ETL Speaker Series: Austin Russell, Luminar

Welcome Stanford and YouTube communities to the Stanford Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders seminar brought to you by stvp, the Entrepreneurship Engineering center in the School of Engineering at Stanford and basis, the business association of Stanford Entrepreneurial students. Today we are thrilled to have Austin Russell here to ETL. Austin is the 27 year old founder and CEO of of Luminar. How many people have heard of Luminar? Oh, fantastic. Okay, so as you guys, as many of you already know, Luminar is a multibillion dollar, publicly traded company that makes LiDAR sensors, hardware and software. Sensors. Sensors for the automotive industry. LiDAR, as you know, is an amalgamation of two words, light and radar. It is using photonics and optics for 3D visualization and analytics and intelligence. Now, before I give Austin's formal introduction, let me explain why I am so excited to have Austin here with us today. As you guys may know, the essence of entrepreneurship, the definition of entrepreneurship comes from Harvard Business School professor Howard Stevenson. He's generally the one that people use when they're citing academically. And he defines entrepreneurship as the pursuit of opportunity without regard for resources controlled. Or said another way, it's about pursuing opportunity unbridled by constraints where really the vision is your currency and your energy source to overcome obstacles that might be in your way. And true entrepreneurs can unlock locks and overcome challenges that others can't. And they're usually driven by a vision that transcends the obstacles in front of them. For me, Austin is a quintessential modern day entrepreneur. And it's not just because his pursuits are entrepreneurial. It's because his pursuits are deeply contrarian. And in the pursuit of that, the entrepreneurship side stands out in even starker relief. So let me just set the stage for that as I introduce Austin. Austin grew up in Southern California.

In Irvine or Newport. Irvine.

Yeah, exactly, near Irvine. And actually started Luminar while he was in high school. When he was 16. 16 or 17. Yep, yep, 16. Then he gets admitted to Stanford, an honor that many of you can relate with deeply. Comes to the farm, but drops out sort of three to six months in to Stanford. He gets a thiel fellowship for 100k and he decides to stop out of Stanford. That alone is a momentous decision. I think many of you can understand the gravity of that. But what's more is that Austin goes all in, into one of the most unsexy spaces at the time. Okay, so he decides to pursue optics and photonics in 2012. So he's not stopping out to go after a sexy area that is sort of A foregone conclusion of success. He's not going to start a crypto company or even a software company. He's doing hardware and he's doing deep tech hardware. Okay? It's classically the things that any mainstream VC would tell you to run for the hills and avoid. He also decides to do not just hardware, but it's capital intensive hardware. His first product with his first vision is going to cost in the tens of millions of dollars. It's not just a couple hundred thousand dollars to create an MVP or a white paper. There are deeply entrenched competitors. So I'm sure you guys are all familiar with the Google cards with those flying buckets, you know, of LIDAR sensors. Apple's working on this and he decides to go head to head with them and he's 17 and he decides to drop out of Stanford. He doesn't have a PhD, let alone even a bachelor's degree. You fast forward nine years later, in 2021, he's raised $450 million, the company has gone public, and he has retained 33% ownership of the company. Just as comparison, if you look at other software companies or other young founders like Aaron Levy from Box, who did a classic software enterprise viral company, he has 5% of equity when he goes public after having raised similar amounts of money. And so not only has he built something that is deeply disruptive, he's also done it in a way where he's also retained significant ownership. So how did he do it and how did he overcome the challenges and obstacles that many of you may have confronted along that journey? Well, those questions and more hopefully we will answer in the next hour. So everybody please welcome Austin. So Austin, let me give the floor to you. First of all, is there anything that you want to explain to people that don't know Luminar about what Luminar does?

