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I've seen this movie before. Andy is a visionary. He left Apple to found Danger which was one of the "genesis" products that led to the smartphone era. (1) H

by aresant 11y ago

I've seen this movie before. Andy is a visionary. He left Apple to found Danger which was one of the "genesis" products that led to the smartphone era. (1) He made the next huge leap with Android and almost failed until Google showed up to help him fully execute his vision under their stewardship. After Android became a very mature business in its own right what to do with the visionary founder? The article states that "Page is interested in robots" - can you imagine if Larry Page came to you and said "Hey how about you literally build robots all day. You could be Tony Stark and here's $100m to get you started. We'll change the world!" It's a hard to turn down offer, Rubin accepted and tried to recapture the magic pursuing somebody else's vision. But it's damn tough to be a founder / visionary under somebody else's thumb, especially when you're set for life financially. That's a story that never works out, but is played out again and again in technical acquisitions as big organizations attempt to find a place for founders. (1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danger_(company) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danger_(company) (2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Google https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio...

Sven7 11y ago
Moral of the story - there is no great need to keep relying on the same visionary. I like Regina Dugan's ATAP (DARPA) model of kicking the visionary out after 2 years.
trevyn 11y ago
I'm pretty sure Andy wouldn't consider robotics "somebody else's vision."
dmix 11y ago
Innovation seems to work best under threat of poverty. Because it tends to push founders to build things with a least some near-term practicality that is of economic value to some party. If you have $100m in the bank then the only primal motivation for a goal "of creating consumer robot technology by 2020" is articles like this one by BusinessInsider questioning what value has been created. The arbitrary deadline set at the beginning (2020) could be another motivation, but that could probably be pushed back and the project refinanced because hey innovation is hard.
- dman 11y ago
  How do you explain the Apple phenomenon in that case? They keep cranking out new product categories in spite of having ample money in the bank.
  - angersock 11y ago
    Apple is not a useful datapoint for anything. It's a company storied and large enough that you can't really learn anything from it. Nobody else is like Apple, except Apple.
    - dman 11y ago
      I dont agree that there is nothing others can learn from Apple. At one point in time, Sony stood apart much in the same way that Apple does now.
  - tennysonmach 11y ago
    You can build teams that buck the trend, but it requires strict discipline and high-up leadership that's willing to cannibalize existing profit. Apple doesn't hand new product categories 100$ million, they make them prototype repeatedly until they have something worthy of investing full resources in.
- jessriedel 11y ago
  I'd say "promise of future status and material rewards" rather than "threat of poverty". The threat of poverty strongly induces very risk adverse behavior. One of the necessary conditions for a country to produce a silicon valley is that they have sufficient material wealth that poverty isn't a risk. But yes, once you have the money and the fame, you probably won't be as driven.
  - antsar 11y ago
    I can't comment on how it works for companies as a whole, but it has been shown that individuals are more strongly motivated by the desire to avoid a loss than the desire to gain something. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion
bishnu 11y ago
I think this is a little reductive. Andy Rubin left Google to form a startup incubator that's focused on hardware and robotics (playground.global). He definitely has interest in it.
- aresant 11y ago
  I researched playground before writing my comment and stand by it. their current investments are in wifi hardware, social connectivity, and brain-based neural networks. (1) Going from buying 6 very specific hardware robotics companies to a diverse base hardware incubator raising money with LPs is a different flavor than being "the" robotics guy which was clearly Larrys vision for him (1) https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/playground-global/investments https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/playground-global/in...
siavosh 11y ago
One counter example to this is John Carmack which seems to still be flourishing after leaving his companies id Software and Armadillo Aerospace, and now working for Oculus/Facebook. Exceptional entrepreneurs and visionaries by definition are exceptional.
dunkelheit 11y ago
I can't quite get what you are saying. Do you imply that Andy was more interested in other things than in autonomous robots and so he left? Or that he didn't like Page as his boss? Or that he grew complacent with all this money in the bank and decided to relax?
nostrademons 11y ago
I think there's something to this, but I would put it in terms of Ben Horowitz's blog post "Ones and Twos": http://www.bhorowitz.com/ones_and_twos http://www.bhorowitz.com/ones_and_twos Larry Page is a One, Andy Rubin is a One, Eric Schmidt was a Two, and Sundar Pichai is a Two. I think Jonathan Rosenberg is a Functional One for product (he left when Larry became CEO, before I had a good sense of Google internal politics, and seems to have come back now that Sundar is CEO of Google). Marissa Mayer is a One. Make of that what you will - IMHO it explains much of the executive changeover in a couple different Silicon Valley tech companies over the last couple years.

