David George
๐ค SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
Stop overthinking it.
And my team, we had built all this analysis and why it would take forever and the economics were going to be strained.
So we compromised and we made a small investment in Waymo at the time.
And I was excited to be a part of it.
I just thought the returns would be stretched
Fast forward five years later, at the end of 2024, they raised money again.
And at the end of 2024, they had cars on the road.
And it turned out, to your question, consumer preference slapped you in the face.
Anyone who was in San Francisco who had the choice was taking a Waymo.
But at that time, we had the chance to invest more money and it was working.
So we took that opportunity to write a much larger check and invest.
By the way, one of the really interesting things about Waymo, so you said you're in San Francisco, you see it everywhere.
How many cars do you think they have on the road in San Francisco?
10,000.
They have 400.
Wow.
So it turns out if your cars are driving optimal routes and fully utilized and not running into some of the problems that drivers have, it's pretty good.
So you can have a lot of coverage.
There are something like 50,000 Lyft drivers in the San Francisco Bay Area and Waymo overtook them in market share.
My style and taste is very much, if I were to summarize in one line, I like to pay fair prices for great companies.