Well, I mean, from what you said, it sounds like a horrible idea. I don't know why anyone in their right mind would stay within a mile. No, but, but yeah, I think you give a little bit of the overview there too. Obviously it was quite a journey, you know, being able to get to get point. But you know, in terms of the whole concept around Luminar in the first place was to be able to create a new kind of, you know, breakthrough ground UP system for LiDAR, you know, which is substantial light detection ranging. It's basically sort of the eyes of the autonomous car that sends out laser pulses in the environment to know exactly how far away things are. Measuring the speed of light you know, guys are familiar if you're, if you're familiar. But basically what we had to do was create something that would be for production vehicles that consumers could be able to utilize. And there's a lot of different contrarian, as you said, that's a lot that we had to make along the way. But the ultimate goal and what we were able to achieve was to be able to build something that could dramatically enhance the driving experience, enhance the driver as opposed to replacing the driver, and be able to work with now the majority of major global automakers to enable next generation safety and, and autonomous capabilities on their next generation vehicle lineups. So yeah, working with automakers is not easy, but it's very incredibly rewarding when you're able to succeed at that. And that's really where I think we have an opportunity and are fortunately having the ability to change millions of lives along the way. The adopters of these vehicles, as it gets out there more and more so. But basically for the first time I think we're seeing this transformation in the autonomous vehicle space from all R and D into actual real production cars. And we're effectively spearheading that. And again, the important part is that it's not just about the self driving part, it's also about the safety part and the holistic mission there is, and we can talk at some point about some of the longer term vision, but the mission there is to be able to dramatically improve collision avoidance capabilities on vehicles, which sometimes people take for granted. But the reality is that the problem has never been worse, where more and more people, more and more cars are getting into more and more accidents, even despite all the technology advancements that have happened on vehicles over the past couple of decades. So that's what we're really looking to be able to turn around and solve one of the leading causes of death globally and suffering. So it's an important part of it as well.

And you articulate that in a vision statement. I want you to share what your vision statement is and can you share how early on in the journey you crystallize that vision statement and what recommendations you have to other founders in terms of how important it is to articulate a vision and when they should put focused attention on that?

Yeah, absolutely. And I would say the most recent iteration of this, and this is from, you know, coming from a few years ago. Basically we have this 100 year vision for what's laid out. And the 100 year vision is to save as many as 100 million lives and 100 trillion hours of people's time out on the road over the next hundred years and every single thing that we do as a company all adds back up towards that vision. And I think it's just really important of you're going to have amazing days as an entrepreneur. You're going to have horrible days that you wish you didn't exist. And you're going to have to go always back to that holistic mission and meaning for not just yourself, but that whole team around what are we actually doing? What's inspiring in terms of the greater purpose around what we're building and why it's there. And I think the more inspiring of a holistic mission that you can have, the better talent that you're going to be able to attract, the more impact you're going to have. And I think just, frankly there's going to be just a lot more satisfaction with everything that you do. But you know, it doesn't always have to start out so, so, so grandiose. It can even just be as, you know, I mean, the first part is just make the best light on, make the best technology, you know, you can have. I mean, even that in itself was ambitious enough because you said we're basically competing with like, you know, the Googles and Apples and every major automaker and every major tier one and other folks there. But then, you know, at some point you just have to keep building and building and building on top of that until you can kind of have this bigger picture holistic mission that everything can roll up under and everything that you do. And I think identifying that as early on as possible, whatever that may be, is absolutely critical to the success of a new company that's looking to get great talent and up against incumbents that just don't have that same kind of direction.

So I just want to underscore that. So even at the very beginning you did have, I don't know if you articulated it as a vision, but you had a focus statement that was critical. Is that right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think like it was, it was that then it was, you know, make autonomy safe and ubiquitous. And then, you know, we ultimately crystallized it to that hundred year vision.

But even when you were a Stanford student, you were about to drop out, even at that stage of the company.

You had a. Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely, 100%.

And so can we, can you take us back? So I want to ask the question that's sort of the elephant in the room for all of our aspiring entrepreneurial Stanford students is what advice would you give to the Stanford students that are wrestling with whether or not they should drop out of Stanford and pursue something entrepreneurial, how do they know if it's the right decision or the wrong decision?

That's a good question. And the reality is that there is no single right decision or single wrong decision for everything. And I think it's the same thing that even Peter Thiel said when he was first convincing me or some of the other Thiel fellows that he joined with in dropping out is that if you know that timing is important in terms of pursuing a journey or an idea or a concept or something that you have, it's, you know, it's not going to wait for you. Like, it's not going to. Sometimes you just really have to capitalize on opportunities that are there. That, like, if the reality is that if I had waited until, you know, for example, like in this specific case, like graduated, let's say, I probably would have had. I probably would have like a. Probably a Ph.D. probably right around now, you know, in terms of what we're building with graduate from this field. And it would be way too late to try and pursue anything in this field. Like, it would already be completely dominated by a host of other players. So sometimes timing is very important. The other part is just I think you have to be able to succeed in a few different dimensions and a few different personality traits. And I think there's three very specific things that have to intersect at the same time, and that's curiosity, drive and passion. All three of those things have to come together at the same time. You're missing any one of those things. You can't be successful as an entrepreneur. So I think that. But when that does come together and it's something that you really believe in, and frankly is, like I said, other people believe in and your customers believe in too, or will believe in for that matter, then there's really no reason why you can be successful, independent, like you can be at school, you can not be at school. That's, that's all, that's all good. But I think on balance I will say that Stanford is, you know, one of the, realistically the, you know, foremost at probably being at the forefront of all this and encouraging the entrepreneurship and the right kind of environment to be able to foster exactly that. So I think like, probably of any academic environment that is like, generally good for fostering that kind of thinking and mentality. Like, it's certainly here.

