What Fascinates Craig Davis of Tesla? Pt. 2

Bobby: Welcome to What Fascinates You?, a series of conversations with entrepreneurs, engineers, scientists, and visionaries who bring world-changing innovations to life. I'm your host, Bobby Mukherjee. I'm the CEO of Loka, a Silicon Valley-based tech consultancy, as well as a lifelong entrepreneur, an all-round curious guy who finds inspiration in the people, ideas, and technologies that shape our world.

Our previous episode began a wide ranging conversation with Craig Davis, a veteran business strategist and marketer who's deeply invested in environmental sustainability. Most recently, Craig was the European Director for Impossible Foods, a company that created the Impossible Burger, one of the top selling plant-based meats in the world.

And in the late two thousands was Tesla's first director of sales and marketing in Europe, and has worked at Coca-Cola, Fisker and BMW Mini. Part one of our conversation touched on Craig's transition from North Carolina into the European business market. We also talked about his personal feelings on vegetarianism and plant-based meats and the way social movements can catalyze world-changing technologies.

If you haven't listened to it, I highly recommend you do in part 2. Craig talks about his early days as Tesla's first Director of Sales and marketing in Europe, as well as the similarities and key differences between Impossible Foods founder Pat Brown and Elon Musk. Let's dive in.

Let's rewind a bit. You joined Tesla at a very interesting time. I think it was 2008. The year that Obama gets elected, and I think it's hard for a lot of people, and even sometimes I'm guilty of this myself that Tesla wasn't always the preeminent brand that you think of today. And so when you worked for the company, I believe your job was to sell some of the first American made electric cars, two Germans, and the early reception was not maybe as glorious as you might expect it to have been.

Craig: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly right. So it's very hard to imagine Tesla like it is now. Then you'd have to be like a psychopath to have left BMW to go work for a company out of California. A guy who was broke right in a divorce, crashed all his rockets. And I literally, and this is not a no joke, I left BMW Mii and went on  my last real vacation I've ever made in my life between these two roles.

Right? And as I was coming back, I heard on my email, which I turned on, that 25% of Tesla folks have been let go, which sounds like a typical Elon kind of thing to do. Didn't even know if I was even still working at the company and I had only just left eight years at Mini and didn't even know if I would have a job.

And then I realized, oh, I still had a job. So I said, Hey, that's awesome. I get to actually do everything right. We were only 150 people. There four of us in Europe. Go around and collect these 50,000 euros per car from guys that had already paid money into accounts and had never seen anything. They'd gotten some emails or whatever.

I was dealing with some very interesting people and you didn't name something else was happening during that time. Madoff was having his Ponzi scheme rolling then. And so very often we would sit and ask ourselves, we'd be traveling through Europe and we would ask ourselves, I wonder where all of this money goes.

Because there were no cars coming. We had just a couple of the validation prototypes here to drive and we had no idea where everything was going. We're like, but we are rea, we are really telling some heavy hitting people, right? Some very serious individuals with a lot of money and a lot of influence.

We're telling them that they're gonna get an electric car that they ordered. Soon, or based on what Elon was telling us. And so sometimes you would wake up and you would say, wait I really hope this does work out, otherwise people know where I live.

Bobby: So the car that they were expecting was which model?

Craig: The Roadster. So the Roadster was the first one made in England at the time. It's based on the Lotus Elise frame, but then built as an electric car from the ground up with the frame that was designed by Elon.

Bobby: So what you're saying is that Elon has done massive layoffs before and come out the winner on the other side.

Craig: Yeah, I would say, basically taking a lot of risk, by looking at very big things and asking these typical questions. And then giving it a shot. And again, like I said, this is just doing it from scratch. There was no air in the room for, he started in 2006. Seven seven, right at Tesla six. Not sure. And then there wasn't really anything going on until the launch of the Model S. And then that took a while. So it wasn't until he was living in production hell with the model three, that things got really interesting.

And yeah, I would say he really puts it all in. And so far everything's turned out good.

Bobby: So when you're at BMW, this esteemed brand, and you've been there for a while, what was it about Tesla that attracted you to take that risk to join?

