Buy-In from the Right People

I think in terms of the go to market side, you have to take it in like in this case, you.

Have to take it in different phases.

First is just make sure that you.

Can get the buy in of the right people at the right organizations, that this can make a meaningful difference.

It's all about reaching the right people. 99.999% of people at automakers would have absolutely no freaking clue what they're looking.

At when they're looking at a point cloud off of some LiDAR prototype.

But if you reach the right person, like as was the case for example.

Back in like 2015, 2016 with Volvo, which is one of our lead partners and customers who actually had a LiDAR expert that was on board the team.

He went up to Portola Valley, took a look at the point cloud in the car and he literally fell out of his chair the second that he saw that. When you have the context, it's like, wow, this really can make a huge difference. And then you get those champions and.

Sponsors that have that vision for you with companies that you'd like to work with and partner with.

And that's really, really important along the way. Otherwise you will just get lost in.

The noise, you know, you won't be able to grow.

So I think that's the most important part, at least in the B2B context.

That, you know, B2C is a little bit different.

But that's sort of the world that.

We'Ve been operating in.

And for founders that wrestle with whether to go after smaller enterprises where they can iterate more quickly and get some type of deal quickly versus the bigger OEMs that are going to take forever and could kill the company. Do you have any guidance on which you should choose?

Yeah, start smaller and then work your way up.

I mean that's honestly the best.

I mean, don't get me wrong, like.

If someone like at the table say hey, like let's go sign a billion dollar deal tomorrow and they're a big.

Company or small company, but like, doesn't matter, Just take like focus on be.

Customer obsessed, you know, as the, as with the Amazon philosophy always is. But you know, but like listen, if you have a choice to stuff there too, I mean, naturally I think it's going to work out that you're going to work with smaller enterprises because they're more nimble.

But you guys actually started pretty big with Volvo early on. Or did you have smaller companies in advance of Volvo?

You know, we did, you know, I think, you know, we had even technology.

Companies that were that were there earlier on.

I mean, I guess they weren't that.

Much like, I don't know, the Ubers of this world or, you know, or whatever. Like, there's probably, there's a bunch more that I probably can talk about.

But, you know, I think Volvo, though, but it's all relative, right? So, for example, in the world of automakers, like, Volvo is, sure, they're, they're, they're an automaker, but they're actually a smaller. No, no, they're actually, they're actually a.

Smaller automaker, you know, so.

Yeah, so, for example, like, you know.

In the, in the Mercedes case there too, they're, you know, they're, they actually produce like, you know, three times the volume of what, for example. So.

But, you know, I think. So it's all, it's all relative. But you know, they're also like a massive, massive company too. So you have to be able to work through it, but it's a risk.

Reward thing and if you can make it happen, then it makes a huge difference.