And so just to make this clear, and how are you feeling? When you made the decision to drop out, was there Fear. Did you have any fear about that decision? Was there gravity in that decision, or did it feel pretty easy and natural?

No. Super easy and natural.

Super easy and natural. There was no consternation.

Not, Not. Not at all.

Austin's dad's in the audience. And your parents didn't say son? I don't.

Yeah, yeah, that's a different one. Yeah, my dad is in town here, too. I'm looking at it. That's. Yeah, it was. It was definitely different. Different kind of discussion that's. That's happening there. I think the thing is, is that if you don't, you need to have, like, an extreme amount of conviction, you know, in whatever you're doing. Like, if you don't get over that barrier, you know, you're. You're. You're not going to be able to make it. So you. So you really. You really have to be confident in what you're doing to be. To be successful, frankly. Even if. Even if you're, like, blissfully ignorant and confident in there, too. If you have enough confidence that. Then it's amazing what you can do.

So let's talk about how you source that conviction, because it does feel very clearly that you had this clear conviction that you would miss out on the opportunity if you didn't take action then. But so many people at the time, if you were looking at doing something that was deeply technical, it's going to cost tens of millions of dollars to build. How did you have enough. What was required for you to put the dots together to say that the timing is now for me to focus on optics and photonics in 2012, to have the conviction to actually go all in.

So I would say for optics and photonics generally. And by the way, I think the timing actually still is now. I think the timing is for the next couple of decades, for that matter. I'm a firm believer that. And I sort of saw a theme and it had a thesis that what electronics was to the 20th century, optics and photonics and optical electronics would be to the 21st century in terms of just major innovations and iterations and problems being solved at a global scale that can deliver massive amounts of value, and saw that as also like the clearest path to be able to make sort of a global change and also make a lot of money while doing it at the same time. So I think when it comes down to it, being able to identify broader themes is a really interesting way and just sort of these trends that. And it's not going to be the stuff that everybody's Talking about, frankly, a lot of times, like if everybody's talking about it, then it's probably like over.

Like.

You'Re going to have a lot of competition. You're going to have a lot of different people focused on things. Like you want to find niches to be able to start off with that are specific. Now in this case, like optimotonics in and of itself a niche. But it's different in the sense that for example, like most major, I mean, talk about universities, like, like most major universities, like you have like electrical engineering programs, you have computer science programs, you have other things like photonics programs. You don't. Like. There's no. 99.9% of schools don't have. You can't graduate as an undergrad in photonics. That's not even a thing. Actually, Stanford's one of the foremost experts on that. More generally, in terms of the level of talent that's had here and even then that's almost pretty much entirely the graduate school. So it's just interesting to see those dynamics. And the important part is, I think is seeing interdisciplinary connections and just being able to actually ensure that it's applied to the real world and that there is a practical application of that kind of product or technology or whatever it is that you're building as opposed to just doing say, research for the sake of research, which I think is still a little bit of a struggle with the academic community, which nevertheless is extremely important for the fundamentals of everything that's done. But I think you can all benefit from more entrepreneurship.

Okay, so it sounds, so it sounds like you connected the dots between the potential and the markets. It captured your passion, your curiosity and your drive. And so that was enough for you to commit your one precious life to this at Stan when you're to drop out and go full time on this all in. Yeah. When was the moment?

In other words? YOLO.

YOLO. YOLOOXO. BACK.

BACK WHEN that was. That term was cool. Yeah.

Dating myself younger generation. But when was the moment then that you actually knew that you would succeed? When that the product actually was going to realize the vision that you had mentally and be a market success. And how did you.

