The High Flyers Podcast with Vidit Agarwal
00:05:19 · Justin Lopas
[00:05:19] S1: Yeah. So I was... Like I said, I was born in Southfield, which is just a suburb just North of Detroit. Actually, I only lived there till I was one years old, and then we moved to Evanston, Illinois, suburb also north, but of Chicago. I lived there until I was 13 and then back to the Detroit area in a different suburb, but very close by for high school and college. And upbringing my upbringing was honestly kinda average and middle class and boring Midwest suburbs. I was just actually back there last last weekend and it always reminds me of what feels like home. But my... Both my parents are from the Chicago area. Actually, wife's from Chicago also. And dad was in the auto industry for his whole career, as you'd imagine, being from that area. Worked in various different roles in sales and finance and supply chain. And I was an engineer earlier on in his career and sort of inspired me to go into engineering. And yeah, I was always sort of tinkering with stuff growing up. My dad's really into cars, still is, I am as well. And we'd be working on cars and going to the track or doing house projects. We did an addition on the house and my dad loves architecture and building stuff. And so we did basically all the work ourselves and just got a sort of firsthand practical understanding of working with your hands, sort of the practical side of engineering. And that's why I ultimately decided to go into engineering later. One interesting thing that I think you probably haven't talked a ton about though is... So my dad worked for different companies in the auto industry. Chrysler when I was born and then various different auto suppliers and truck suppliers. And we, he, these are like big old slow companies that were like not innovative or at least not particularly innovative and didn't have great corporate cultures. I remember that one week he told me they're allowing us to wear jeans on Fridays, and it was like a big deal. It's like everybody's talking about jeans and jeans, Friday jeans at the office. And so because of that, didn't really like work. He was never into work in a totally different way than when I went to SpaceX. Was like, oh, man. People are into work. They enjoy it, they're here for a mission, they're motivated, they're thinking about and talking about work outside of work.
00:07:13 · Justin Lopas
And the whole sort of like startup mission oriented sort of culture just does not exist or almost exclusively does not exist in Detroit and Chicago and places I grew up. And so when I went to SpaceX, I was like, okay, well, I'm going go there and hopefully it'd be a good career and kind of do the thing my dad did is make a living and have a good life and all that. But then I realized there's lot more to it than that. Like work and life are not separate things. Done well, are very well mixed. And that was something I think I learned from my childhood that I had to unlearn very quickly in 2016 when I started at SpaceX. And even before that, when did the internship there and internships at other places that I felt were exciting. There's a big gap I think I've learned between General Motors or Boeing or Walmart or, I don't know, just pick an old industrial or retail company and like startups that are doing something exciting. There's a huge gap in, like, the reasons that people go to work. I'm very glad to have found SpaceX and then Andrew Roll and now started the company Base Power because otherwise, I think I would have done the... Worked for one of the big three as they're called in Detroit and had a somewhat successful, hopefully, career, but it would have been totally different.
00:08:18 · Vidit Agarwal, Justin Lopas
[00:08:18] S0: It's so interesting you say that because as I'm Australian, and I think one of the things Australians and people from the Midwest care in common is we're pretty no BS, put your head down, do the work kind of people. And I think when I spoke to a lot of the people that know you really well for research, they said that's one of your really endearing qualities is if you don know the answer you just say I don know whereas whereas there s like a big culture in tech is like to act like you know all the answers and act like you s smarter than you are like reflect on that like how much of that Mid West upbringing has allowed you to do the work you've done today, like just being grounded and no BS performance based upbringing? [00:08:58] S1: Yeah, I mean, I think that that is where the sort of, using your word here, high flying sort of tech companies and Midwest work ethic ethos and grounded sort of approach to business and life, frankly clash a bit. And my view is like you sort of let your game do the talking. This is something that my co founder Zach says a lot actually. And what I have, I'd say disliked honestly about sort of the Silicon Valley culture, even though we're not Silicon Valley, we're here in Austin, same difference. [00:09:26] S0: Yeah.
00:09:26 · Vidit Agarwal, Justin Lopas
[00:09:26] S0: Yeah. [00:09:27] S1: Is exactly what you said. It's like the sort of fake until you make it or like embellishing what you're doing or talking a lot more about the future than the present. If you ask me about how many batteries you're making, I'm gonna tell you how many batteries you made today. And then I might be like, and we're planning for this, but not, well, we have capacitized the factory to x y z. It's like, no, I'm gonna start with today. What literally happened? And did it go well or not? I think that's... There's some Midwest in me about that when you talk to... We have a bunch of suppliers up in the Midwest, and when you talk to them, they're very sort of down to earth and realistic. It's like, here's the number that we produce for you today. Here's our plan. It's not like some big embellished thing, and then you have to peel back the layers of the onion till you get to the truth. Honestly, look for that in candidates too. It's... Just tell it to me straight. If I have to dig to find the truth, then it's like a bad outcome. I wanna know the truth, know exactly what's happening, and then we can also talk about the future, but know the truth and what's happening today now. [00:10:21] S0: Tell me if I met your high school teachers and asked them to describe the young Justin, how would they have described you?
00:10:29 · Justin Lopas
[00:10:29] S1: That's an interesting question. Probably quite insular and and... What's the right word? Nonsocial... Antisocial. Growing up, especially high school is a good example here, like, quite an antisocial kid. And not because it was like I was like a... Maybe I was... Maybe you can accuse me of being a nerd or whatever, but it was not like in the traditional sense. I just like really did not find value in interacting with other people, which I later have in life have learned is it was extremely stupid and like totally the wrong approach to life. But socially, think that was what they would say. I'd hope they'd say I was smart, had good grades, and like extremely focused on one thing. So in high school, I did this robotics competition called First Robotics. It's like, I think global now, but definitely in The US. And you basically like work with a team to build a robot to play a game to compete against other high schools. And like I did literally nothing else except for go to class and do that. And then funny enough in college, I had basically the exact same experience. We did Baja SAE, basically build this like off road race vehicle and go competing against other colleges. And I did literally nothing else but that and go to class. And so I have zero ability to do more than one thing. Like, wasn't like, oh, I did wrestling for a little bit in high school and ended up dropping that to focus on robotics. Like, I can't do multiple things. Like, I don't think I could ever run two companies at once. Like, I'm inspired by people that could, but it's like you gotta put all of your eggs into the one basket. And I did that in high school, especially as you're asking with with the robotics team.
00:11:53 · Vidit Agarwal
[00:11:53] S0: And people, everyone I spoke to say that you're very meticulous with everything. You're very routine oriented. You're very organized. Very like one, two, three, four, five. Were you always like that?