He tries 1,000 ideas a decade & kills nearly all—that's how X built Waymo & Google Brain. | Astro Teller, CEO of Moonshots at X (Alphabet)
About this episode
Astro Teller discusses the importance of failure in innovation and how his teams at X test numerous ideas to maximize learning.
Astro has run X, Alphabet's Moonshot Factory, for 16 years. His teams created Waymo, Wing, and Google Brain—by testing over 1,000 ideas a decade and killing nearly all of them. His whole system rests on one uncomfortable rule: celebrate the people who kill their own projects. In this episode, Astro breaks down why you should do the hard thing first, how pre-written kill criteria force intellectual honesty, and why X maximizes learning per dollar instead of progress—and never tracks whose idea...
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