{"id":436,"date":"2019-07-02T10:26:21","date_gmt":"2019-07-02T10:26:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/seventh-studios.com\/project\/harper\/?p=436"},"modified":"2019-07-02T10:26:21","modified_gmt":"2019-07-02T10:26:21","slug":"embark-announces-30-million-series-b-led-by-sequoia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wiharper.com\/embark-announces-30-million-series-b-led-by-sequoia\/","title":{"rendered":"Embark Announces $30 Million Series B led by Sequoia"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Today,\n Embark is proud to announce our $30 million Series B. The round was led\n by Sequoia Capital, with participation from our existing investors \nincluding Data Collective, YCombinator, SV Angel, and AME Cloud. With \nSequoia partner Pat Grady joining our board and $47 million in total \nfunding to date, Embark is ready to lead the way in developing the first\n commercially-viable driverless truck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since\n completing the first coast-to-coast run in an automated truck back in \nFebruary, we\u2019ve hit key milestones that bring the dream of self-driving \ntrucks closer to reality. Delivering goods cheaper, faster, and safer \nwill improve life for everyone: from consumers paying less for goods to \nreducing traffic fatalities \u2014 94% of which are the result of human \nerror.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

People\n often ask me, \u201cHow will Embark compete with teams like Waymo, who have \nbillions of dollars and can partner with the biggest names in the \nindustry?\u201d I think the best answer comes from a kid in Calgary who loved\n building robots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My First Robot<\/strong> <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I was 13 years old when my middle school teacher, Mr. Sveen, invited me to join his after-school robotics team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr.\n Sveen encouraged five of us to enter an international robotics \ncompetition usually won by high schoolers. When I voiced doubts about \ngiving older, more experienced teams a run for their money, Mr. Sveen \nwas undeterred. \u201cI expect you to step up,\u201d he said, \u201cto work hard, work \nsmart, and work as a team.\u201d Whether it was youth, na\u00efvite, or both, that\n pep talk was enough to convince us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\n built a testing field in my living room (thanks, Mom!) to spend more \ntime on the project. I\u2019d wake up at 6 AM to work on the robot before \nschool and come straight home afterwards to keep plugging away until \nbedtime. It was during these early days and late nights when I fell in \nlove with robotics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Halfway\n through the season, a local news crew visited to tell our story. \nMirroring the skepticism I originally expressed to Mr. Sveen, the \nreporter asked how a team of kids expected to compete against high \nschoolers. Without skipping a beat, li\u2019l 13-year-old me smiled and said,\n \u201cWe have more heart than they do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nAgainst all odds, our scrappy Canadian team won it all, taking first \nplace in a field of 2,000. This win \u2014 nine years ago \u2014 was one of the \nbest days of my life, leaving impressions that still guide me today:\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It doesn\u2019t matter what you look like on paper.
What matters is working hard, working smart, and working as a team.
What matters is having heart. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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Forks in the Road<\/strong> <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The\n time spent learning from Mr. Sveen set the stage for a lifetime of \nrobotics-related nerdery. I entered more competitions. I spent summers \nat math camp. I enrolled in a self-directed high school that afforded \nmore time building robots, even designing one out of a juice box as a \ngift for a girlfriend. I attended very few parties (go figure!), but was\n learning a lot and having a blast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My\n robot obsession brought me to the Mechatronics program at the \nUniversity of Waterloo, where I met Brandon Moak. It didn\u2019t take long \nfor our love of building stuff to become little robotics projects, \nculminating in Canada\u2019s first self-driving vehicle (a golf cart, because\n it\u2019s all we could afford). Buzz around our self-driving golf cart \nexceeded expectations, leading to demo rides with VIPs like the \nUniversity\u2019s president, the CEO of GE Canada, and the Governor General \nof Canada.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brandon\n and I realized our project was on to something special. Halfway into \nour undergrad careers at Waterloo, we decided to spend our lives focused\n on building robots. We dropped out, co-founded a company committed to \nself-driving vehicles, and were accepted into Y Combinator\u2019s startup \nincubator.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before\n moving to the the Bay Area, people said we were crazy, showering us \nwith skepticism eerily familiar to the doubts I had with Mr. Sveen: \n\u201cWhat can two 19-year-olds contribute to a challenging, \ncapital-intensive problem like self-driving vehicles?\u201d \u201cHow can you \ncompete against more established players?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This time, we knew the answer: \u201cWe\u2019ll work hard, work smart, and work as a team.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Embark<\/strong><\/h1>\n\n\n\n

Two\n years after founding Embark, Brandon and I are excited to partner with \nSequoia, tapping into their experience as early investors in Google, \nAirbnb, and Dropbox, among many others. In two short years, Embark has \nbuilt a self-driving powerhouse from scratch. Getting an investment from\n the most successful venture firm in the world is a humbling validation \nthat Embark\u2019s ethos is working:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Work Hard<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\n just opened an operations center in the LA suburb of Ontario, CA. I\u2019m \nincredibly proud of our team, who brought it online in just three \nmonths. While Embark is headquartered in San Francisco, adding \noperations in LA places us right in the middle of the west coast\u2019s \nbiggest freight hub. Embark\u2019s presence in the region was the key to \nhitting our milestones for the first half of 2018:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2705 Los Angeles to Phoenix with no disengagements.<\/strong>\n We run daily service on our freight route from LA to Phoenix and back. \nAs of June, our system can complete the route end-to-end with no \ndisengagements. This includes lane changes, merges, on-ramps, off-ramps \nand lots of LA-metro traffic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2705 100,000 test miles.<\/strong> There are only four self-driving companies with more than 100k public test miles: Waymo, Cruise, Uber\u2026and now Embark!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2705 Welcoming new customers.<\/strong> Several new Fortune 500 shippers are now Embark customers (that\u2019s all I can say for now, stay tuned for more).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Work Smart<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Working\n smart means making every person incredibly high leverage. It means \nconstraining the problem carefully (start with only trucks, only \nhighways), prioritizing projects based on real world data and choosing \ntechnology that gets the right outcomes, regardless of the latest \nresearch craze.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Embark\u2019s\n 35 people have done more than hundreds of people at other companies. \nThat was one of the key things that convinced Sequoia to make Embark \ntheir first investment in any company making autonomous vehicles in the \nUS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Work as a Team<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

To\n each and every one of you on this adventure with me at Embark: Thank \nyou for putting your faith in me \u2014 I love you all! You\u2019ve shown what \nunderdogs can accomplish in self-driving. You\u2019ve proven what is possible\n if you work hard, work smart, and work as a team. We\u2019ve accomplished \nmuch so far, with much more to go. I\u2019m excited to face the challenges \nand milestones ahead with all of you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\n last two years have been incredible, working on the kind of truly \nworld-changing technology I\u2019d always dreamed of, with a team of people \nI\u2019m excited to see every morning. We\u2019re thrilled to have Sequoia joining\n that team and working alongside us on our mission to transform \nself-driving from fantasy to reality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\n believe in this team. Even alongside the wealthiest corporations in the\n world, Embark will continue to revolutionize the development of \ndriverless trucks. To quote a little robotics-loving kid: \u201cWe have more heart than they do.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today, Embark is proud to announce our $30 million Seri […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"blocksy_meta":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wiharper.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wiharper.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wiharper.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wiharper.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wiharper.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wiharper.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wiharper.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wiharper.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wiharper.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}