Craig: I was always looking at alternatives. So we were actually going after the most unique people that were influencing decisions. Most of the creatives, architects, people who lived in urban environments and we were trying to create a car for these people to give a little bit of guidance. And like I said before, it was the lowest carbon footprint of any car in the group.

And so basically, I was looking for even more ways to do this. My whole crusade was to make an electric Mini because the Mini should be the first electric car. And this is before I'd heard of Tesla. So I had started looking into a lot of these hybrid bikes over here. I don't know if you've ever heard of a Trike.

But a Trike and it's a very interesting name. It's covered hybrid three wheeler, and I was configuring one and I configured it and maxed it out with everything and it costs like 42,000 euros. And I'm like, wait, hold on a second. Someone in Europe is selling a 42,000 Euro hybrid electric bike.

And I said, we should be on this. Flynn, we should really be after this. And I really did push it, but Tesla was a little bit faster.

Bobby: You talked about that early friction being an American, selling an American electric car to Germans who know Yeah. At the time, I'm sure, believe that they know one or two things about building cars.

Yes. Yes. What were maybe a few of the turning points where that wave started to go Tesla's way in Europe?

Craig: That's a really hard question to answer, right? Because it all depends on who you're talking to. The main thing is we always focus on people that were building a bridge to Tesla, not just somebody that was coming in like right off the, right out of the BMW hardcore target group, right?

It was people that were already looking for alternatives, right? The ones that weren't really sold on the brand or where cars were going in general, like looking for new technology to go different directions. So I would say that, where I clearly noticed that something was happening and in a good way was when I would be driving through the city here in Munich, going to the first location I had chosen as a store, which was downtown in Munich. And I would go pretty quickly to work… don't say this too loudly, but I was going pretty quickly, but no one could hear me. So it was cool. And the roads are pretty quiet here in the morning. And then I would have every now and then, and this one day I had a Porsche chase me. And it was a guy in a nine 11.

And he followed me all the way to the store and he was really loud and I was like, this guy's gonna get me busted, right? And so I finally got to the store, and then he got outta the car. I'll take out the expletives. I thought it was gonna get really serious, but he wasn't really angry with me.

He was like, what? In the, what in the, is that? And I was like, yeah, this is a Tesla. We're from California. This is the first store, and they're like a Tesla and how? And I said it's electric. And the guy's come on. And he used some really heavy words that I won't use here. And I was like, nah, I'm not joking.

And I would open up the, I opened up the boot, and he had to look in and he's like, why don't I know about this? And I'm like I don't know. Now you're one of the first! You want to go for a ride? I think that's the key thing is that if they go for a ride in one of these cars, back then, even back then, they're just amazed.

He went on a 30-minute ride. I would always just pray that the car would come back and then the car would come back. because I had his Porsche, I had his key and this is all, no, there's no German process management in this. This was off the beaten path.

And he came back and said I will take two of them please. Black and white. When can I have it? And I said, ah, let's have a chat. And then in the end he did. He did do that, but it was about driving in the car. You can talk for a long time about, even now, about Tesla's build quality. And Germans are really obsessed with build quality. That's fine. We can talk about that all day long, but it's a heck of a lot easier to improve build quality through new technology and getting all the Germans to make your cars by importing into your factories in California and China and wherever.

It's a lot easier to do it that way than to start with the real nuts and bolts of the electric car, which is the software, the battery pack, the motor, all of the rest of the ecosystem that Tesla was making. And so I think in that case where the Germans realized it and where all automotive really realized it was when you weren't talking about just the driving sensation of electric, which is just unbelievable and impossible to beat, in my opinion.

And a lot of people agree with me now and then also the fact that it creates an entire ecosystem. If you look at the way Germans benchmark German professional consultants, they benchmark a car brand in eight areas. Tesla wins in seven and only loses on build quality. And so if that's the case, then that's a lot better argument for the longevity and the legs of a solution than just building it.

And so you get over the fact that maybe the door jam is not always the same. But wow, what an amazing experience. And I have so many ways, different ways that I can live with this car. Like the other thing that Germans really realized that this was totally different was that they didn't have to go out and buy a 350 euro old CD every two years to get a new mat in their car.

