One of the top investors in Silicon Valley Bill Gurley thinks the golden age of Silicon Valley could soon be over as some of the biggest startups could also be gone.
According to Gurley he is not so confident about Driver-less cars, as there will be too much error with the technology. Gurley said he’s “skeptical” about driver-less cars. He also thinks that consumers won’t be battling to embrace the new technology anytime soon.
Gurley is known for his investment in Uber and Snapchat. According to Gurley, “Millennials don’t give an s— about cars. I hear parents frustrated that their kids won’t get their drivers licenses”. Then he added, “[Millennials] view cars as a utility, not as a social statement. We just got lucky with some of the demographic changes”.
Gurley believes that with too much error with the driverless technology, there will be fatal errors. He also thinks that people will not take it easily if there is any machine related fatal error. He said, “There’s a science where people talk about what percentage of time you need a product to work versus not work”. Then he added, “Like the amount of up time [versus down time]on a website. That concept, where there’s almost no error in technology, is referred to as ‘four nines’”.
Then he explained, “For a machine to be out there that weighs three tons moving around at that kind of speed, it would need to have at least four nines. Because an error would be catastrophic. I think we’re a long way off on that [faultless driving technology]”. He also believed that, driver-less car is a ploy by big tech companies to divert the attention of media. But he said, there has to be dedicated lanes for driver-less cars.
