I spent eight years building Rivian in secret. Most of the auto industry didn't know we existed until 2018. We used that anonymity to perfect the product before anyone could copy it or write it off.
I wanted to build a vehicle that could take you off-road without destroying the environment you drove to see. Adventure and sustainability shouldn't be opposites — they should be the same thing.
Making cars is really, really hard. Everyone says that, and nobody understands it until they try. The supply chain alone has 10,000 parts that all have to show up at the right place at the right time. Every. Single. Day.
Amazon ordering 100,000 delivery vans was the moment everything changed. It wasn't just the money — it was proof that the biggest company in the world trusted a startup with their logistics fleet.
The stock going from $179 to $12 was painful. But the value of what we're building didn't change — the market's perception of it did. I've learned to separate market noise from engineering progress.
I started this at 26 with a PhD and a dream. Fourteen years later, we're delivering tens of thousands of vehicles. It took longer than I expected and was harder than I imagined. But we're building something that will exist long after the stock price noise fades.