I mean, I sort of like, maybe it sounds kind of crazy. The title is I had a lot of conviction that it was going to be successful. To make it work, I think, you know, for what it's worth, like as an entrepreneur, you sort of have to take the mentality that like failure is not an option, um, you know, and Apollo style, where no matter what you do like, you have to succeed, you have to make this work. So like, if you're going all in on something, you know, you have to, you have to do that in a very, very intelligent capacity. And I think kind of like that, you know that Warren Buffett saying, like, don't put all, don't put all of your eggs in a bunch of different baskets. Put it all in one basket and watch that basket very carefully. So yeah, in this case you have to build and I think I would say probably, I don't know, within the first year of what I was doing there too. I didn't know the full extent of what it could do and what it could ultimately mean by any stretch of the imagination. But I knew that it was valuable, I knew it was impactful. And frankly, when you're in a technology ecosystem and you can build valuable technology, like, it's amazing how much interest you can get from like, you know, from potential, you know, customers, in this case, automakers, technology companies, other stuff. People want to, you know, people want to buy technology from you. People will probably want to even buy your holistic company if it really is that breakthrough. So, you know, if you can build the right breakthrough tech in the first place and get that product market fit, that makes all the difference.

I just want people to get a good feel for the difference between great and good. You're the youngest self made billionaire for a reason. And so I wanted them to understand what does validation feel like when you're in one of these mega unicorns? So I understand it sounds like from day one you had 100% conviction that it was going to succeed, but there was a moment when maybe you could relax a little bit because you had the external validation that was going to succeed. Can you give us any more tactical detail on what numbers you were sensitive to that gave you that validation?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, and, and we, like I said we had raised obviously a lot of capital and other stuff along the way. I mean, I would say though that the true validation never like, you never get 100% true validation like until very, very late in the game, like probably like 10 years in maybe. That's when you get like start to get your true, true validation for it. But I mean the reality is, is that different steps along the way, I would say like the first sort of major iteration of the product of like, you know, the first time when we had everything come together with the lidar, you know, flipped on the switch and everything can actually image, you know, and it can work as you would expect. It to work and you know, your theoretical calculations match up with the real world. Like those are the moments. That's like the mind blowing moments, you know, at the same time it's like the first moment when we came out of stealth mode. We were actually, we had no press, no interviews, no public website, no anything for the first five years of the business that was that.

Would you recommend that by the way? Because it sort of goes against. It's another contrarian move. Most people would say let's fumble towards victory. Iterate. You release and mention and talk and interact with the market frequently so that you get feedback. You went into deep stealth for five years?

Yep.

Was that the right decision?

Absolutely. Like 100%. I mean honestly, like. I think the distinction is that if you. We have jokingly had to say that we had to find 2,000 ways to not build a lidar before finding the way that would actually solve the problem for all these different dimensions and everything of what it takes to be able to make this happen. And you want to do that behind closed doors. Like you want to be able to make sure in a world of where everyone is always over promising and under delivering, like in, you know, the startup aura of hype sphere, like you, there is value in under promising and over delivering or frankly just not promising literally anything at all. Like hence, you know, being deep in stealth mode. But then when you do have that and when you're ready to be able to show it off, I mean, I think it was like literally the first time that we launched out of stealth mode. Next thing you know, you have like just breakneck interest from everything from the customer side to. I mean I think we were, you know, getting these like huge features from like Bloomberg and the New York Times.

And like how do you overcome the criticism which is like the classic customer development trend over the last decade that you know, you want to get outside of, outside of the business, interact directly with your end customers and iterate quickly.

And you can, you can do that.

Too and still be stealth.

You can absolutely. You can do that and still be in stealth.

It's very good.

Just make sure that, you know, everybody has everybody properly NDA'd everybody like make sure you have the right, the right frameworks for things, but you can operate in stealth and do those, do all of those things. Like there's. And in fact I think actually like there's some element, I mean in this case we were, I mean talk about like other unconventional things. Like we were, I had this network of like hacker houses, you know, they call like it was almost, it was very Silicon Valley show esque that I used in part to be able to fund the business. And, and one of them was actually this, this compound on the, on the top of the hill in Portola Valley, actually just what, like 10 minutes up the road here. And, and that was, that was one where it was like, that was actually where we would like live and work out of and just be able to build these kinds of different products and systems. And it was like such a different, it was like you would just enter a completely different universe when you would come into it. And it was almost just isolated from the rest of reality of the dimensions and constraints of what's possible. And it was like you didn't have to worry about any of the noise, didn't have to worry about any of this stuff and you just focus on what you need to do. And that focus part I think it goes back to is definitely critical, but it's all those things that add up that make a difference.

