4 ms·

I think there are plently of examples where a lot of innovation came out of already established companies as the other commenter has already mentioned. But eve

I think there are plently of examples where a lot of innovation came out of already established companies as the other commenter has already mentioned. But even leaving that aside, isn't that checkbook the most important part? While VCs are flushed with money and they do invest in companies like Magic Leap, a lot of these projects do require sustained funding through long term which VCs might not have the stomach for. Since you picked Google, take the example of Waymo. It has taken a lot of money and resources poured over a long time to get it where it is today. Also, unlike Tesla they didn't just make a half baked product, market it as self driving and push it to consumers because they needed to keem themselves afloat. SpaceX is competitive today because thankfully it had the blessing of the government and NASA through both tech and money. I wonder if this will be true for all other non strategic projects.

JumpCrisscross 6y ago
> take the example of Waymo Google spent $1.1bn on Waymo [1]. That does not require a trillion-dollar backer and rivals the funding regularly raised in single rounds. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waymo#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waymo#History
- actuator 6y ago
  Well, you are mentioning that in hindsight in 2020. When it started in 2009 and technologies like deep learning were mostly limited to companies like Google and universities, would most investors have went with those high values knowing they won't even have a product 11 years later? 2009 was just 5 years after DARPA challenge and Level 5 self driving was still a moonshot. Also, the wiki article mentions that funding amount to be between 2009-15. I don't know how Google accounts for cost, but would they count the value of shared technology?