DARPA's Autonomous Vehicle Prize
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Sam Parr tells a story about how DARPA's Grand Challenge competition spurred innovation in autonomous vehicles.
"In 2003, DARPA created this thing called the Grand Prize. The idea was we have a 150 mile road trip or route, and the first person who can create an autonomous vehicle that can drive that route wins $1,000,000. 106 teams or something like that applied.
For a little while, no one did it. But then a team did it, and that's when we first used LIDAR, which is a type of self-driving technology that all or many of the cars have now. It already existed, but it was applied to cars for the first time ever. So it was very successful."
Sam Parr
Host of MFM and fitness influencer
Sam Parr is a serial entrepreneur and business media pioneer.
In 2016, he founded The Hustle, a business news media company that started in his kitchen with just $12 and grew to eight figures in revenue.
Sam led the charge in making newsletters popular when few believed in their potential.
After four successful years, he sold The Hustle to HubSpot, a publicly traded company. Now operating as HubSpot Media, The Hustle reaches 3 million readers daily, employs a team of nearly 100, and has been the launchpad for dozens of its staff to found their own media companies and newsletters.
Sam remains the host of the popular business podcast, My First Million, and continues to start and sell companies. He also co-founded Hampton, a highly vetted community for entrepreneurs, founders, and CEOs, and teaches people to write better through his platform, Copy That.