Guest: RJ Scaringe, CEO and Founder of Rivian

“I’m very comfortable with things not being in their end state,” says Rivian CEO and founder RJ Scaringe. The company’s challenging mission — to help make 100% of the world’s cars electric — will take a long time, and a lot of willingness to build the metaphorical plane in midair.

As Rivian has grown from one person to seven to 17,000, though, RJ admits that there’s a lot more pressure to not screw up. “There’s all these conflicting emotions I had ... is this the right product?” he recalls. “Is it the right strategy? Am I capable of doing this? But at the end of the day, I try really hard not to let that be overly distracting.”

Chapters:

• (01:58) - Starting from scratch
• (05:35) - Auto tech innovation
• (08:03) - The supply chain
• (09:52) - Rivian’s deal with Volkswagen
• (14:28) - Outsourcing
• (16:10) - Capable EVs
• (19:06) - Brand and customer satisfaction
• (21:05) - That nagging feeling
• (27:26) - Raising capital
• (31:31) - RJ’s father
• (32:35) - The dark side of cars
• (34:43) - Tesla’s influence
• (37:13) - Financial challenges
• (42:38) - Entrepreneurial mindset
• (44:59) - Hard decisions
• (46:46) - Don’t screw this up
• (49:56) - 25,000 decisions a day
• (52:16) - Daily routines
• (54:57) - Who Rivian is hiring
• (55:34) - What “grit” means to RJ

Mentioned in this episode: Porsche, Alex Honnold, Amazon AWS, Mercedes, Elon Musk, Lotus, U.S. News and World Report, MotorTrend, J.D. Power, Ford, Blue Origin, SpaceX, MIT, Jeff Bezos, and the Tesla Roadster.

Links:

Connect with RJ

• Twitter
• LinkedIn

Connect with Joubin

• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Email: grit@kleinerperkins.com

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This episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm