00:31:36 · Karol Hausman, Mario Gabriele
[00:31:36] S0: Yeah. That's that's exactly right. And I think there's maybe two points there. One is that we made the same mistake in robotics. We wanted to write all of these rules. We thought that if we... If only we had enough of these rules, the robots would be able to follow them and do the right thing. But kind of like we said about the inner game of tennis, you know, you can't just write all of the rules. You kind of have to do it. And there is some underlying structure, but you can't just fully put your finger on it of what it is. You need to learn it from data. And I think people thought about it similarly in in language as well. They thought that, you know, if only we could write all of the rules Yes. That would be enough. But it turns out that there is, you know, trillions or billions of these rules, and sometimes we can't fully even express them in language. You just need to learn them. And if you do, then you would be able to follow them even though you still don't understand what fully... What what they are. So I think we're learning this lesson over and over again. [00:32:33] S1: And so, you know, you have this almost third eureka moment for yourself where the technology has, you know, taken yet another jump. By that point, it sounds like you have most of the the physical intelligence cofounders around the table. But how did you sort of pull the last few members aboard and decide to make that leap?
00:32:54 · Karol Hausman
[00:32:54] S0: Yeah. I think at that point, it started becoming clear that it could be possible. And if you worked on something for so long, at that point that was basically my entire adult life, fifteen years or so. And for a long time you thought that there was no solution to this problem. There were some times where it felt a little bit more tangible, but it never felt like it could actually be solved. And then you have this moment where for the first time you see the light at the end of the tunnel. Like maybe, just maybe, if we do everything right, if we combine it with Internet knowledge, if we scale it up, if we if we do all of the pieces that need to be done, it might work. If you see that light at the end of the tunnel, you you can't unsee it. You you want to do something about it. And at that point, it became clear that the way to to accomplish this is to create an organization whose sole purpose is to solve physical intelligence, is to solve this problem. It can be solved as, like, priority number 20 in another organization. The only reason to to exist for this organization would be to solve physical intelligence. So then the next question is how do we actually do it and what are the what are the the conditions to to make it happen? And what became clear immediately is you need to have truly the best people, truly the best researchers to make it happen. Because the second best team in those areas doesn't doesn't really work with a company like that. You need to have the top top people in the field. So that one actually wasn't that hard because we were already working with each other for a very long time. So I happened to be friends with the best people in the field already. So it was just a matter of making sure that we all want to do it and we're ready for it. The other condition was that you need to get access to a lot of funding. It would require very long term bet and investors that are fully aligned with this taking some time and this starting as research company and not being oriented around revenue or around the short term revenue. So it was the second requirement, and the third requirement was just like build a very very... Build an incredible company with the right focus, with the right people, with the expertise in all the other areas that we didn't have expertise in, hardware operations and and things like this.
00:35:13 · Karol Hausman, Mario Gabriele
I spend most of my time figuring out these two points. How do we... How can we find the right investors that can that can really help us in this in this adventure, and they're fully aligned with how we want to do this? And then how can we find the the right people to to fill all the missing pieces? [00:35:32] S1: How did Lachy Groom join the crew? Because he's obviously had a very impressive career as an operator, as an investor, but isn't someone who one would automatically think, you know, this is someone who's gonna devote the next chapter of their life to robotics. So I didn't know Lachy before we started thinking about starting a company.
00:35:52 · Karol Hausman
[00:35:52] S0: But then... And he should tell the story rather than me, but I believe what was what was happening is that he was in... He's been investing in that point for a few years. And as long as he's been investing, he always thought that he doesn't wanna be investing forever. He wants to find something else that he can fully devote himself to and he wants to build things. And the one area he was always fascinated by was robotics. And he was seeing over the past few years that there was a lot of innovations happening there. There was some kind of moment. Robotics was having its moment. And particularly, he was impressed. He was seeing over and over papers coming from Chelsea Finn and Sergey Levine's lab, as well as our papers from Google. So he he talked to a lot of a lot of his friends that if ever Chelsea, Sergey, or Karol or anybody from those teams are thinking of starting a company, please connect me to them. I would at least want to invest or at least talk to them. So that's when we got introduced by by a friend, and we pitched to Lachy as a way to to to have him invest. And at the end of that pitch, it became clear that he would like to do much more than just invest. This is the opportunity he's been looking for for all the years he's been investing, and he really wanted to to to dive in. So then the next step was us trying to get to know each other as quickly as possible, spend as much time together as as we could. And and then as we were doing that, it also became clear that this is the person that that I've been looking for that could help us on on the on the commercial side, on fundraising side, on operation side, kind of one
00:37:32 · Mario Gabriele
[00:37:32] S1: of the the missing links that we really needed. Were there certain philosophical alignments that you needed to to find in someone who you hadn't worked with before? What were the sort of, you know, even beyond maybe the tactical pieces, the the traits that you you saw in him that made you feel like, yes, this is someone I can can bring into this very trusted group where, you know, we've already built all this history together?
00:37:57 · Karol Hausman
[00:37:57] S0: There were there were a few. I think maybe the the biggest one was that he immediately got it. At that point, were a lot of investors or other people that I talked to, other business people that I talked to, and it was very hard to get that idea across, that idea that you have to do research right, you need to build the technology first and you can be distracted by short term revenue. And if we do do this right, this is gonna completely change the world and it's going to be most valuable business of all time. But you need to have the patience to let let us do it the right way rather than short circuit that path and and kinda cap the ceiling. And he got it, I think, within like the first minute. So that was very reassuring. And then on top of that, what what I really liked about our conversations was that in in many of those previous conversations with with other people, I always felt that, like, I'm the one pushing the ambition of this project of how far it could go if... Set it up right. And I think this was the first time where I had somebody else set up even higher ambitions for us. That was really cool to see because it it felt like we're all pushing in the same direction. He will make us even better and more ambitious. So I was really glad to find someone who will make sure that we are not gonna... That we're not gonna short circuit this. He's fully aligned in doing this in the biggest way possible. He makes us more ambitious, and he's the person in the areas that we really need more expertise. And he'll make sure that those areas are fully aligned with how we want to develop this company. So it was it was basically a no brainer at that point.