At a staff meeting in April 2022, CEO Sebastian Thrun tried to calm down the staff of the flying car startup Kittyhawk. Because the employees were frustrated with the new policy, which read: Follow the instructions of Larry Page, the Google co-founder and Kittyhawk financier blindly – even if they seem ridiculous.
Managing director Sebastian Thrun tried to defuse the situation and told employees that Kittyhawk was pressing the reset button. Heaviside, one of Kittyhawk’s vehicles, will be phased out in favor of new, experimental ideas for a cheaper air taxi. Page will lead this effort as “Chief Designer.”
Business Insider received internal emails and audio from multiple meetings that took place in April and May 2022 prior to the September Kittyhawk exit. The meetings and emails about which insiders already reported, show that conflicts arose within Kittyhawk as Page became more involved in the day-to-day running of the business. Executives urged employees to act quickly to “gain Larry’s trust” – which eventually raised safety concerns.
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In a particularly tense meeting in late May 2022, an engineer simply resigned on the spot. Many employees were unhappy with the new direction from the start. At an all-hands meeting in April, shortly after executives announced Kittyhawk’s realignment, Thrun asked employees to give Page a leap of faith, according to audio tapes viewed by Insider.
“We’re radically different from what’s been known before,” Thrun said during the meeting. “We do crazy things. None of this fits with existing conventions, including the way we look at security and testing.”
At this point in time, the workforce consisted of less than a hundred employees. At its peak, Kittyhawk had about 450 employees.
„Drink the Kool-Aid“, demanded Thrun. In American English, this roughly means to trust someone blindly, despite potentially dangerous consequences. “Are you ready to embark on a journey?” continued Thrun. “The result could be amazing. We could actually democratize air travel. We could actually build something that could fly people around for $20,000. Or it could fail. I believe it will be successful. But it could also fail.”
Neither Thrun nor Page responded to requests for comment. Chris Anderson, Kittyhawk’s former chief operating and technology officer, was also unavailable for comment.
Larry’s Yes Matters
Page previously managed Kittyhawk remotely. During the company’s final years, he became more directly involved with a secret research team called the Feather. The Insider Documents showthat Page invested at least $330 million in Kittyhawk through a shell company.
After Page became more active in 2022, he communicated with his employees via Google Docs. The engineers self-described being given “snippets” of ideas and directions, and were strictly instructed never to tag Page in comments.
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Page showed up in person on a few occasions. Otherwise, however, he managed the teams via documents or via CEO Thrun and COO Anderson.
During the above-mentioned all-hands in May 2022, which came after an employee exodus, some employees reacted with frustration. Page is said to have previously given orders to conduct experiments, even if the employees thought them pointless.
“Are we supposed to do experiments to test gravity?” a Kittyhawk employee asked sarcastically. “Unique laws of aerodynamics and physics can be accepted without experiments.”
“We had a lot of trouble with Larry’s leadership,” said another employee, wondering if Page’s “yes-men” were all that was left at the company because “objections are clearly not valued.”
“Larry doesn’t want consent, he wants data,” COO Anderson replied. “So if he asks about X and you say, ‘X won’t work, let’s try Y,’ then he won’t be interested in your theories.”
When asked if the staff had to test everything, including gravity, when Page asked, Anderson replied, “I can’t read his mind. In my experience he has spent the last ten years dealing with aviation. His son gave him a t-shirt for Christmas that said ‘My Dad Loves Airplanes’. He wears it too. He knows a lot more about aviation than I would have thought before I came here.”
“This is not the time to say no,” he said later in the meeting. “This is the summer of experiments.”
“He doesn’t want to hear no”
In an even more bizarre session in late May, Anderson discussed with employees who were struggling to meet what they felt were unrealistic deadlines. An employee told Anderson that it would take three weeks to source a particular part.
“When I told him it would be three weeks, he didn’t understand and immediately told me I was wrong,” Anderson said of Page. “I’m telling you now that you’re wrong. I don’t know if you’re wrong, but Larry Page tells me you’re wrong. This is an example of Larry’s intolerance when it comes to reasons why something shouldn’t be possible. He wants you to make it easy.”
The engineer said it was “physically impossible”. Anderson then offered a bet that he could get the part within a week. The employees then wondered why Page couldn’t just put them in touch with a supplier who he thought would be on schedule.
“He doesn’t want to hear ‘no,'” Anderson said of Page. “He doesn’t want to hear ‘can’t’, especially when he knows it can. And that’s the kind of thing that really erodes his confidence in the team.”
An engineer resigned on the spot
Recordings of a meeting in late May show staff growing frustrated with Thrun and Anderson, who often acted as a go-between for staff and Page.
“We’re put under a lot of pressure to do something because Larry said so,” said one employee. “I think that’s where the trust between employees and managers is lost.”
Thrun told staff that Kittyhawk was creating “great leeway” to gain the trust of Page, who is working “day and night” on the new projects.
Nevertheless, there was great anger about how Page controlled the projects in detail.
“I know everyone feels a little disempowered,” said Anderson, who says he was surprised by the level of detail Page went into — down to details like wire gauge.
“Once we’re back on track and have aligned well with Larry, the engineers will be able to make self-determined technical decisions again. But we’re not that far yet.”
At that moment, one engineer had heard enough. “I now have a much clearer picture of where Kittyhawk is going and what opportunities for growth I have here and what I don’t have,” he said. “I would ask that you consider this my resignation effective two weeks from now.”
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Kittyhawk dismissed safety concerns
In another example of the company’s aggressive mode of operation, a few days later, Thrun dismissed safety concerns that came from Douglas Robertson, Kittyhawk’s environment, health and safety manager.
Robertson raised concerns about an airplane landing pad that Kittyhawk wanted to use in Hollister, California. He said California was going through a drought and the company should have found a test site with less dry grass.
He raised concerns about the containers used to transport certain components in an email obtained by Insiders and sent out across the company.
“At times, ‘the urge to meet deadlines’ has trumped concerns about safety,” he wrote.
“Please ignore the email from Doug,” Thrun replied in another email to the company. “Yesterday at 9pm all responsible persons (including me) signed the security document. We comply with all applicable safety standards and have taken effective protective measures. We will continue today.”
Thrun then fired Robertson, according to another email. Former employees who were familiar with the situation confirmed the layoff. Another email from Léonard Bouygues, Kittyhawk’s security chief, said security was “of the utmost importance” and that Robertson had been “dismissed with good cause on another, unrelated matter”.
Bouygues told Insider that any security concerns were addressed under due process and that Robertson’s email did not raise any new concerns.
“Any concerns raised after this process was completed have already been addressed,” he told Insider.
Still, some employees were concerned that Robertson’s firing came at a time when Kittyhawk wanted to move forward with great urgency. Robertson declined to comment.
Over the past summer of 2022, collaborators tested new approaches to designing and manufacturing flying cars, including 3D printing and a vehicle design that rotates in the air.
Kittyhawk was out in September. The twelve year project ended in a crash landing after the company failed to bring a viable product to market.
This article was translated from English by Amin Al Magrebi. You can find the original here.