Much less get an over-the-air update that gave them a new car. Couple more, 2% more efficiency. In the early days it was like update was like 10% more efficiency. Now it's, like tweaks and then obviously the movement towards autonomous full self-driving. Right now we're at self-driving, but not necessarily full.

I think that this really changed their minds when they saw that they didn't have the core competencies they needed in order to compete with Tesla, and that's when everyone said, oh wow, then these guys must be up to something.

**Bobby:**You're  joining Tesla right after the 25% riff has happened. What was the Elon Musk of 2008 post 25% layoff working at Tesla to really get that plane to take off. What was that like? What was he like?

Craig: Elon, version one. Yeah, that version, he looked very different then. He had a very different personality. Then time on the phone with him was very much informing him and asking, is this good?

I'm doing this, and it was most likely. Yeah, go for it. That's great. Let me know what I can do to help. Make it more successful. So it was very collaborative. Obviously he was absorbing the knowledge as it came down and we were the only ones to give it. So we were the sensors for him in the market. And so in that sense, we were trusting in him that these cars were gonna be delivered for the sake of ourselves and our family. Not only because we were invested in the company and our time and everything, but also because they knew where we live. But I think also he was very much interested in understanding where to go in Europe, you know how to go about this because obviously we needed urgently to get Europe going. Not only for the investment argument, but also for the volume argument. And there was a lot more margin, because we didn't have to move the cars as far, it was a lot easier. And then long term we knew that we were gonna have to compete eventually with the premium automotives.

In Europe, we were learning as we went forward. So very collaborative, very mostly friendly, but always exciting and always very direct. Yeah, I remember the first time I went to California and I was taken to the headquarters, the Hive, they called it. I went to San Carlos. That was early, early on, and that was pretty cool.

There weren't many people to talk to because everyone was so busy. But when I went back to the Hive, I went in and went into some of the meetings with the team. That was in 2011. And I was told to just ignore what people say to you. Just don't pay any attention at all, right? Because they just don't have a wall between what they think and what they say.

So just don't let it bother you. And you'll see a lot of things happening. You just ignore it. And so that's where I got used to these meetings where people would just be like going at each other and saying, that's ridiculous. And, you're senseless. And I've experienced other things in phone calls also with Elon that, that I don't know exactly how that's supposed to work in most of the cultures in the world, but it works for the, the Elon Musk model of disruption.

So I think to a certain extent he has changed. Now he looks different, he acts different, and obviously he has hit all the benchmarks, right? So in hitting all the benchmarks and proving all the points, I think that he has now. A lot to say about where things go from here and now the question is for us to decide if that's where everything will go and we want it to go or not.

And I think that's where we were back in 2008. It's just a bit louder voice. I don't hear him at night. Everyone hears him. It's just the weirdest thing and I really, sometimes I think about it is the weirdest thing to have him in the news every day. Because back when we opened the store here in Munich in 2010, I had to beg people to come to the opening right now.

They had to close the city. Right now they have to close the downtown. I was traveling with him in Monaco after an event. He was on his way back to the States and we spent Thanksgiving in Monaco and I was hanging out with him and three or four others, and Ulla, his fiance at the time, and basically at the Monte Carlo Casino.

And I'm thinking, Hey Elon, Feel safe. I'm your bodyguard. These days he travels like with serious set of bodyguards. He's like the wealthiest man in the planet. So the weird thing is that you see. That he had this very unique way of looking at the world and doing what Steve Jobs did, but even more bombastically.

Yeah. No, it's incredible. Yeah. Incredible. And not even talking about SpaceX and all the other things, right?

Bobby: Yeah. What are just one or two things that make you think that you would say are different about the Elon Musk of 2022 that you read about versus the Elon Musk of 2008 to 2011 or something that you worked with?

Craig: I think the most interesting thing is that if anyone thinks that they have a way of controlling him, giving him guidance or feedback, they're kidding themselves. So that's like the first learning that I've ever made is that it's his way or the highway. And that's very clear. I would also say that it is very interesting how things develop.

We have to ask ourselves also if what is said is actually what is done in the background. There's a means to an end, and we are in the midst of that, right? So in the beginning, although Elon never said anything about the environment, and you can maybe change my mind about this, but I never heard him say anything about Tesla doing something for the environment.

