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Tim Harris

Founder & CEO, Swift Navigation · 1 appearance on the record.

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

Tim Harris is the Founder and CEO of Swift Navigation, a startup building technology to power GPS-enabled robots and autonomous vehicles. Prior to founding Swift, he held roles in supply chain consulting and corporate strategy.

13statements → 2claims → 1claims resolved → 3.77/5average certainty → 2.38/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated →

1 supported 0 partly supported 0 contradicted 1 not checkable as stated how the 2 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

1 prediction · 1 assertion · 4 opinions · 6 insights · 1 disclosure · every statement was checked. The prediction and assertion are the 2 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 1 is resolved, and 1 names 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 Tim 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

Assertion Supported
Swift Navigation spun out of airborne wind turbine startup acquired by Google
“That company ultimately merged with another company in the space, sold to Google, and we spun out the technology ahead of the Google acquisition.”
Tim Harris Sep 1, 2017 ▶ 2:46 20VC: What Is The Big Lie To Silicon Valley, Why Silicon Valley Is No Longer Optimised For Deep Tech Investing & Why AI Will Lead To More Business Model Innovation Than Technology Innovation with Tim Harris, Founder & CEO @ Swift Navigation

How they sound: speaking style how? →

270 words/min while actually speaking · 6.7 um and uh per 1k words

No argument clarity score for Tim Harris: 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 22 exchanges on the produced feed is ≈4.5/5, shown at half point precision because the sample is small and produced tape scores higher.

Measured by listening to 3,567 words across 1 episode, but every recording we have of Tim Harris 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 55%