And so I want to dive into some of the creative things that you did because even if you have the conviction, you know it's right, being a 17 or 18 year old kid needing to raise you ended up raising $450 million. But even raising your first money, even if you know that you're right, is a challenge. It's a challenge even for people that have a much deeper pedigree under their belts when they go into VC funds. Can you talk about the creative ways in which you got financing? Obviously the Peter thiel check was 100k. It's great, but it's not enough to build a next gen LIDAR system. And how did you get financing and any unintuitive tactics that you use that you would share with others.

Yep, yep, yep. And by the way, for what it's worth, I think by the time we're, we're done, it's probably well over, you know, a billion and a half dollars in terms of total financing there.

A billion and a half dollars. And can you share what percentage of the company you still own?

Yeah, about a third.

About a third. I think that's unprecedented, you know, in my 20 years of venture. But, but okay, so, so spill. Share the insights on how did a 17 year old kid get your initial funding? Any, any unintuitive tactics or hacks?

There's, there's, there's a lot, there's. And there's a lot of craziness too. Like this is. Oh man. So yeah, first and foremost the reality is, is that raising Money, particularly in the early stages of a business is extremely dilutive. Money is always the most expensive, so to say in the early stages by orders of magnitude. Actually, you know what's really, it's really funny. So I was just there with, actually here we are in the, you know, Jensen Wong auditorium here too just a, a couple hours ago or a few hours ago. Earlier today we announced this big deal with Mercedes alongside Nvidia there too, which was like fantastic outcome and expanding across their whole lineup of vehicles for the next generation technology that we're building on it. And actually was there with Jensen so funnily enough, and was like, oh well, speaking in your auditorium later, hey. So it was pretty cool. And it's so weird by the way too like being here when I was in the audience like 10 years ago, taking a look at some of these talks and other things kind of coming full circle. But the thing that I remember Jensen saying here just a couple hours ago was that the big thing that he wanted to do, the first thing he did when he ipoed was he wanted to buy his parents Mercedes. And I think it was like a $50,000 Mercedes that he ended up buying for it. And he's like, I, that was the most expensive Mercedes ever. Because that now he's like, you did the math. And now that's the equivalent of a $200 million Mercedes, you know, based on the current value of where Nvidia is at. So you know, it goes to show like point is, is that if you, if you believe in a long term growth trajectory, you know, you, you can like money is very, very expensive. But in the early stages, wait, he.

Spent that 50,000 at the beginning of the company, is that.

Yeah, towards the beginning of the year.

Towards the beginning. And he could have put that into.

His like orders of magnitude growth if he held onto it. It's instead of selling that portion of stock or whatever would have been $200 million.

Got it.

Yeah, that was the joke about the $200 billion Mercedes. But the point is that I think early on it's very important to try and be creative and thoughtful about how you finance. And one of the things that the strategies that I took early on is because we had so much conviction in terms of long term value about what we could create. And this I think like safe notes in particular is a certain mechanism of financing that was originally started by Y combinator and proliferated throughout. It was, how do we say, much more niche and much smaller scale there too. Like people would do like $10,000 safe notes, $50,000 safe notes, maybe $100,000 safe notes. The reason for these notes, instead of operating off of traditional equity financings, where people give you a certain amount of money for a certain percentage of the company, was basically you would be able to, in exchange for either getting a higher valuation cap or getting a discount off of a future round, be able to effectively push out when that mark to market is on valuation. And from a discounting perspective, even if you basically are saying ex investor, I guarantee you will get a 30% return by giving you a 30% discount or, or plus or minus or whatever it may be, which, by the way, is. For most investors, those kinds of returns are really good. But if you think that you're going to 10x and grow by 1000%, 30% is completely in the noise. So that's where you can be creative around these things. So we took a mechanism that Normally people raise 100k on, and over the years we raised $200 million on safe notes, which I think I've never heard.

That is obscenely extreme data point, everybody, so. But it's an example of your entrepreneurial thinking.

Yeah. So technically speaking. Technically speaking, we actually, before going public, only ever did one equity financing because it all sort of converged together.

