Former Tesla president and Lyft COO Jon McNeill on what both companies have gotten right and wrong

We recently interviewed Jon McNeill to learn more about his newest project, a startup studio called DeltaV Ventures. But we also wanted to hear about what it’s like to work inside of Tesla and Lyft.

McNeill spent two-and-a-half years as the carmaker’s president, heading up global sales, marketing, delivery and government relations before heading to Lyft in early 2018, where he served as COO for 18 months. (He left four months after the ride-hail company’s IPO last year.)

He shared his take on his experience at both places, and what, from each, he is using and eschewing at DeltaV. Our conversation has been edited lightly for length and clarity.

TechCrunch: What was it like working with Elon Musk?

Jon McNeill: To me, it was fascinating. He’s the best practitioner of my craft as an entrepreneur. It’s hard to name another entrepreneur who has started four companies, all of which are worth more than $10 billion in market cap [and] several of which are worth more than $50 billion.

We were in hyper-growth mode, and there were no playbooks. Like, literally, when I started, the company had about $2 billion in annual run rate revenue, and three years later, it had $20 billion in annual run rate revenue. And there are no playbooks for that, so we were innovating constantly to either try to get ahead of that growth or just to keep up with it.

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