Peering Over the Edge of Death (with Jon McNeill)

I talked to Jon McNeill about when Tesla came close to bankruptcy, the investment firm he co-founded, and his experience blitzscaling Lyft. Behind the headlines, Jon McNeill has been a key operator and board member across many of the companies that you read about. He was the president of Tesla. Then, in February 2018, he left to take the role of chief operating officer at ride sharing company Lyft. At Tesla, he worked desperately to get the company to sell enough cars to hit Tesla’s sales targets. With the rest of the executive team, he said, “We were arm and arm to do the impossible.” “For more than two years we operated the company and we just had a quarter’s worth of cash,” McNeill said, recalling a period that Musk has said put the company on the brink of bankruptcy. Tesla was manufacturing vehicles out of tents. “For sure, bankruptcy was a reality,” McNeill said. “When you’re peering over the edge of death, creativity starts to happen in really unique ways.” After Tesla, McNeill helped take Lyft public. But his tenure at the company lasted less than two years. His vision conflicted with the ride sharing company’s founders. Today, McNeill sits on the board of General Motors, CrossFit, and Lululemon — to name a few. In 2020, he helped found the hatch studio DVx Ventures, which has spun up seven startups so far.