Alex Rodrigues

Founder & CEO, Embark · 1 appearance on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

Alex Rodrigues is the founder and CEO of Embark, a developer of self-driving trucks operating automated freight routes. He has raised over $47 million in funding from investors including Sequoia, Data Collective, SV Angel, and Y Combinator.

13statements → 8claims → 4claims resolved → 50%fully supported → 3.77/5average certainty → 2.23/5average debate potential → ≈4.0/5argument clarity, estimated → 3said about them ↓

2 supported 0 partly supported 2 contradicted 2 not yet assessed 2 not checkable as stated how the 8 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

6 predictions · 2 assertions · 2 opinions · 3 insights · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 8 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 4 are resolved, 2 are not yet assessed, and 2 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Alex argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Prediction Held up

Rodrigues: Autonomous vehicles will be fleet-owned public utilities, not private assets

“The people who will own this will be fleets, and they'll be available sort of on the push of a button.”

Alex Rodrigues Jul 5, 2019 ▶ 14:31 20VC: Why Self-Driving Is Still Under-Hyped in The Medium To Long Term, What Will The Ownership Mechanism Be Both In Physical Assets & Data and How To Assemble A World Class Exec Team As A Young Founder with Alex Rodrigues, Founder & CEO @ Embark

Their most notable contradicted claim

Prediction Didn’t hold up

Rodrigues: Embark will power the first autonomous truck fleets within five years

“Yeah, the next five years, I want to see our technology powering the first self-driving trucking fleets in the world. So call me up in five years and we'll be doing something that humanity has never done before.”

Alex Rodrigues Jul 5, 2019 ▶ 32:03 20VC: Why Self-Driving Is Still Under-Hyped in The Medium To Long Term, What Will The Ownership Mechanism Be Both In Physical Assets & Data and How To Assemble A World Class Exec Team As A Young Founder with Alex Rodrigues, Founder & CEO @ Embark

How they sound: speaking style how? →

255 words/min while actually speaking · 0.4 um and uh per 1k words

No argument clarity score for Alex Rodrigues: no usable question→answer exchanges on raw tape (a fair score needs 8+). We do not score a sample that small. Roundtable and news formats yield far fewer direct exchanges than interviews. Their coarse estimate from 24 exchanges on the produced feed is ≈4.0/5, shown at half point precision because the sample is small and produced tape scores higher.

Measured by listening to 5,299 words across 1 episode, but every recording we have of Alex Rodrigues is the aired feed, and an editor cleaned that audio before release. Some of the hesitation was cut before we ever heard it, so read these as floors: the true rates are at least this high. These are measurements of speaking style, not scores. How it's measured →

How the interview went all their pushback → series average →

Across 1 rated episode:

host pushback ▾ 4/10

pushed back at the host ▾ 3/10

setup questions received 70%

host pushback: the hardest questions Harry asked, tap to play ▶ 11:22“Can I dive in and ask, is that value creation or is it value transferal from the existing incumbents to the new generation of semi-autonomous?” ▶ 17:10“Will Embark be the destruction or the salvation of the existing truckers?” ▶ 24:17“Where do you see the biggest commonalities in terms of the mistakes that young founders make?”

when Alex pushed back ▶ 13:53“So it's actually five hundred billion.” ▶ 24:26“I think that the actual thing in my mind is really a question of what are the mistakes that immature founders make, and so maybe it's a bit self-serving of me to reframe it this wa…”

What they said13 What others said3 Episodes1

Everything Alex Rodrigues said on 20VC that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Prediction Not checkable as stated

Rodrigues: Autonomous truck fleets could create $6 trillion in enterprise value

“3.8 trillion dollars of trucking revenue worldwide. New next generation self-driving powered trucking fleet are able to earn even 10% margin and get even like a conservative 16 X PE ratio. You run those numbers together and we're talking about six trillion dol…”

Alex Rodrigues Jul 5, 2019 ▶ 10:25 20VC: Why Self-Driving Is Still Under-Hyped in The Medium To Long Term, What Will The Ownership Mechanism Be Both In Physical Assets & Data and How To Assemble A World Class Exec Team As A Young Founder with Alex Rodrigues, Founder & CEO @ Embark

Opinion

Rodrigues: Cruise and Zoox are undervalued compared to AV's potential

“And like cruise is worth nineteen billion. Uber ATG is valued at seven. Zoops is valued at two. And so it's like huge, huge amounts of money, but not actually close to the 600 that you could sort of support when you look at what the long term value will be.”

Alex Rodrigues Jul 5, 2019 ▶ 13:15 20VC: Why Self-Driving Is Still Under-Hyped in The Medium To Long Term, What Will The Ownership Mechanism Be Both In Physical Assets & Data and How To Assemble A World Class Exec Team As A Young Founder with Alex Rodrigues, Founder & CEO @ Embark

Prediction Didn’t hold up

Rodrigues: Embark will power the first autonomous truck fleets within five years

Opinion

Rodrigues: FIRST Robotics was better preparation for Embark than university

“Yeah, I stand by that a hundred percent. I think First Robotics was by far the most useful preparation for running Embark”

Alex Rodrigues Jul 5, 2019 ▶ 5:08 20VC: Why Self-Driving Is Still Under-Hyped in The Medium To Long Term, What Will The Ownership Mechanism Be Both In Physical Assets & Data and How To Assemble A World Class Exec Team As A Young Founder with Alex Rodrigues, Founder & CEO @ Embark

Insight

Rodrigues: Trucking is an order of magnitude larger than the advertising market

“So it's actually five hundred billion. So we like put that in context when technology came for advertising, it created two almost trillion dollar companies. And when we're talking about self-driving, we're talking about technology coming for an industry that's…”

Alex Rodrigues Jul 5, 2019 ▶ 13:53 20VC: Why Self-Driving Is Still Under-Hyped in The Medium To Long Term, What Will The Ownership Mechanism Be Both In Physical Assets & Data and How To Assemble A World Class Exec Team As A Young Founder with Alex Rodrigues, Founder & CEO @ Embark

Prediction Open · timeframe Jul 2034

Rodrigues predicts widely deployed self-driving vehicles in 10 to 15 years

“In 10 to 15 years, we'll see widely deployed self-driving vehicles.”