And in that first year, when you're just starting, when the money's the most difficult to raise, how much of it was funded by the Hacker House?

I mean, most of it, I just.

Want people to say. So when did you get your first outside check? Outside of. So you guys understand the Hacker House? He rented a big house, he subleased the rooms and he made a margin off of that. And you also created this community that was also a competitive advantage.

Absolutely, yeah. Yeah. It turns out the ultimate form of due diligence on people is living with them.

So you ended up getting your cash in the Hacker House talent and also tech development.

Absolutely.

Okay.

Yeah. It, like actually got to a point where people were like, so excited to live with like, literally like the, the, the market rate for what people were bidding on for like a closet, you know, I like. Which it was. Was around like $2,500 per month, like for literally like a closet in the hacker. Like, it was, it was crazy. Like, you know, in terms of people were coming up with creative ideas for how can they just. People want to be a part of the community. Like, and it was just wild to see early on just how much of, well, like, literally Wild west type mentality was it. But there was a lot of civility. There to it at the same time. It's not like the movies in that sense.

But that was your cash for the first. How many months was that for the first year? And then you got your outside capital from safes.

Okay, yeah, yeah. And it started to get outside capital as they started compiling that on. And. And I think, you know, as you progress yourself, you can mark up evaluation paths. You can, you know, you don't have to give people as big a discount. You can do other things. But yeah, it makes. Makes a difference. But. But the point is, is that, like, even by shifting out dilution, like a year or two on things, that literally can make all the difference. I mean, you guys are familiar with exponential scales on things. If you like, even slight changes in terms of the timing of when that dilution happens just makes, like, dramatic differences in the total outcome of what can happen from a ownership stake perspective. To the point is that the reality is that most of the time to end up with a 5% stake, for example, by the time you go public, people end up diluting themselves 20 times over. It's actually a lot of new shares that you just have to constantly issue and issue and issue and issue and issue, and that can be very challenging. So the key thing, though, is that it's not just about. And this is a very, very important point, it's not just about the owner. Like, for example, as an entrepreneur, it's not just about the ownership stake that you have. It's about all the other employees that you have. You dilute. Like, yes, you get diluted on something, but if you bring more shares in, you do more financing, more dilution, then it dilutes everybody else along with you. So what you want is to be able to end up in a virtuous cycle of value growth with your employees, rather than a vicious cycle of value growth where you then you have to issue more shares to then make up for that value.

And were the safes capped then, or.

Is it just discounts casually capped and then it was discounted?

That was discounted.

Okay.

That also makes a big difference in the fact I want to make sure that we save room for you guys to ask questions. I'm asking one more question, and then we're going to open it up, which is awesome. You did share about the three cardinal principles that drive you. Curiosity, passion, and drive. I understand that there's another one that you care deeply about, which is oftentimes not talked about, which is generosity. I wanted to give you the floor to talk about that principle. How is that a compass for your actions. And why should other entrepreneurs care about generosity when they're just worried about their survival?

No, it's a good question. I think honestly, when you are initially worried about survival on that too.

You.

Have to think about generosity in a different way than you think about generosity when, when you're at a different stage of business. But I think the generosity part as a just a holistic philosophy goes a long way going back to the mission and the purpose around what you're trying to do. Like the point is, is that there, there is a bigger picture movement of what you want to build and what the impact of this is like. Yes, in theory, the fundamental purpose of any corporation is to, you know, make money. And that is true. And that has to be the case because without money then you can't invest. And without investing, you can't build what you want to build. And if you can't build that, then you can't make the impact. But the point is that is the byproduct, not the end result from what you want to do. And from a first principles perspective, that's very, very important to be able to establish. I think getting people along for that, for example, even early on, getting people along for that journey, making sure that people have equity as part of the company in that journey, as part of the whole generosity concept all the way to. I think when you do have an opportunity to have liquidity and when you do have an opportunity to be able to help others along the way, even outside of the company or operation or whatever you may do in life, I think that can be particularly meaningful. In this case, just not too long ago, had done a donation, in this case of $70 million to the Central Florida foundation, which is part of what is with the local community that we have out in Orlando, Florida, where our headquarters is. But we're able to help both local and global causes all around in terms of being able to make a difference and make an impact. And it's awesome just seeing even everything from helping a housing crisis locally all the way to global scale. We have now ocean trash cleanup robots that are being deployed with other partner programs that are around to be able to prevent and remove the majority of trash out of the ocean by 2050. So there's a lot of really interesting things that can be done that you can also apply creative skills to earlier on. I think the reality is that unfortunately, the vast majority of not just necessarily entrepreneurs, but just people generally probably don't really think around the generosity aspect until they're probably in the last couple of decades of life, maybe sometimes even literally until the exact end. And I think that in part takes away from some of the importance of being able to apply yourself towards these causes and towards what makes a difference in the world more generally. And I think that whole aspect of, in my case, philanthropy is going to be a super important part, not just now for the future. And that again, it applies. It's not just about the capital side of it and money side of it, about giving, but it's also, again, going back to the holistic mission around what you're trying to do and the causes you believe in. And for example, you know, the 100 million lives saved you can do. I think if we, if we accomplish that, you know, that that'll be certainly the proudest achievement that what it could do.