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

Opinion
Tim Harris: Uber is a business model innovation, not a tech company
“So the venture capitalists have been investing in mostly business model innovations as a distinction from technology innovations, and those are things like, when you think about it, Uber isn't really a tech company, right? They build a, an app, so they use tec…”
Tim Harris Sep 1, 2017 ▶ 3:45 20VC: What Is The Big Lie To Silicon Valley, Why Silicon Valley Is No Longer Optimised For Deep Tech Investing & Why AI Will Lead To More Business Model Innovation Than Technology Innovation with Tim Harris, Founder & CEO @ Swift Navigation
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Tim Harris: AI will drive more business model innovation than tech innovation
“AI is actually going to drive more business model innovation than it is actually technology innovation.”
Tim Harris Sep 1, 2017 ▶ 4:46 20VC: What Is The Big Lie To Silicon Valley, Why Silicon Valley Is No Longer Optimised For Deep Tech Investing & Why AI Will Lead To More Business Model Innovation Than Technology Innovation with Tim Harris, Founder & CEO @ Swift Navigation
Opinion
Harris: Many LIDAR investors lack necessary technical competency
“There are so many LIDAR companies, and there's, more importantly, there's so many investors who don't really have the competency to understand which LIDAR innovations are meaningful, and really what it even takes to make a LIDAR company successful, right?”
Tim Harris Sep 1, 2017 ▶ 6:28 20VC: What Is The Big Lie To Silicon Valley, Why Silicon Valley Is No Longer Optimised For Deep Tech Investing & Why AI Will Lead To More Business Model Innovation Than Technology Innovation with Tim Harris, Founder & CEO @ Swift Navigation
Opinion
Harris: Silicon Valley startups break unit economics to chase rapid growth
“The big lie is fundamentally around unit economics. What I see out there in the market is people, they go out and they prove product market fit, right? They have a product or they have some business model innovation and it's going to work. The next question is…”
Tim Harris Sep 1, 2017 ▶ 8:46 20VC: What Is The Big Lie To Silicon Valley, Why Silicon Valley Is No Longer Optimised For Deep Tech Investing & Why AI Will Lead To More Business Model Innovation Than Technology Innovation with Tim Harris, Founder & CEO @ Swift Navigation
Opinion
Harris: VCs care more about company size than profitability
“At the end of the day, I think everyone's just going to keep accepting this big lie, because as long as markets still appreciate size over return, they're going to continue to support these types of companies. And if you look at it, proof is in the pudding. Th…”
Tim Harris Sep 1, 2017 ▶ 10:31 20VC: What Is The Big Lie To Silicon Valley, Why Silicon Valley Is No Longer Optimised For Deep Tech Investing & Why AI Will Lead To More Business Model Innovation Than Technology Innovation with Tim Harris, Founder & CEO @ Swift Navigation
Insight
Harris: Deep tech attracts capital because business model innovations lack defensibility
“Now, that said, the deep tech companies, the reason why you see lots of investment in them is because the business model innovation companies themselves are not Not particularly only a few of them work as well. They're not particularly defensible, a lot of the…”
Tim Harris Sep 1, 2017 ▶ 15:09 20VC: What Is The Big Lie To Silicon Valley, Why Silicon Valley Is No Longer Optimised For Deep Tech Investing & Why AI Will Lead To More Business Model Innovation Than Technology Innovation with Tim Harris, Founder & CEO @ Swift Navigation
Insight
Harris: Deep tech startups must partner rather than attempt full disruption
“I think, yes, I think a partnership model is actually more appropriate, because you can't win at everything now. It used to be, the rules have changed, things are harder, so you want to figure out what is the thing that you can do better, and just that thing, …”
Tim Harris Sep 1, 2017 ▶ 18:33 20VC: What Is The Big Lie To Silicon Valley, Why Silicon Valley Is No Longer Optimised For Deep Tech Investing & Why AI Will Lead To More Business Model Innovation Than Technology Innovation with Tim Harris, Founder & CEO @ Swift Navigation
Insight
Harris: Deep tech cost curves should tie to Moore's Law
“For deep technology, you need to understand what aspects of the bomb they're looking to come down, right? I think a lot of it tends to be external and dependent on startups. I see this a lot. Oh, there's a lot of companies innovating around X, Y, or Z, and tho…”
Tim Harris Sep 1, 2017 ▶ 11:58 20VC: What Is The Big Lie To Silicon Valley, Why Silicon Valley Is No Longer Optimised For Deep Tech Investing & Why AI Will Lead To More Business Model Innovation Than Technology Innovation with Tim Harris, Founder & CEO @ Swift Navigation
Insight
Harris: Deep tech startups must build discrete saleable products during R&D
“If you can build a business that is sustainable from a revenue standpoint, and then grows from a revenue standpoint in deep tech the same way that you would in any other business, you can still build that deep technology, but you have to fill it, figure it out…”
Tim Harris Sep 1, 2017 ▶ 13:13 20VC: What Is The Big Lie To Silicon Valley, Why Silicon Valley Is No Longer Optimised For Deep Tech Investing & Why AI Will Lead To More Business Model Innovation Than Technology Innovation with Tim Harris, Founder & CEO @ Swift Navigation
Insight
Harris: Startups beat incumbents by picking new directions and out-accelerating them
“In reality, you can only really win by picking a new direction, and then accelerating towards it faster than anyone else. So everyone else is running in another direction at a very high speed, and what you want to do is pick a new point on the horizon and Acce…”
Tim Harris Sep 1, 2017 ▶ 17:23 20VC: What Is The Big Lie To Silicon Valley, Why Silicon Valley Is No Longer Optimised For Deep Tech Investing & Why AI Will Lead To More Business Model Innovation Than Technology Innovation with Tim Harris, Founder & CEO @ Swift Navigation
Insight
Harris: Corporate partnerships fail unless tied to the core business
“What you need out of a partner is some value that you can offer them on their main product line, is what I personally believe, because a lot of them have these innovation departments, and they want to explore lots of other things, but politically, they just ca…”
Tim Harris Sep 1, 2017 ▶ 19:34 20VC: What Is The Big Lie To Silicon Valley, Why Silicon Valley Is No Longer Optimised For Deep Tech Investing & Why AI Will Lead To More Business Model Innovation Than Technology Innovation with Tim Harris, Founder & CEO @ Swift Navigation
Assertion Supported
Swift Navigation spun out of airborne wind turbine startup acquired by Google
“That company ultimately merged with another company in the space, sold to Google, and we spun out the technology ahead of the Google acquisition.”
Tim Harris Sep 1, 2017 ▶ 2:46 20VC: What Is The Big Lie To Silicon Valley, Why Silicon Valley Is No Longer Optimised For Deep Tech Investing & Why AI Will Lead To More Business Model Innovation Than Technology Innovation with Tim Harris, Founder & CEO @ Swift Navigation
Disclosure
Swift Navigation CEO Tim Harris has no technical background
“I'm not, I don't even have a technical background myself, but I can stand up there and I can explain GPS and the subtleties of high precision.”
Tim Harris Sep 1, 2017 ▶ 8:18 20VC: What Is The Big Lie To Silicon Valley, Why Silicon Valley Is No Longer Optimised For Deep Tech Investing & Why AI Will Lead To More Business Model Innovation Than Technology Innovation with Tim Harris, Founder & CEO @ Swift Navigation

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
20VC: What Is The Big Lie To Silicon Valley, Why Silicon Valley Is No Longer Optimised For Sep 1, 2017 14m
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