻找一个能驾驶霰弹枪（shotgun）的人，而且确保我喜欢走在最前线。我们应该离前沿只有几英寸的距离。这做得很对。嗯，然后当然，我需要我的采矿业务的首席执行官。

Speaker B: 是的。我需要建立全方位的技术领导力，涵盖自主性、重型机器人技术，而且我们总是有很多人不断涌入，但那些能够激励团队超越自我并创造奇迹的顶尖领导者是存在的。嗯，所以无论你身在何处，作为一名企业家，人才竞争始终是核心。而且，当你把行业规模扩大三倍时，你就回到了主流之中。因为我们之前一直处于隐蔽状态，我们不是在主流里。我们一直在挨家挨户地推销（cold calling）所有人。我认为我们现在重新回到外面是一个美好的事情，我们可以让人们了解我们的身份、我们的目标，我可以开始组建能够公开展示自己并向人们展示我们所做伟大工作的团队。

Speaker A: 如果你现在加入，你将同时受益于你所学到的所有课程以及你在云厨房和当然还有Uber之前证明过的东西。所以几乎是二十年了，但时间足够早，前景是巨大的。是的。而且能够做一些超级有意义的事情，我的意思是，拯救孩子们不让他们在矿井里工作。嗯，基本上让每个人都能吃到很棒的食物，就像而不是吃超健康的食物一样，这能给人们争取时间。

Speaker B: 是的。是的。嗯，同时还能省钱。是的。而且省钱。是的。是的。这是一项非常重要的使命。是的。所以我们正在玩得很开心。这是美好的时光。是的。这是一个很棒的收尾。好的。谢谢你。太棒了。谢谢大家。