I realized that however, the byproduct of what he was doing was very good or could be seen as good for the environment, right? Enabling climate technology for the environment. Solar panels and batteries and, but they're also the things that are needed for space travel, right? So this is a byproduct of, so he's not necessarily a guy for nature, right? So that, that's for one, not good with feedback, not really a guy for nature, not really a guy for this planet, like really for Mars, right? His famous thing is, die on Mars, but not on impact. You guys know all this stuff in the meantime. And so basically his, that's his focus.

So you have to ask yourself, start looking at the climate and getting those people behind him. Those are the first people that bought the cars and now changing his whole colors and going into a totally different direction. And so it either is that he is very open-minded and willing to see everything from all sides and would like to create a safe environment for everyone to exchange ideas and speak freely.

No, he is not, and he's in fact just increasing his own free speech. And add his own will. So I think this is where things get very tricky with the Elon version 2.0, or we might be on three now or 2.5. I'm not really sure. But I think that Twitter did also do something there. And I think there you have to learn what you've learned before or unlearn what you learned and then listen very clearly to what is being said.

And if you talk about setting up free speech and a platform for speech, free speech, but at the same time you're not journalism. And you actually destroy the idea of a free press, and you say it's a big lie, then you have to ask yourself then what is actually the hidden agenda? So it's a mystery, but now we're all in this.

It's not just 150 people, me and 150 people to deal with. Everybody has to deal with it.

**Bobby:**We're gonna find out soon enough.

Craig: It seems. We'll find out soon enough. Yeah.

Bobby: We are gonna go through some things. So I wanna ask kinda a compare and contrast question and do it at two levels, the leader level and then the company culture level.

So let's start at the leader level. So similarities and differences between Pat Brown and Elon Musk.

Craig: Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. Like I said before, the best one is, pat Brown is Elon for the planet. The two topics. Electrification, I'm not talking about SpaceX, right? So electrification of mobility, decentralized storage, solar byproducts for this planet.

This stuff is pretty good for the planet. Check everything else is off planet, right? And I would say, that goes AI and robots and all the rest. And whereas Pat Brown is using that same way of thinking, that same way of disrupting and that same way of using science or the hardcore science.

Although one could argue if Elon is the scientist necessarily, or the visionary, he finds the way to get the science to work. And Pat Brown is actually looking at this from a really scientific point of view, and that's for animal ag, and that's like the higher level impact for the planet even than electrification.

So if you put the two together, you'd actually say that Pat Brown and that group working in the space of getting animals out of agriculture is more valuable for the planet than electrification. However, as you can see, there's a different way of going about it, and there's a different way of creating this grassroots following.

And Elon certainly does have a following because I've actually been thrown out of this following because they consider me too moderate. But basically I'm in it for the, that both of these gentlemen and anyone who works in these spaces around climate technology, they're all developing something that we urgently need and urgently need to prioritize.

And I'm hoping that we get more of such people, but I'm wondering to what extent all of them will be able to deliver on these targets as things get really tight, right? It's gonna get very interesting. As resources get tight and we don't prioritize correctly, then we'll find that we might not have the things we need to get to where we gotta go next.

So I trust Elon to see these things, right? I trust Pat Brown. He was the first person that really threw it up onto my radar that since I'm on the planet, there's twice as many people. Which is pretty heavy. There's more than twice as many cows and other animals that we eat and half as much wildlife. Now, you won't hear Elon making these kinds of comments or these kinds of claims.

He's not really so concerned about that. Nonetheless, that is a big deal because that's also a natural ecosystem. So I would say that although Pat is. Very scientific. He's also human, right? So very human, very empathetic to people. And I would say that Elon is more science fiction, visionary, tech, technology, and you can see it from his following, that's what gives him his energies is what gives him his go.

So two very different people in terms of their personalities, in terms of leadership, same applies, right? Pat Brown and Impossible Foods, most diverse environment I've ever worked in. Some of the most incredible people that I've ever spoken to, having like clear discussions, talking about results of a research, putting things on the table.

