The future is here, it’s just not evenly distributed — I co-wrote the following text with an AI using OpenAI’s text completion API. My prompt: “write a short blog post about riding a robotaxi in San Francisco.” Results: Riding a robotaxi in San Francisco is an experience like no other. Robotaxis are vehicles that are autonomous and self-driving, and their…

The industry needs a clear line between industrial R&D and pure R&D — Times are tough for startups that are not cash flow positive. It’s especially tough for startups in the self-driving industry since they are still years away from generating revenue, let alone becoming cash flow positive. These startups have burn rates that run into billions of dollars per year. I have…

Q3 2022 — This is a short round up of the news that caught my attention during Q3 2022, enjoy reading and let me know what else you think was significant! Deployments — AV products that consumers have some access to The most important event in Q3 2022 was a flurry of activity on both vehicle platform and geographic expansions. After their first…

I’m on vacation in Europe and a major question friends are asking me is how will AVs navigate narrow and complex rural roads such as those found in many old European villages? Even human drivers find driving in these environments difficult and have to make many judgement calls, so how…

For global entrepreneurs interested in manufacturing — Since childhood, I was fascinated with the work of a factory owner. The Persian word for factory owner is “کارخانه دار”. Its literal translation is “house of work owner”. The process of managing a manufacturing business that takes some inputs and (mass) produces valuable items for millions of people has…

For global entrepreneurs: background material and thoughts on Silicon Valley — I’ve had the privilege of learning from different cultures by living, studying and working in Tehran, London, Paris, and Vancouver. Since 2015, I have travelled frequently between London and Silicon Valley to improve my startup investing skills. I plan to travel more and learn more. Many tech ecosystems still compare…

Part of Conscious Leadership series — I first read the book, The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership: A New Paradigm for Sustainable Success, by Jim Dethmer, Diana Chapman and Kaley Warner Klemp in early 2015 when it wasn’t even available on Kindle yet! At the time, I had just gone through a painful process of shutting…

Q1 2022 — Some key questions remain about self-driving cars: When will they hit the road? How safe is safe enough? Should we call them self-driving or autonomous vehicles? Is regulation holding the technology back? Is the capital being invested going to see a return? When will they hit the road? According to a recent McKinsey survey, a timeline…

Most cited reasons for disengagements — I think a mixed quantitative/qualitative analysis of the reasons for disengagement yields better insights than the miles between disengagements. As this Forbes article writes, “how many miles each team is driving between disengagements has not been that useful because there are too many variations in what a team needs to…