The Man Who Took Tesla From $2B To $20B Shares The Exact Formula | Jon McNeill
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
I'm very, very excited about this podcast. This is going to be one of the best ones yet. And I've done over seven hundred podcasts. John was the president of Tesla when it grew from two billion to twenty billion in revenue in thirty months. He founded and sold six companies and sat on the boards of General Motors, Lululemon, and CrossFit. His new national best-selling book, The Algorithm, reveals the five-step framework Elon Musk used to build Tesla and SpaceX, and how any company in any industry can use that to cut complexity and grow faster than they ever thought possible.
What is the guestβs background and how did he go from a Nebraska farm town to leading Tesla?
Today he runs DVX Ventures, a venture studio that's launched 12-plus companies using the algorithm as its operating system. And you know, after this podcast, we might It's good to be with you, Tommy. You know, you you you've already founded and sold six companies when Cheryl Sandberg decided to call you and said Elon needs help and and I've I've really researched the hell out of Elon Musk and his his childhood. I read his doc or his biography and uh it's just interesting because he's the richest, most successful man in the world. So he's but it's people around him that make it possible. There's no way he could do everything he's doing without a guy like you.
Yeah, the team the team he's got an incredible ability to attract people of talent to him. And so like the the team that's around him is fantastic. Uh and the team below that team is fantastic. They get I forget how many thousands of applications per job uh at a place like SpaceX or Tesla. Because the best people in the world want to work with somebody that gives a big challenges and then gives a lot of agency to go attack those challenges. So yeah, I i he can't do it alone and he would be the first to say that. Um, but he's got a pretty unique ability to attract talent too.
In your companies as you're you created this algorithm framework, how how much do you guys promote failure? I mean, it seems like failure is like race towards failure and fix it versus NASA trying to get it perfect.
Yeah, exactly. Like the the whole mantras start. Like, don't try to avoid failure, just start, knowing that like we're gonna screw it up, we're not gonna get it right. It'll probably take us 20 or 30 or 40 tries to get it right. But you won't get to the end goal unless you actually start. So to your point, we don't wait until we've figured it out uh and then we move. We move first and and figure it out. And that's key to this, uh, because what we're striving for is big, big breakthroughs. And you You get those breakthroughs little chips at a time. You don't get 'em in big uh big aha's typically. And uh and so we're working Really towards making these little gains, little gains that pile up into big gains over time.
You know, I'm sure uh you came from lean manufacturing. I've read the Toyota Way and um The principles of Kaizian incremental improvement. You know, you said that Elon taught was complete opposite of everything you knew. What what was that like? What was what was different about that?
Yeah, like I came in and we had immediate problems producing the Model X. And so I hopped into that problem with everybody else on the leadership team and started to use the skills that I had, the toolbox I had, which was Lean and and uh Kaizan. And uh the Torta production system. And what I found was that stuff was great to to drive incremental change.
How did Tesla achieve the $2β―B β $20β―B revenue growth in 30 months?
But it wasn't sufficient to drive quantum change. And when I m when I met Elon and and asked him Like what does success look like if I come if I come and join Tesla? He said what success looks like is you double the company every s every eight months. I was like, man, you're already two billion dollars in sales. That's a big if a big ask. And I learned that the lean and toilet uh the Toyota production system weren't sufficient to drive that kind of growth, which is why over time we ended up inventing the algorithm because we wanted A formula that would drive quantum growth. Uh, and that's what the that's what the algorithm does. It really drives big, big innovation breakthroughs.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00β0:32
2
What is the guestβs background and how did he go from a Nebraska farm town to leading Tesla?
0:32β3:27
3
How did Tesla achieve the $2β―B β $20β―B revenue growth in 30 months?
3:27β13:05
4
What is βThe Algorithmβ and how does the fiveβstep framework work?
13:05β17:59
5
How can the algorithm be applied to a garageβdoor service business to cut costs and speed installs?
17:59β29:45
6
How do network effects create a flywheel for localβservice marketplaces?
29:45β48:33
7
What is the twoβquestion performance review and why is it better than traditional reviews?
48:33β59:26
8
How does a culture of urgency and weekly CEO checkβins drive fast execution?
59:26β1:08:05
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from The Home Service Expert Podcast
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