- The Google cofounder Larry Page took back control of his flying-car company, Kittyhawk, last year.
- Audio recordings from several meetings lay bare the scramble to meet Page's expectations.
- Leaders talked of winning Page's trust as staff expressed frustration over the new directive.
"Drink the Kool-Aid."
During an all-hands meeting in April 2022, CEO Sebastian Thrun tried to compose staff at Kittyhawk, the flying-car company funded by the Google cofounder Larry Page. Employees were frustrated with the new directive: do whatever Page asked, no matter how ridiculous it seemed.
Thrun told employees that Kittyhawk would hit the reset button — killing off its most advanced vehicle, Heaviside — and explore experimental ideas to build a cheaper flying taxi, with Page leading efforts as the "chief designer."
Insider obtained internal emails and audio of several meetings held in April and May 2022, a few months before Kittyhawk shut down in September. The meetings and emails, some of which Insider previously reported on, show a scramble inside Kittyhawk as Page returned to micromanage projects, to the dismay of many employees. Leaders pushed employees to move quickly — which at one point raised safety concerns — while talking of "winning Larry's trust."
One particularly tense meeting in late May 2022 even resulted in an engineer resigning on the spot.
Still, many staff were unhappy with the new direction from the get-go. In the April all-hands, shortly after leaders announced Kittyhawk's pivot, Thrun asked staff to put their trust in Page and take a leap of faith, according to the audio reviewed by Insider.
"We are radically departing from anything anyone has ever known," Thrun said during the meeting. "We are doing crazy stakes… None of this fits existing convention, including the way we look at safety and testing and so on."
At this point, fewer than 100 employees remained. Kittyhawk had about 450 employees at its peak.
"That's the ask: Drink the Kool-Aid," Thrun said. "And are you willing to go on a journey? It might be amazing, the outcome. We might actually democratize flight. We might actually build something that can fly people around for $20,000. Or it might fail. I believe it's going to succeed. But it might fail."
Thrun and Page didn't respond to requests for comment. Chris Anderson, Kittyhawk's former chief operating and technology officer, couldn't be reached for comment.
Larry's 'yes people'
Page spent the prior few years guiding Kittyhawk from afar, though he became more directly engaged with a secret research team known as Feather in the company's final years. Documents reviewed by Insider show Page invested at least $330 million into Kittyhawk over its lifetime, via a shell company.
After Page became hands-on again in 2022, he communicated with staff using Google Docs, dropping what employees referred to as "snippets" of ideas and orders for his engineers. Staff were strictly told never to tag Page in comments.
Page showed up in person on a few occasions but otherwise managed teams remotely through documents and via Thrun and Anderson.
During an all-hands in May following another exodus of staff, some employees became frustrated with Page's edicts to run experiments they believed to be pointless.
"Are we going to run experiments to test gravity?" one Kittyhawk employee asked sarcastically. They added that there were "flat-out laws of aerodynamics and physics" that could be assumed without running certain experiments.
"We've had considerable friction with Larry's direction," said another. They asked if the people who remained at the company were merely Page's "yes people," adding that "objections are clearly not valued."
"Larry doesn't want 'yes', he wants data," Anderson said. "So if he asks for X, and you say, 'X won't work, let's do Y instead,' he's not interested in your theory."
As employees pushed back on whether they would have to test anything – including gravity – if Page demanded it, Anderson replied, "I can't read his mind. In general, in my experience, he has spent the last 10 years obsessing over aviation. His son literally gave him a shirt for Christmas that says, 'My dad is plane crazy,' and he wears it. He's a lot more knowledgeable about aviation than I had any reason to believe before coming here."
"This is not the era to say no," he said later in the meeting. "This is the summer of experiments."
'He does not want to hear no'
In a more bizarre meeting held in late May, Anderson sparred with employees struggling to meet what they considered unrealistic timelines. One employee told Anderson it would take three weeks to get ahold of one particular component they needed.
"When I told him three weeks, he was not sympathetic and immediately told me I was wrong," Anderson said of Page. "I'm now telling you, you're wrong. I don't know that you're wrong, but Larry Page tells me you're wrong. That's sort of an example of something where Larry is a little intolerant of reasons why it can't be done, and he kind of wants you to just figure it out."
The engineer said the ask was "physically impossible." Anderson then made a bet that he could get the part in a week. Staff then questioned why Page couldn't simply put them in touch with a supplier that he said could meet the timeline.
"He does not want to hear 'no,'" Anderson said of Page. "He does not want to hear, 'it can't be done,' especially if he knows it can be done. And that's the kind of stuff that really undermines trust, his trust in the team."
An engineer resigned on the spot
Recordings of a meeting held in late May show how staff became increasingly frustrated with Thrun and Anderson, who often acted as an intermediary between staff and Page. One engineer even resigned.
"We're getting a lot of pressure to make it happen because Larry said so," one employee said. "And that's where I think the trust between employee and exec is lost."
Thrun told staff that Kittyhawk was "making great leeway" in gaining Page's trust and that Page was "working day and night" on the new projects.
Still, some were annoyed by how Page micromanaged projects.
"I know everyone feels a little disempowered," said Anderson, who said he was surprised by the granularity with which Page involved himself, down to specifics of wire gauges.
"Once we get back on track and calibrate well with Larry, I expect the engineers will be re-empowered to use their engineering professionalism and advice to execute according to a spec of some sort, but that's not where we are right now."
At that moment, one engineer had heard enough. "It's much clearer to me now the direction Kittyhawk is headed in, and what growth opportunities I do and do not have here," they said.
"I'd also like you to consider this my two-week notice."
Kittyhawk dismissed safety concerns
In another example of the company's aggressive push to move faster, Thrun dismissed safety concerns from Kittyhawk's environmental health and safety manager, Douglas Robertson, a few days later.
Robertson raised concerns about an aircraft-landing site Kittyhawk was planning to use in Hollister, California. He said that California was in a drought and that the company should have found a testing location with less dry grass, according to a copy of the email to the entire company seen by Insider. He also flagged concerns about the containers used to transport certain components.
"At times, the 'Drive to Hit Deadlines' has taken over some safety suggestions," he wrote.
"Please ignore Doug's email," Thrun responded in a follow-up email to the company. "Yesterday at 9pm all responsible individuals (myself included) signed the safety document. We are in compliance with all applicable safety norms and have effective mitigations in place. We will proceed today."
Thrun then fired Robertson, according to a follow-up email on the thread and former employees familiar with the situation. Another follow-up email from Kittyhawk's head of safety, Léonard Bouygues, told staff that safety was "of paramount importance" and that Roberton was "terminated for cause for a separate unrelated matter."
Bouygues told Insider that all safety concerns were properly addressed through a process and that Robertson's email did not raise any new concerns.
"All of the concerns that were brought after this process was complete were already addressed," he told Insider.
Still, some employees were concerned Robert's dismissal came at a time when Kittyhawk was moving with great urgency. Robertson declined to comment.
Over the summer, staff tested new approaches to designing and manufacturing flying cars, which included 3D printing and designing a vehicle that could rotate midair.
In September, Kittyhawk shut down. You can read the full inside story of the company's rise and fall here.
Got a tip? You can reach this reporter on Signal at +1 628-228-1836 and email at hlangley@businessinsider.com.