Alex Rodrigues Jul 5, 2019 ▶ 10:02 20VC: Why Self-Driving Is Still Under-Hyped in The Medium To Long Term, What Will The Ownership Mechanism Be Both In Physical Assets & Data and How To Assemble A World Class Exec Team As A Young Founder with Alex Rodrigues, Founder & CEO @ Embark

Prediction Held up

Rodrigues: Autonomous vehicles will be fleet-owned public utilities, not private assets

“The people who will own this will be fleets, and they'll be available sort of on the push of a button.”

Prediction Not checkable as stated

Rodrigues: Autonomous vehicles will prioritize privacy over data monetization

“I think that you'll see a lot more privacy in this next wave of technical development because maybe in similar to how hardware businesses have an easier time where they're selling you a product and so They don't need to also get your data.”

Alex Rodrigues Jul 5, 2019 ▶ 16:19 20VC: Why Self-Driving Is Still Under-Hyped in The Medium To Long Term, What Will The Ownership Mechanism Be Both In Physical Assets & Data and How To Assemble A World Class Exec Team As A Young Founder with Alex Rodrigues, Founder & CEO @ Embark

Assertion Supported

Rodrigues: US truck driver shortage is driven by youth rejecting long-haul lifestyle

“America has a huge driver shortage right now. And so we're in a very different position in our relationship It's currently facing this huge shortage. And this is really being driven by the fact that younger people aren't getting into trucking because they don'…”

Alex Rodrigues Jul 5, 2019 ▶ 17:15 20VC: Why Self-Driving Is Still Under-Hyped in The Medium To Long Term, What Will The Ownership Mechanism Be Both In Physical Assets & Data and How To Assemble A World Class Exec Team As A Young Founder with Alex Rodrigues, Founder & CEO @ Embark

Assertion Contradicted

Rodrigues: Average US trucker is 55, reducing AV labor displacement risks

“The average trucker is 55 today, I think you'll see a lot of things able to line up where we're coming in and filling roles that are presently empty instead of roles that are presently full.”

Alex Rodrigues Jul 5, 2019 ▶ 20:00 20VC: Why Self-Driving Is Still Under-Hyped in The Medium To Long Term, What Will The Ownership Mechanism Be Both In Physical Assets & Data and How To Assemble A World Class Exec Team As A Young Founder with Alex Rodrigues, Founder & CEO @ Embark

Insight

Rodrigues: Hiring and firing are young founders' biggest weaknesses

“If I had to pick like specific things that I think young founders frequently don't understand how to do, I would say hiring and firing are probably the top.”

Alex Rodrigues Jul 5, 2019 ▶ 25:32 20VC: Why Self-Driving Is Still Under-Hyped in The Medium To Long Term, What Will The Ownership Mechanism Be Both In Physical Assets & Data and How To Assemble A World Class Exec Team As A Young Founder with Alex Rodrigues, Founder & CEO @ Embark

Prediction Open · timeframe Jul 2039

Rodrigues: Autonomous localization and perception tech will enable home robotics in 10-20 years

“I think that a lot of the technology that's been developed in terms of localization will then end up working in the home. You have all these cool perception pieces that we'built, allowing us to move around and allowing us to see and interact with things. Reall…”

Alex Rodrigues Jul 5, 2019 ▶ 29:02 20VC: Why Self-Driving Is Still Under-Hyped in The Medium To Long Term, What Will The Ownership Mechanism Be Both In Physical Assets & Data and How To Assemble A World Class Exec Team As A Young Founder with Alex Rodrigues, Founder & CEO @ Embark

Insight

Rodrigues: Make clear crisis decisions by framing problems as advising a friend

“Yeah, I think it's easy to get wrapped up in the emotions of it, but I try to step outside myself and think, if this was a friend of mine who was having this problem, and they came to me and said, hey, here's the situation, what do you think? And sometimes I'l…”

Alex Rodrigues Jul 5, 2019 ▶ 31:18 20VC: Why Self-Driving Is Still Under-Hyped in The Medium To Long Term, What Will The Ownership Mechanism Be Both In Physical Assets & Data and How To Assemble A World Class Exec Team As A Young Founder with Alex Rodrigues, Founder & CEO @ Embark

The other half of the tape: Alex Rodrigues's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 3 times in 1 episode on 20VC. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Pat Grady 3

Every mention by year

mentionsepisodesper episode tap a year for its mentions

2019 3 mentions in 1 episode

Appearances (1)

Episode	Date	Speaking time
20VC: Why Self-Driving Is Still Under-Hyped in The Medium To Long Term, What Will The Owne	Jul 5, 2019	22m

Alex Rodrigues

The record, in short

Their most notable supported claim

Their most notable contradicted claim

How they sound: speaking style how? →

How the interview went all their pushback → series average →

Every mention by year

Appearances (1)

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