10 Minute Text

Getting the most out of life (while a robot drives you around): With Kyle Vogt

Mar 22, 2023, 8:06am EDT

Everyone in tech knows Kyle Vogt, the wunderkind co-founder of Twitch, the video game streaming service that Amazon bought for $1 billion. He went on to create Cruise Automation, the self-driving car company that sold to General Motors for $3.5 billion. He didn’t just pocket the cash and go. Vogt continued to run cruise and has actually made the cars work. They’re offering paid taxi rides in San Francisco, sans drivers. I texted with Vogt for ten minutes while he zoomed around the city in one of his cars, and learned a few interesting things about how fast the technology is progressing and what he would start next (If he were forced to leave Cruise).

Reed Albergotti said:

Hey Kyle, it’s Reed Albergotti with Semafor. Still up for texting for ten minutes?

Kyle Vogt said:

Yes! Let’s do it.

Reed Albergotti said:

Awesome. Thanks for doing this and my first question is, where are you right now and can you send me a selfie?

Kyle Vogt said:

I’m at our R&D office in SF about to hop in a self-driving car. I do weekly rides to make sure I’m happy with each version of software that our customers will experience.

Reed Albergotti said:

Do you get around basically everywhere now without a driver? Or do you still drive yourself every now and then?

Kyle Vogt said:

At nights I almost exclusively use Cruise in the city. Great for a ride home after a dinner out. Even works in the rain.

Reed Albergotti said:

I saw my first self-driving car (with no safety driver) in the wild yesterday in the middle of the day just cruising along in traffic. (It was a different brand, can’t remember the name), but it made me wonder: Why aren’t these in every city now?

Kyle Vogt said:

They will be soon. It took us almost 8 years to get this technology ready for prime time. Last year we were running 2 cars. Now over 150 run every night. You can imagine how fast it scales from here. We are rapidly building more cars!

Reed Albergotti said:

I know you’re using detailed mapping technology to help these cars along. How many people do you have working on mapping? And how much work is it to keep those maps updated?

Kyle Vogt said:

Mapping helps us scale to initial cities faster, but it won’t be required in a couple years. It’s not really much of a constraint for us, even now. Now that we have great safety performance it’s all about iterating on the overall customer experience. Better pickup and drop off, reliability, and more fun. Those are the things we want to nail as we scale.

Kyle Vogt said:

Not too much work to keep them up to date or build maps. Mostly done by machine learning these days.

Reed Albergotti said:

Wow, I imagined a warehouse full of cartographers or something!

Reed Albergotti said:

Have you ever had a really rich person ask if they can buy one of your cars for their own personal use?

Kyle Vogt said:

Yes. But this isn’t just for rich people. Once you realize a driverless car can basically be your personal assistant - drop off your kids at school, pick up your dry cleaning, etc… I think people will see their car in a very different way. Your car will be worth far more to you than something that just gets you from A to B.

Reed Albergotti said:

Can you name names?

Kyle Vogt said:

Nice try

Reed Albergotti said:

Lol. Ok, I’m fascinated by the fact that you created Twitch (video game streaming) and you’re now making self-driving cars. If you had to start something new from scratch today, what would be? (And you have all the resources you want).

Kyle Vogt said:

Great question. Working on Cruise is the best job I can imagine. But if I was doing something new it’d be biotech. I think the intersection of ML and bio is where we’re going to see the greatest positive impact on humanity. I think we’ll be able to address most diseases and other quality of life issues. Cruise will give you back an extra hour or two of your life every day, so the next focus will be living the best we can and making the most of the time we’ve got.

Reed Albergotti said:

Love that answer. And great way to tie it into Cruise! Although we know most people will just be streaming Twitch in the back seat 😊

Kyle Vogt said:

Hah Isn’t that exactly what it means to get the most out of life?

Reed Albergotti said:

Wait, are you in the car yet or still waiting?

Kyle Vogt said:

Reed Albergotti said:

Nice!

Kyle Vogt said:

Reed Albergotti said:

I think I’ve taken you a little over ten minutes. I really appreciate this!