David Alspaugh

🚘 What Tesla’s Door Handles Taught This CFO About Strategic Finance When Mike Taylor, CFO of Gusto, was at Tesla, he faced a classic finance dilemma: cut costs or enhance customer experience. During the creation of the Tesla Model S, his team proposed standardizing door handles to save hundreds of dollars per car. The response? A hard no. Why? Because the door handle wasn’t just a functional part of the car—it was a customer’s first touchpoint. Designers argued it created a sense of delight and uniqueness, setting the tone for the Tesla experience. This moment shaped Mike’s philosophy: finance leaders must think beyond spreadsheets to see the unseen levers of customer value. 🎯 Takeaways for CFOs: *Strategic decisions must balance cost with customer experience. *Customer empathy can drive business success as much as data can. *Finance leaders add the most value when they align metrics with moments that matter. Looking to dig deeper into operational insights? Mike recommends The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt, a compelling business novel that teaches how to identify bottlenecks and drive continuous improvement—a must-read for navigating complexity. 🎙️ Hear more of Mike’s reflections on the evolving role of CFOs in the full episode: 👉 Show Notes & Episode Link 👣 I’m Jack Sweeney: 💼 A storyteller in the finance leadership realm. 📣 Amplifying the voices of today’s finance leaders. 👣 Follow me for more finance insights and behind-the-scenes leadership stories. #CFOTHOUGHTLEADER #FinanceLeadership #CareerGrowth

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Holy mother of all that is EV charging, the EV industry press cycles over the past couple of weeks have not been for the faint of heart 📢 Let's recap 👇 Tesla recently announced they laid off 10%+ of the workforce...including a large portion of the Supercharger team (wait...what?!) Confusion and speculation (understandably) ensues, what's happening to the most formidable and substantial charging network and why?! What follows in quick succession is more turbulent news - FreeWire Technologies announced substantial layoffs, Keith Kerman added the 5000th EV into the NYC municipal fleet, Walmart was spotted using the Tesla semi in the wild and much more. Then, almost seemingly from nowhere, Tesla announced their intention to spend $500m+ on expanding the Supercharger network this year alone, dispelling speculation that they'd be slowing down deployment. Finally, fresh from their $1b charging deployment commitment earlier in the year, bp pulse declares their intent and interest in supporting real estate owners left in uncertainty from the Tesla announcements. This, coupled with their recent $100m spend on Supercharging hardware, is sparking further discussion. Our brief take, is that it's an increasingly exciting time to build in EV charging. The spotlight will increase on sustainable CPO business models, utilization rates and leveraging existing infrastructure in new and effective ways. Mobility electrification is only accelerating and we need an exponentially greater footprint of charging infrastructure. As a Tesla alum, even in light of recent news, I can't see the Supercharging network not continuing to play a big role. What do the next few weeks have in store? We shall see 🕺 Let us know what we missed and what you think 💭 #EVCharging #EV #Tesla

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Today I want to put the spotlight on Arelys Sosa, Thomas Tingelöf and Kent Moore who are the amazing founders of DREV.🔦 The problem they are tackling is that battery gigafactories, semi-conductor factories, and battery recycling plants face big challenges collecting hazardous metal micro-particles, slowing production, and they are squandering precious materials, and endangering staff. These are all individually big problems and combined this is huge.☣️ Drev has the solution to all to this with The Vault, an innovative technology powered by patent-pending dry brush technology and a revolutionary canister design, eliminates water and chemicals from the cleaning process, improves safety, and enables the adaptive reuse of valuable materials that would otherwise be thrown away with save manufactures millons. 🧹 The Drev team has the unique domain experience for solving a particular problem that we're always looking for when we are backing founders at the Norrsken Accelerator. Arelys is an industrial engineer who was part of the original team at Panasonic Energy at Tesla’s Gigafactory 1 so she has seen this problem first hand for years. Thomas has a PhD and he has been the CTO of PowerCell and VP at Volvo Cars and has massively scaled technologies before.🤩 The interest from the industry is huge and they are currently running projects with some of the leading battery manufacturers. You can read more and contact them here: https://lnkd.in/d7V-mKrx

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“… her company is seeking out Tesla site hosts who might want a more reliable partner.” 😆 Name ANY other vendor without “hooks” that go “bang” in the night and break, rendering the charger useless. Or ANY other vendor than does NOT have a credit card reader that goes down… or does NOT have an LED/CRT screen to get busted. There is not and may never be a more reliable ESVE on this planet than $TSLA — so forgive me for once again NOT playing into FUD that made $MSFT a brand name to avoid by a whole generation. FYI: By most accounts, Linux powers over 75% of the web servers. $TSLA produced over 60% of all EVs in the USA and that number is growing with U.S. OEMs pulling back.

