Waymo

includes Waymo One, Waymo Driver

14 statements across 4 episodes · 3 bullish · 1 bearish · 4 people on the record · first statement Apr 9, 2023 by Shweta Shrivastava · said 80 times in 15 episodes since 2023 · across every show →

Mentions by year, the whole family

brought up most by Lenny Rachitsky (43), Kevin Weil (7), JM Nickels (6), Shweta Shrivastava (4), Sachin Kansal (4), Edwin Chen (4), Eoghan McCabe (3), Nick Turley (2)

tap a year for its mentions
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0510202320242025episodes it came up in
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2025 24 mentions in 10 episodes 2 per episode
2024 28 mentions in 4 episodes 7 per episode
2023 28 mentions in 1 episode

every mention, scene by scene, with the transcript →

Everything said about Waymo, oldest first

Apr 9, 2023
Assertion Supported
Shrivastava: Waymo calls unbuckled passengers and displays sensor perception inside vehicles
“The, if they're not wearing the seatbelt, the writer support would call them, right? So then they know, okay, there's a human. That they can reach out to if they have an issue, they can look at the monitor in the car, right? To understand what the car is seein…”
Shweta Shrivastava Apr 9, 2023 ▶ 13:40 Product lessons from Waymo | Shweta Shrivastava (Waymo, Amazon, Cisco)
Apr 9, 2023
Disclosure
Shrivastava: Waymo slows down on steep San Francisco hills for comfort
“We realized that for driving in the, in sort of the slopes or the gradients you know, the street with inclines in, in San Francisco, there are many of those, right? The human brain is trained to, or the human drivers are sort of, you know, subconsciously, they…”
Shweta Shrivastava Apr 9, 2023 ▶ 15:05 Product lessons from Waymo | Shweta Shrivastava (Waymo, Amazon, Cisco)
Apr 9, 2023 neutral
Insight
Shrivastava: Autonomous vehicles must balance safety with assertiveness to make progress
“Hey, you can be very safe if you're not moving at all. That's not what we're building, right? We need to make sure that the riders get to their destination on time. So it has to be making, it has to be appropriately assertive and be making the right progress.”
Shweta Shrivastava Apr 9, 2023 ▶ 18:39 Product lessons from Waymo | Shweta Shrivastava (Waymo, Amazon, Cisco)
Apr 9, 2023 positive
Disclosure
Shrivastava: Waymo will expand autonomous testing in Los Angeles throughout 2023
“We have done initial fully autonomous testing in LA and we're going to be expanding in LA through the rest of the year.”
Shweta Shrivastava Apr 9, 2023 ▶ 35:48 Product lessons from Waymo | Shweta Shrivastava (Waymo, Amazon, Cisco)
Apr 9, 2023
Insight
Shrivastava: Autonomous vehicles require a fundamentally higher MVP bar due to safety
“The concept of MVP, right, which is so Why be popular in the SaaS product management world or product management world in general has a whole new meaning here at Babel when you work on a product like this, because safety is, is, you know, top of mind for all o…”
Shweta Shrivastava Apr 9, 2023 ▶ 10:19 Product lessons from Waymo | Shweta Shrivastava (Waymo, Amazon, Cisco)
Apr 9, 2023
Assertion Partly supported
Shrivastava: Waymo engineered for full autonomy from inception, unlike Tesla
“Since you mentioned Tesla, you know, I just want to clarify that it's a different system that we're building, right? Which is for Waymo, we started by solving the problem of fully autonomous driving without a human driver at the wheel from the get-go, right? I…”
Shweta Shrivastava Apr 9, 2023 ▶ 11:51 Product lessons from Waymo | Shweta Shrivastava (Waymo, Amazon, Cisco)
Apr 9, 2023
Insight
Shrivastava: Autonomous vehicles must learn location-specific social driving norms
“A lot of driving is also social norms, right? It's if you, if you're in a particular, you know, section in San Francisco, you know, maybe it's okay for pedestrians to cross even when they don't have a walk sign, right? Another city, another intersection might …”
Shweta Shrivastava Apr 9, 2023 ▶ 7:31 Product lessons from Waymo | Shweta Shrivastava (Waymo, Amazon, Cisco)
Apr 9, 2023 neutral
Assertion Supported
Shrivastava: Waymo vehicles cannot drive in snow yet
“In terms of the blocker, I would say the technology is there, but it still needs improvement, especially, you know, we were not able to drive in snow yet, right? Something that we have to tackle in future.”
Shweta Shrivastava Apr 9, 2023 ▶ 22:16 Product lessons from Waymo | Shweta Shrivastava (Waymo, Amazon, Cisco)
Apr 9, 2023 positive
Assertion Supported
Shrivastava: Waymo models detect pedestrian gaze and body orientation for intent
“We have you know, deep learned models that can understand what the other road user's intent is. So stuff like, you know, which way the pedestrian is looking, right? Or what is their body orientation? Because that could tell you know, what, which way they're he…”
Shweta Shrivastava Apr 9, 2023 ▶ 6:41 Product lessons from Waymo | Shweta Shrivastava (Waymo, Amazon, Cisco)
Oct 6, 2024 positive
Opinion
Nickels: Waymo has largely solved self-driving in complex environments like San Francisco
“I would say what's really interesting about Waymo is they've largely solved the self-driving piece, right? However they've done that. Right. And we, and in a complex environment like San Francisco, and they, you see them driving in fog and rain and puddles and…”
JM Nickels Oct 6, 2024 ▶ 50:51 Conscious leadership: Unlocking vision, strategy and purpose | JM Nickels (Uber, Waymo, DoorDash)
Oct 6, 2024 neutral
Disclosure
Nickels: Uber's autonomous strategy is aggregating AV fleets onto its platform
“And right now, you know, our kind of stated you know, strategy is to be an aggregator, right? So it's like, we are partnering with Waymo, with Cruise, Motional, others in China, et cetera. And then, you know, the idea is to have every vehicle on the platform r…”
JM Nickels Oct 6, 2024 ▶ 52:59 Conscious leadership: Unlocking vision, strategy and purpose | JM Nickels (Uber, Waymo, DoorDash)
Oct 6, 2024 neutral
Insight
Nickels: Scaling AV fleets requires operational and marketplace skills beyond autonomy
“Building a self-driving car on a test track is a very different problem statement than scaling a fleet of thousands of cars. And how do you operate them, clean them, charge them, maintain them. And then how do you build a rideshare network? It's like, okay, we…”
JM Nickels Oct 6, 2024 ▶ 51:11 Conscious leadership: Unlocking vision, strategy and purpose | JM Nickels (Uber, Waymo, DoorDash)
Aug 21, 2025 neutral
Opinion
McCabe: Uber added female driver options because women feel safer in Waymo
“And I guarantee the reason they're doing that is because women love Waymo because they feel safer.”
Eoghan McCabe Aug 21, 2025 ▶ 15:50 How Intercom rose from the ashes by betting everything on AI | Eoghan McCabe (founder and CEO)
May 17, 2026 negative
Insight
Kalinowski: Home robots face tougher consumer adoption than autonomous vehicles
“There's a big difference between a car that is safer, that drives itself versus a car that a human drives, because you have an existence proof of the human driving car and you have the data. When you talk about homes, what is the delta? You have now a thing th…”
Caitlin Kalinowski May 17, 2026 ▶ 1:10:27 Why the next AI boom is physical AI | Caitlin Kalinowski (ex-OpenAI, Meta, Apple)
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