Martin Eberhard (Tesla Motors) - Lessons from the Electric Roadster

Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders (ETL)

Stanford eCorner

Business, Life Lessons, Creativity, Startups, Strategy, Thought Leadership, Education, Stanford University, Leadership, Challenges, Journey, Culture, Etl, Innovation, Founders, Stanford, Entrepreneurship

4.5 • 740 Ratings

🗓️ 10 October 2007

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Martin Eberhard is the Co-Founder, President of Technology and former CEO of Tesla Motors, a company that produces the Tesla Roadster, a battery-powered electric sports car. Eberhard discusses his inspiring journey of diverse experiences in building Tesla Motors. He describes the lessons he learned: from the realization of doing something meaningful to thinking an idea through and aggressively following all leads. Tesla Motors which started with two employees is now more than 250 employees strong.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	You were listening to the Entrepreneurial Thought Leader series, brought to you weekly by the Stanford Technology Ventures Program.
0:10.0	You can find podcasts and video clips of these lectures online at edcorner.standford.edu.
0:19.2	It is my wonderful honor to introduce Martin Eberhard right now.
0:23.6	He is the co-founder and president of technology of Tesla, where they're making a battery-powered
0:30.6	electric car.
0:31.6	Sounds really amazing.
0:32.6	I know we tried really hard to get a car here, but we couldn't pull enough strings, but we
0:36.6	did get posters,
0:38.2	and hopefully some of you have picked up free posters outside. Now, Martin has a wonderful
0:43.8	background. He has 20 years of experience as an entrepreneur. He is a co-founder of NUO Media,
0:50.0	and also as a co-founder of network computing devices. But he also, like many of you in the room, is an engineer by training.
0:56.5	He did both his undergrad and graduate work at the University of Illinois,
1:00.9	both in CS and then electrical engineering.
1:03.3	So, without further ado, Martin.
1:09.4	Thanks.
1:13.6	Is this mic working?
1:14.6	You guys can hear me in the back?
1:16.6	No.
1:17.6	I'm on now? Ah, that's better.
1:21.6	So I don't know, I've been accused of being a serial entrepreneur.
1:24.6	I don't know. These guys are serial entrepreneurs. I mean, look what they did.
1:28.3	Well, anyway, okay, I started a few companies.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Stanford eCorner, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Stanford eCorner and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.