The former Tesla president reveals the secret of scaling a company

A few companies grew at the speed that Tesla launched, especially before the company launched the 3rd EV at reasonable prices.

“We have expanded the scope of Tesla’s revenues in 30 months from 2 billion dollars to $ 20 billion,” John McKenil, former head of Tesla, who is now participating in the co -founder and executive director of DVX Ventures, told Crowd at the Techcrunch event in Boston.

This was not the first McNeel’s scaling companies, and it will not be the last. Previously, he founded six different companies, and after Tesla, joined Lyft as CO before starting his project company, as he launched dozens of startups.

Over the years, McNeil has developed a book that helps him to determine when the company matures to expand its scope. Share these ideas last week with the audience in Techcrunch All Stage 2025.

When assessing the company’s capabilities, MCNEIL is primarily judged by two different measures, suitable for the product market and suitable for going to the market. It is not unusual for investors to focus on these concepts, but McNEIL distilled them into two objective measures.

As for the suitability of the product market, every startup asks, “Do 40 % of your customers say they cannot live without your product.” If not, the company is not ready.

“We continue to add, add, add and switch the product until we reach 40 % and then say, well, a boom, we now have a suitability in the product market,” said McKenil. “It is actually objective and measured. It is not a feeling, it is not meaningful. It is a measure.”

“We conducted a study of companies that have already achieved the collapse, and these companies have almost outbreak about the acceptance level of approximately 40 %,” McKenil added.

Second, McNeil is looking for whether the company has a mature strategy to go to the market. Specifically, it is interested in whether the amount that the company spends on obtaining customers, known as the cost of customer acquisition (CAC), is less than a total lifelong value (LTV) that the customer will attend the company.

When the company begins to attract money more than four times over the life of the customer more than it spends it-the LTV ratio to CAC is from four to one-and when it knows the company is ready.

He said: “Then we pour into cash. But before that, we rid $ 100,000 only every time to reach the various theater gates.”