by aresant 11y ago

Sven7 11y ago

Moral of the story - there is no great need to keep relying on the same visionary. I like Regina Dugan's ATAP (DARPA) model of kicking the visionary out after 2 years.

trevyn 11y ago

I'm pretty sure Andy wouldn't consider robotics "somebody else's vision."

dmix 11y ago

Innovation seems to work best under threat of poverty. Because it tends to push founders to build things with a least some near-term practicality that is of economic value to some party. If you have $100m in the bank then the only primal motivation for a goal "of creating consumer robot technology by 2020" is articles like this one by BusinessInsider questioning what value has been created. The arbitrary deadline set at the beginning (2020) could be another motivation, but that could probably be pushed back and the project refinanced because hey innovation is hard.

dman 11y ago
How do you explain the Apple phenomenon in that case? They keep cranking out new product categories in spite of having ample money in the bank.
- angersock 11y ago
  Apple is not a useful datapoint for anything. It's a company storied and large enough that you can't really learn anything from it. Nobody else is like Apple, except Apple.
  - dman 11y ago
    I dont agree that there is nothing others can learn from Apple. At one point in time, Sony stood apart much in the same way that Apple does now.
- tennysonmach 11y ago
  You can build teams that buck the trend, but it requires strict discipline and high-up leadership that's willing to cannibalize existing profit. Apple doesn't hand new product categories 100$ million, they make them prototype repeatedly until they have something worthy of investing full resources in.
jessriedel 11y ago
I'd say "promise of future status and material rewards" rather than "threat of poverty". The threat of poverty strongly induces very risk adverse behavior. One of the necessary conditions for a country to produce a silicon valley is that they have sufficient material wealth that poverty isn't a risk. But yes, once you have the money and the fame, you probably won't be as driven.
- antsar 11y ago
  I can't comment on how it works for companies as a whole, but it has been shown that individuals are more strongly motivated by the desire to avoid a loss than the desire to gain something. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion

bishnu 11y ago

I think this is a little reductive. Andy Rubin left Google to form a startup incubator that's focused on hardware and robotics (playground.global). He definitely has interest in it.

aresant 11y ago
I researched playground before writing my comment and stand by it. their current investments are in wifi hardware, social connectivity, and brain-based neural networks. (1) Going from buying 6 very specific hardware robotics companies to a diverse base hardware incubator raising money with LPs is a different flavor than being "the" robotics guy which was clearly Larrys vision for him (1) https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/playground-global/investments https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/playground-global/in...

siavosh 11y ago

One counter example to this is John Carmack which seems to still be flourishing after leaving his companies id Software and Armadillo Aerospace, and now working for Oculus/Facebook. Exceptional entrepreneurs and visionaries by definition are exceptional.

dunkelheit 11y ago

I can't quite get what you are saying. Do you imply that Andy was more interested in other things than in autonomous robots and so he left? Or that he didn't like Page as his boss? Or that he grew complacent with all this money in the bank and decided to relax?

nostrademons 11y ago

I think there's something to this, but I would put it in terms of Ben Horowitz's blog post "Ones and Twos": http://www.bhorowitz.com/ones_and_twos http://www.bhorowitz.com/ones_and_twos Larry Page is a One, Andy Rubin is a One, Eric Schmidt was a Two, and Sundar Pichai is a Two. I think Jonathan Rosenberg is a Functional One for product (he left when Larry became CEO, before I had a good sense of Google internal politics, and seems to have come back now that Sundar is CEO of Google). Marissa Mayer is a One. Make of that what you will - IMHO it explains much of the executive changeover in a couple different Silicon Valley tech companies over the last couple years.