Whereas with Ellan, it'd be like, oh, that's all bullshit and there's where this whole big lie comes in. I get it. Yeah. There's a lot of stuff that is that, but not all of it is that. And this is where a little bit of a Trumpian kind of communication comes in. They say, and it is a lie, and it, is big.

Whereas Pat Brown would basically say, look, hit the facts and these are the facts and we have to agree on the facts first. So they go totally different directions and different speeds. And obviously Pat Brown solely focused on really the big chunk, right? Which is animal Ag. And Elon in everything and then we see how that works out.

Bobby: And did that permeate, you think the culture isn't to create I'm assuming they the, impossible Foods and Tesla have very different cultures?

Craig: Yes. As companies, definitely. Yeah. Absolutely. I hope to always have a chance to bring the kind of arguments that Elon brings into a conversation, into a real conversation, into a real dialogue, into a dec, a real decision process at any company. At every company. First principles, right? I think that's critical, and disruption is critical. Asking why and saying, why do we do it like this all the time? You say that something has been tried and failed? No it hasn't. Yeah, because you know, that was somebody else that did it.

We didn't do it. And so Elon would basically say, yeah, okay, forget all that and then we make it from scratch. This is something you have to always have and at some point in time someone has to make the decision. So Elon would obviously make the decision and that's why the company moves so quickly. Right now, he did make some bad decisions, but then typically blamed somebody else and then you know, whatever, off to the seller.

But however he did make decisions. And I think that's also critical. Other organizations and Impossible might be part of this, probably got caught up in a little bit too much consensus and just didn't have this pace of change and didn't have anybody slamming on the table and saying, this is what we agreed, didn't it?

There's a very different way of doing it. So I think that both are extremely valuable leaders and leader types. It's just you have to really look at it and say, what can an organization handle? What pace can an organization handle? There's the famous story about Mary Beth at SpaceX and I met Mary Beth and she's a very dear person and this kind of person as a scapegoat around their value for the company.

It's just crazy. And what kind of company can live at that pace? You chew through people. At the same time we know that we're getting in a pinch, right? With climate, other resources and. And other things that are coming, and then the economy's stupid. All these things are happening at the same time, so it's gonna get more challenging than not.

So we'll need a balance, a more fine tuned balance of these kinds of leaders and companies. But I think where it's really missing is in the political realm, in the realm of governmental leadership. And this is where I have to really agree with Elon. That we really have to pressure our politicians to do more walking the walk and not just talking the talk.

And I don't know how to solve that problem. I don't know that he knows how to solve that problem. And I think this is an age-old problem. As long as there's been humans, there's been people telling those humans what to go, what to do. So who guards the guardians. And so I think that more than the corporate will and having these kinds of leaders like a Pat Brown or like a, or like an Elon Musk and you can talk about others, but I think that they're really two that are doing something really good as a direct product or byproduct. I think that we need to find a measure of what kind of company and a person deals with how sustainable is any model that is fully corporate driven, if it's not driven by everyone, including government, including international governments, including others, right?

And we have to get a single source of truth or a closer to a single source of truth that's accepted. You have to look only at America to figure out this. I think what? What's the percentage? Half of Americans still don't believe in climate change. I don't know if that number's gotten any better, but what I see currently in actions in the states, I don't know that we've really accepted the science and if we can't accept some sort of single source of truth science, then I wonder where we're gonna go next.

Bobby: Yeah. There's a lot to unpack and think about. I found this in incredibly fascinating. Craig. I am so very grateful for you giving us this much time. Thank you. Thank you so very much. I really appreciate

Craig: it, Bobby. Thanks very much. It's been great to be here.

Bobby: The end of our special two-parter wraps up the 2022 season of the podcast.

We've had some amazing minds share their thoughts with us. Folks from Microsoft, Netflix, Google, and more. I'm grateful to all our guests and listeners who I'd like to wish a happy holiday season and new year. Also, a big thank you to the team behind the scenes who make the show possible. The show is sound mix by Milovich in Niche Serbia, edited by Jonathan Zwickl in Seattle, Washington, and directed and produced by Daniel Goldberg in Carlsbad, California.

Stay tuned for more. What fascinates you in 2023? Until then, I'm Bobby Ji.