So that's great. Well, let me open it up. I know you guys must have questions, so just raise your hands and then I think the CAs are going to come around. Can they introduce themselves or they cannot because we're on YouTube? No. Okay. They can't even say like they're. If they're okay. Their year or context. Okay. Can they say like if they're an.

Engineer or undergrad or if you can say it even if they can't hear it online, it's fine.

Okay. So if you can, you can just don't say your name, but give Austin context if you're an undergrad or grad, what you're studying, if you know what you're majoring in, and then ask your question. I think there's a question here. And if you just raise your hands if you have a question, we'll come around and get you. There's a question also. There Cas on the, on the side, so you can give them the next one.

Hey, Austin.

I can hear you, but I don't know if YouTube can. It's on.

Hey, Austin. So I'm currently an undergrad and I'm an engineer looking to work at the intersection of software and hardware. And one of the questions I have for you is kind of like, how did you approach, you know, like go to market as like an early entrepreneur? So I'd imagine that as a hardware company, as like a startup trying to sell to some of these automated factors actually be quite difficult and you're going to run into a lot of pushback from these legacy companies. So curious to see how you approach it and how you kind of like iterate your way through. Go to market. Thanks. Yeah, I mean, I think in terms of the Go to market side, you have to take it in, like in this case, you know, you have to take it in different phases. You know, 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, as was the case, for example, back in 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. You know, the second that he saw that. When, when you had 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, let's go sign a billion dollar deal tomorrow and they're a big company or small company, but it 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 of 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 they probably could 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 an automaker, but they're actually smaller. No, no, they're actually, they're actually a smaller automaker. I know, you know.

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. Yeah, 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. That, so you have to be able to work through it. But you know, it's a risk reward thing and if you can make it happen, then it makes a huge difference.

Terrific. Other questions I think we have.

Okay, thanks, Austin, for the many brilliant ideas.

And I work with several early stage companies and what would be your advice when it's really early, low cash to build team and bring other people on board?

I think that's where the extreme efficiency matters. You have to be super scrappy early on. You're going to have to find a way in, one way or another to be able to get people on board with the mission, people on board with the vision. That's where equity can come in handy. You want to be smart about it. You don't want to be too stingy with equity early on in terms of what you can provide at the same time in terms of the opportunity and outcome. But just make sure that the people that you provide it to are going to be there for the long run, like day in, day out, you know, doing absolutely whatever it takes to make the business successful. And if you have those people and can do it right, then that's really all you need. Now I think at the same time, like I said, it's amazing what, you know, even cash constrained, you know, what people can really do when you put your mind to it to get to that next step. But the thing is that you have to make sure that the people that are along with you for the journey make sure you recognize that there's no theoretical world where you can ever get to where you want to go to with the kind of cash constraints and with the constraints that you have. You have to see yourself Taking it a step at a time, visualize the end state, but then break it down into the individual steps. What has to happen for you to go there? What's the best case, what's the worst case? What's the path to really be able to get there? And I think walking people along for that journey early on also makes a big difference in sort of getting them on board. And people are always going to be the number one expense for those types of companies here.

Terrific. Other questions? I think we have one down. Oh, oh, Mandy has one from the YouTube universe.

Yeah.

So we have about 150 people on YouTube and Zoom. So the most upvoted question is if you had to do it over again.

