He just posted a bunch of messages he got from his team at Zoox. Seems like a lot of employees really liked him and his leadership.
https://www.forbes.com/feature/zoox-autonomous-cars-taxis/#1...
"In a move that some will call devious and others will call ingenious, Kentley-Klay reached out to some of the biggest names in the field and told them he was making a documentary on the rise of self-driving cars. The plan was to mine these people for information and feel out potential partners."
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-07-17/robot-tax...
The whole thing seems insane to me. I don't understand why you would fund someone with no tech or business background... I'm sure he hired some good people, but it still doesn't make sense.
As to why the investors booted him? Investors generally don't kick out the CEO unless they did something crazy. It doesn't look good for the investor, and it makes it investment look bad (and follow on investment less likely).
You've commented on Zoox several times before in an overly enthusiastic manner. You've also commented several times before on autonomy and your comments have been called out for astroturfing in a couple of instances.
Readers please beware and take this comment with a grain of salt.
As an aside, the lack of clarity about who you do work for is probably what's contributing to the "teleological conspiracy theories".
Ashley Vance for Bloomberg did a big puff piece on Zoox a month ago, the video is pretty interesting, it's the first we've been able to see of their prototypes in action, and I had been waiting years to see if they were actually following through with their original vision:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2018-07-17/zoox-and-it...
A couple days ago some pics of an unidentified av test vehicle was spotted, and one of the smart guys in my subreddit called it out as a zooxmobile with an new sensor configuration arranged to match the configuration of their protoypes:
https://thelastdriverlicenseholder.com/2018/08/21/unidentifi...
I am not quite sure what I believe about when it is appropriate to accuse someone of having undisclosed conflicts of interest. But I am certain that the best way to respond to such an accusation is with a full disclosure of all conflicts of interest. Regardless of whether the accusation was appropriate, the disclosure ends the issue. And conflicts of interest (to one degree or another) are perfectly normal and do not invalidate a person's opinions or eliminate them as a useful contributor to the discussion.
Just because someone is enthusiastic doesn’t mean they’re a shill. Even if you’re ultimately correct you shouldn’t wield that accusation without exceptional evidence - being an apologist for a company is not exceptional evidence. Cynicism has a place but you can’t just use it like a blunt instrument.
The author chose phrasing that seemed to carry an authoritative tone and it begged questioning into the author's background/history.
It's a sign of how crazy things are when 300M USD can be considered a small amount of money to spend on technology development (particularly for a product that doesn't actually require anything inherently very-very expensive, aside from staffing costs).
Maybe that was the board's plan for the initial rocky phase of the company, without telling Tim?
Booting a startup CEO always looks bad in my opinion and would likely concern anyone doing a follow on investment.
Ideally you'd have the CEO onboard with this from the start. Alternatively when it came time to boot them, you'd a) already have someone in place to take over b) be able to pay them off sufficiently to not make a fuss, and help you frame it as transitioning to a new role (i.e. they'd stay on as an advisor, move to a COO role etc.).
With a startup, you've invested in the founding team. If you throw them out... you've effectively thrown out a significant part of what you invested in. It also calls in to question your own judgement as an investor. And it reduces your standing in the eye of companies looking for investment.
Overall, unless something really really bad happens you don't want to throw out the founder...
If you just don't have confidence? You either let the investment go, or you try and pump it and get someone to buy you out in a subsequent round.
The only possibility I can see if that someone wants to buy Zoox, they made a really generous offer... but the Zoox CEO blocked the sale. Acquiring company is willing to take Zoox without the CEO to get Zoox out of the market, and acquire the team for their own projects...