Kathy Hannun, founder of Dandelion Energy, explains why Google X's incubation criteria favor software moonshots like Waymo over operationally complex hardware businesses.
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“The issue was, you know, X really looks for a very specific type of project. Their ideal project is something like the self-driving car, Waymo, where you have to invest a lot of money up front to create, ideally, something software or software adjacent, like a self-driving car, and then once you solve that technical problem, All the other problems that you'll have in starting the business are very minor compared to that central problem.”
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AssertionContradicted
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AssertionSupported
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Insight
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AssertionSupported
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AssertionNot checkable as stated
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Insight
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