What aspects of your Luminar founder journey would you do the same versus do differently? I think the important part about being an entrepreneur is not getting everything right. You will make mistakes all the time and probably beat yourself up for it. The key thing is you just have to make the right decision more than 50% of the time. That's the key. You do that and you'll be in a good spot. But I think at a general level, A lot of things had to work out obviously very well in lockstep to get, to get to the stage of where we're at. But I would just say also like, emphasis on the right people. I know people talk about it all the time, but cannot be stressed enough. But making sure that you have the right people in the right roles, in the right positions, and the way you structure and set up teams is going to look dramatically different every two years as a growing business. And you have to constantly be rethinking how you're structuring the teams, the level of talent that you're able to get in and attract to the business. And at the same time, I think learning more about like, I would just say, org structures, it sounds kind of boring, but like, just like there's, there's resources now where you can look up work structures of like technology companies and how things are set up. And like ask other entrepreneurs of how they set things up and like how they manage the teams and how they actually, you know, succeed at scaling. I think is, is super important. You know, the reality is, is that like I said, there's always a lot of different steps and a lot of things that you can have done differently along the way too. But I think that is one of those things that will substantially reduce the amount of insanity that you have to go through on a year to year basis if you get that right. And there's some parts that got it right very well. And there's some parts that along the journey that I had to learn.

That's a great way to frame it. It's learning. It's learning. I think we have time for one or two more. There's a question right here. Yes. Hi. Hello. You're on Huron. As a hardware focused tech company in the automotive industry, I'm curious if and how supply chain disruptions during the pandemic affected Luminar and whether you're still feeling those effects given kind of like the long term nature of that technology or the development of that technology. And then additionally, I'm also curious how you view Luminar in this new creation, currently shaping or currently evolving world as it relates to like geopolitics in the tech industry, especially as it relates to sensors as we've seen like recently, over the past year this sort of change on between namely like China and the U.S. yeah.

So I'd say a couple thoughts in general from a supply chain standpoint there too. There's, I think if there's anything that people have recognized over the course of the past couple of years is that supply chains are very important, very critical and cannot be taken for granted. This is a completely different shift in mentality for automakers, for big companies, for everyone alike. And I think fortunately we've been largely insulated from a lot of that stuff given for two reasons. One is sort of the obvious that we're not a at least yet like a Fortune 100 company that produces tens of millions or hundreds of millions of product at this stage that has to worry about some of the larger scale challenges or issues. But I'd say more specifically, given that there's a lot of development vehicles development work, we're really scaling up in some pretty larger scale numbers starting more later on this year or next year or the following year when we're scaling series production with our automakers. But the other part is that made an early bet to be able to be completely vertically integrated from the chip level up. And a lot of the semiconductor shortage challenges that have happened have. Well, I would say just a lot of the supply chain charges that have happened have been around semiconductors. And that's where being vertically integrated at the semiconductor level, where we control that whole side of it, everything. But I actually have three different companies that Luminar owns that are part of this. It's one is Black Force Engineering, the other is called Optic Ration, the other is called Freedom Photonics. And so basically does a processing chip, the indium gallium arsenide receiver chip, and then we have the laser chip for the last one. So having control over that supply chain is definitely very, very helpful. And that's also made a huge difference in sort of weathering that storm. The other part of it is from a geopolitical standpoint, yeah, I would say that there's a lot of the stuff that people talk about generally. I would just say there's always the. An infinite amount of talk about politics, probably way more than there should be for things that don't end up being substantive issues to the real world, at least for these kinds of industries and whatnot. I think the relevant part is that you have to build a global supply chain ecosystem that is available to be able in a cost effective way, provide product to different customers globally, like, particularly for this industry where like some people can get away with just operating something. In the U.S. for example, like automakers are very globally distributed. You know, like you have these major centers in, you know, Germany or Japan or Sweden or China or, you know, around, around the world or wherever it may be. So that's why we actually have our first major series production factory they're building out is in Mexico that we have. That's sort of a more neutral location when it comes down to that. And then we actually will be building out another factory in Asia to be able to support customers there and beyond globally is something that we literally just announced a few hours ago today to support the expanded volume from companies like Mercedes and beyond globally.

So I have to wrap it up, Austin, but thank you so much for sharing, so generously. Thank you everybody for tuning in and coming to this session of the Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders seminar. And please join us next week when we'll have Andreessen Horowitz, general partner, Connie Chan as our special guest. And as always, you can go to Ecorner, Stanford Edu to see all of the material. So thank you everybody. Thank you, Austin.

All right, thank you.