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I would love to add a battery to our household next year and in preparation I've done a fresh pass on the latest offerings. The latest batch of residential batteries are all LFP based and most are stackable and modular. Tesla's PW3 and Enphase IQ 5P are LFP and can be stacked for more power and capacity. EP Cube is a nice modular and stackable solution from Canada. Panasonic is also modular, and so is Fortress, and others. These are all nice. Then we have the new disruptor vendors like Anker and EcoFlow. They have stationary batteries but they also have portable batteries, and inverters... and coolers and autonomous lawn mowers. Still LFP everywhere, and very expandable, up to 53kWh! And they can be used in multiple scenarios, including connected as a sub-panel, and still being portable - so easier to be permitted. (and in Texas we have Base Energy, who will put a large battery in your household very cheaply in exchange for you contributing to their VPP) I wrote three new posts on what I learned. The most "fun" one is about the new portable residential batteries. Possibly the most useful one is a review of new stationary residential batteries. And I also wrote a post on the background for all these developments. If interested, check them out. My substack is https://lnkd.in/gikA78Bd. The posts are https://lnkd.in/g-e-j_QR https://lnkd.in/gD6aFnyu https://lnkd.in/gHu_bGPK

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While this is a needed change, it points to a larger issue that's only going to grow with more EV sales. Too many people are leveraging public chargers as their everyday charging station, unfortunately this is not the ideal way to charge. Much like our phones, EVs are better suited for charging at home or work. What the world truely needs isn't more public stations, but more private chargers where vehicles are parked 4+ hours. This is why what Pando Electric is doing is so important. We drive down the costs of EV charging at home and allow for 10x the number of stations at any location.

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At Faction we occasionally use chase cars when observing our driverless EVs, so this WIRED article on reporters chasing Waymo made me smile. 😉 The next wave of self driving is going to be focused a lot more on operations, so “day in the life” of self-driving fleet vehicles is a fun evolution on the business and data side. #autonomousvehicles #futureofmobility #selfdrivingcars

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The dude and dude’s company, Tesla that popularized Fast Chargers is seriously rethinking EV Charging. For a very long while, Olu "Sam" Faleye, MD, FACP. and SAGLEV have explained that Level 2 (AC) chargers have been seriously undervalued and under appreciated as the lynchpin of EV charging. 70% of EV drivers worldwide will in fact and do charge on Level 2 chargers. In Africa, the cost of DC (fast chargers) make that option unlikely to gain ground, and unlikely to become ubiquitous within the next 10+ years. DC(fast) chargers cost between $9000 and $60,000 (for 300+KW DC chargers). Conversion to an EV user demands a mindset totally unlike ICE vehicles drivers. In Africa, we in fact will mostly charge EVs with AC chargers. SAGLEV EVs charge 320 km to 900 km on 4-10 hours AC charging. Thats plenty folks!! Most Africans will only charge 2 times weekly. SAGLEV DC chargers are designed to supplement AC chargers and serve mass transit primarily. We will soon kick off public education campaigns to educate people about EVs and EV Charging. The future is here folks! 🍀🍀🍀🍀🍀 #electricvehicles #electricvehiclecharging #climatechange #evworld

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🗓️ Save the Date – For our Next 🎙️The Full Crew with Joan Michelson, Matt Bianco, and Chris Treanor as we dive into "Electric Vehicles (EV)." We'll explore Kamala Harris's potential impact on EVs, EV charging at federal sites, and how Chinese EV makers are entering U.S. and European markets. https://lnkd.in/g9qKkQN8

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Who doesn't love chatting about the frontier of Space?! Loved getting this insiders look from Epsilon3 CEO Laura Crabtree (ex-SpaceX, Northrop Grumman) as the industry reshapes into a lightening fast startup ecosystem for us to marvel. Small teams are lowering the cost to access space. Homegrown automation software is dramatically reducing team size -- as Laura puts it: "You won’t see 50 people in a control room for launch…you’ll see 5 controlling 50 different assets and a couple of 100 assets that are mostly operating on their own." Personally i'm keeping a close eye on the new interconnectedness between space and the broader economy will spark a flywheel of innovation. 🎙️ Listen in to our discussion (link in comments) as we release today -- 5YF#16: Space command reimagined, automating mission control, new deep tech hubs, interstellar missions, and the future of space operations w/ Epsilon3 CEO Laura Crabtree To infinity!

