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In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · 3 min · Sep 16, 2026
Curiosity and financial levers guide McNeill's management calls
Jon McNeill
He tests candidates for curiosity, bias to action and intelligence, then starts a turnaround by mapping the company's financial levers.
In this episode
Full analysis- 1:22Tesla cut online car orders from 300,000 configurations to twoPro pick 5 min
- 10:25Speed reveals broken processes before it improves themPro pick 6 min
- 15:47Tesla nearly went bankrupt by automating too early4 min
- 8:30Tesla targeted 30% gross margins against a 10% industry norm2 min
- 5:59Mapping the work reveals steps customers do not pay for2 min
- 20:24Ambitious targets force teams to rethink the operating system4 min
- 27:34Curiosity and financial levers guide McNeill's management calls3 min
“curiosity, bias to action, and intelligence, it's a pretty good bet that they were really going to thrive at a place like SpaceX or Tesla.”
Jon McNeillat 28:34 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen
Takeaways
- Ask candidates to unpack a difficult problem they have solved.
- Look for curiosity, bias to action and intelligence.
- Start with the two to four financial levers that drive the business.
About this segment
He tests candidates for curiosity, bias to action and intelligence, then starts a turnaround by mapping the company's financial levers. He treats status-quo thinking as an early warning about culture.
Jon McNeill is CEO and co-founder of DVx Ventures; author.
Founded and scaled six companies, then grew Tesla revenue from $2B to $20B as president.
Nicolai Tangen, Host · CEO, Norges Bank Investment Management
From “Jon McNeill: The Algorithm Behind Tesla and SpaceX | Podcast | In Good Company”, Sep 16, 2026. Watch the full episode
Thanks. We'll look at and fix what's off.
Transcript
Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.
- 27:40
So when you look at people to recruit, how do you spot somebody who could execute properly and not just talk a good game? It's a great question. The first thing we look for is curiosity. So in interviews, we present a very difficult problem. And we watch how curiosity played into... they're breaking down the problem, and they're pursuing an answer. And then we'd ask for examples where they'd done this themselves. And so first thing we look for is curiosity, because people that are curious tend not to be satisfied with the status quo. And that was the first ingredient we needed. Second ingredient we look for is a bias to action. And then we would go into, we would ask them for an example of something that they had done in their career or in their academic experience that they felt like was world-class. And we would break down
- 28:29
how they got the insight. Again, looking for curiosity. We would break down what first steps they took. Did they have a bias to action? And if they had three key ingredients, curiosity, bias to action, and intelligence, it's a pretty good bet that they were really going to thrive at a place like SpaceX or Tesla. So if we parachute you into a struggling company, what's the first thing you do? How do you attack it? First thing I do is I look for how the financial model or how the financial machine of the business actually works.
- 29:00
Because what I'm looking for there is what are the two, three, or four key levers financially in this business that I need to understand? Because that's then going to tell me where to go to work and where innovation might help this company break through. And so that's the first thing I look at is teach me the money machine of the business. Tell me where the leverage is, and then let's go figure out how we double, triple or quadruple one of those levers and make the business now in a much more strong, profitable situation that we can then further innovate off of.
- 29:41
And what would make you think this is just beyond repair? I'm leaving. I think attitude of people who are accepting the status quo versus those who are dissatisfied and not curious and don't have a bias to action. I think the culture is the first signal that would tell me that it might be beyond repair.