Two Years Past Amazon: Return to Silicon Valley

I left Amazon two years ago to get back to Silicon Valley hypergrowth.? Something in the back of my head told me I had to get back.??

I got my first taste of what an office park in Mountain View felt like in March of 1996.? I vividly remember standing outside in the bright sunlight with a couple new friends on a day in the high 60’s standing next to a flowing water feature with the flowers blooming all around and knowing I wasn’t in Boston or upstate New York anymore.??

I had flown out to interview with Netscape.? I knew the world was changing.? If MIT had been the place for a STEM-interested student to be pushed and challenged, Silicon Valley was the place to put that experience into code and systems.? And if there was one place that was going to change the world, it was Netscape.??

Over the next 11 years, I would contribute to Netscape’s rapid expansion as a web portal and then leave Netscape to join a small startup as their 5th employee.? Tellme Networks was formed at the peak of the dot-com boom and was a unicorn in 12 months.? I was working alongside friends from Netscape and MIT and new friends who joined Tellme day in and day out to realize a new vision for cloud-based telecommunications infrastructure.??

If you came to Silicon Valley, you came to change the world.? Not acting isn’t an option.??

We survived the dot-com bubble burst.? We built a $100MM+ ARR business.? After 8 years, we sold to Microsoft.? Strange times when a group of former Netscape executives sell their company to Microsoft, but capitalism trumps old grudges, particularly in Silicon Valley.

Seattle was an amazing respite from the sometimes overwhelming intensity and pace of Silicon Valley and Amazon was on an amazing rocket-ship ride, but it is different when you’re building someone else’s vision of the future, even if it is a future you believe in.? Too often it feels like you’re swinging for a solid single rather than challenged to hit a home run.??

Maybe what was rattling around in my head after 13 years at Amazon was what Steve Jobs admonished when he shared… “Most people never pick up the phone. Most people never call and ask. And that's what separates sometimes the people who do things from those who just dream about them. You gotta act. You gotta be willing to fail. You gotta be willing to crash and burn. With people on the phone or starting a company, if you're afraid you'll fail, you won't get very far.”

That’s the beauty of Silicon Valley.? If you can see the future, your job is to build it.?

Maybe that’s the difference.? Maybe it is just about being in a place where it is ok to fail.? Netscape in many ways failed to deliver the full vision it set out to deliver and yet Netscape is legendary in Silicon Valley.? But in Silicon Valley, it isn’t ok to not bother trying to change the world.? If you came to Silicon Valley, you came to change the world.? Not acting isn’t an option.??

When I first visited Silicon Valley in 1996, I never imagined I’d be starting a robotics company.? Even when I came back to join Scale AI in 2020, I didn’t have that in mind.? But that’s the beauty of Silicon Valley.? If you can see the future, your job is to build it.? I see a new future for robotics where robots work seamlessly in and around humans.? So excited to be building it.??

I’m so happy to be back here.? Silicon Valley is still a special place where incredibly talented young engineers and scientists flock to build world-changing technology. A place where the crazy ones, those who can see and build the future and can paint that picture, are given a chance to bring a team together to do just that.?