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Nanoramic, Inc. isn’t just their name—it’s their blueprint. They’re zooming in on the atomic scale while taking a panoramic view of the energy landscape. This isn’t tinkering at the edges of battery tech; it’s a complete redesign of how energy is stored, managed, and deployed. With their proprietary Neocarbonix® technology, they’ve pulled off a balancing act that’s eluded the industry for decades: higher energy density, faster charging, and lower costs without cutting corners on sustainability. The $44M raised in this latest funding round isn’t just capital—it’s fuel for a mission. General Motors Ventures and Catalus Capital lead a roster of backers who see the bigger picture. GM’s involvement underscores that this isn’t about experimentation—it’s about scaling for global impact, with applications ready to roll out in #EV, #energygrids, and beyond. Samsung Ventures, Top Material, Fortistar, and Windsail Partners round out a coalition that understands how to move disruptive tech into mainstream adoption. What sets Nanoramic apart isn’t just what they’re solving—it’s how. For years, battery innovation has been boxed in by trade-offs: speed or capacity, affordability or sustainability. Neocarbonix® erases those lines, delivering batteries that perform better while cutting out harmful chemicals like #PFAS and #NMP solvents. This isn’t just a win for manufacturers—it’s a seismic shift for the entire supply chain. Cleaner production, safer materials, and lower costs mean this tech doesn’t just meet the moment—it defines it. John Cooley, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained visionary, has steered Nanoramic with precision, aligning breakthrough science with real-world demands. Partnerships with some of the world’s largest automotive OEMs are already in motion, proving that their technology isn’t just viable—it’s inevitable. This isn’t a startup chasing hype; it’s a company carving out a path to make batteries more scalable, sustainable, and essential. But the real power here isn’t just in the tech—it’s in the timing. As industries from automotive to energy grids scramble to adapt to electrification, Nanoramic is delivering the tools to make it possible. Energy density and thermal management aren’t just technical challenges; they’re the keys to unlocking the future. And with Neocarbonix®, that future doesn’t look theoretical—it looks unstoppable. When you build a platform that eliminates compromise and accelerates progress, you’re not just participating in a transition; you’re driving it. Every battery they touch, every partnership they forge, pushes the boundaries of what energy storage can achieve. #Startups #StartupFunding #Energy #CleanEnergy #DeepTech #Batteries #BatteryTech #Sustainability #VentureCapital #Technology #Innovation #Manufacturing #SupplyChain #TechEcosystem #StartupEcosystem

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bp's move to buy Tesla's #ChargingInfrastructure and shortcut the EVgo and ChargePoint public EV fast-charging network market shares could explain Musk's hasty decision to let go of its legendary #superchargers. Yes, I know, the words Musk and hasty go hand-in-hand 😆 #EV #EVs #electricvehicles #charging #energy #infrastructure https://lnkd.in/eRk56ZaD

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POV: you're a battery developer looking at two potential POIs in close proximity to one another. Historically, they perform nearly identically in terms of their $/kW value. So, performing nodal analysis on these locations would be a big waste of time, right? Not a chance! Check out this graph of two potential ERCOT battery locations I recently studied with a fundamental-based nodal forecasting approach. Historically from 2014 to 2023, they perform about the same. But in the mid 2020s, we start to see a large deviation between the two locations, causing Battery A to achieve a much higher $/kW value than Battery B. Upon further investigation into the model and corresponding shift factors, several hundred MWs of wind gets added in closer proximity to Battery A, leading to much more price volatility on Battery A than on Battery B. If we were to assume an extrapolation of the batteries' trends through pure statistical forecasting, we would've completely missed this deviation and continued to believe Battery A and B to be equivalent one another! As more and more batteries come online, getting these details will prove to be more and more valuable. Ultimately, a fundamentals-based, nodal modeling approach is the way to go for valuing these projects appropriately and identifying POIs with the highest economic potential. (This isn't a Grid Status plot, but shout-out to them for inspiring the colors/animation and their all around good work 😀)

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Innovation AND execution exemplified....but why did Tesla succeed? EV's are everywhere and there is so much demand. There is Rivian, Lucid and multiple others... At the end of the day, this is why many great ideas in VC ultimately fail...execution and lack to a path of profitability. Here is why Tesla succeeded vs Ford but many others are struggling: 1. First Mover Advantage: Tesla has been producing EVs at scale for over a decade, giving it a head start in refining manufacturing processes, supply chain management, and cost reduction. - Economies of Scale: With a significantly larger production volume than newer competitors, Tesla benefits from lower per-unit costs. 2. Control Over Supply Chain: Tesla designs and produces many of its components in-house, including batteries and software. This reduces reliance on third parties and allows better cost control and faster innovation. 3. Manufacturing Innovations: Gigafactories: Tesla’s Gigafactories are designed for scale and efficiency, incorporating automation, innovative production lines, and co-location of battery production. Gigapress: Tesla uses massive casting machines (Gigapresses) to produce large, single-piece components, reducing assembly complexity and costs. Focus on Simplicity: Tesla's designs emphasize simplicity, using fewer components and standardizing across models, which reduces manufacturing complexity. 4. Scale: Lucid and Rivian are producing at much lower volumes, leading to higher per-unit costs. At the end of day, Tesla makes $9,264 per vehicle (profit) while Rivian loses $38,784 per vehicle and Lucid loses $137,150 per vehicle. Same idea, right? Just done very differently... #venturecapital #endowments #familyoffices

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