YouSaid · the spoken record

Ernest Garcia

lines on the record: 68
first: 2025-04-07
most recent: 2025-04-07
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“That was a very nice thing to say. Thank you back. Really appreciate it. And it really had fun as well. We did not talk about anything things that I thought we talked about.”
2025-04-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Carvana CEO on Buiding a $50B Company, Losing 99% and Coming Back | Ernest Garcia: Inside the Mind of the Most Misunderstood CEO in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In their mind, they'll start applying that multiple to bigger and bigger numbers. And I think, you know, our numbers are real big. But I think we don't want to share them, but we want to, you know, we're ambitious.”
2025-04-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Carvana CEO on Buiding a $50B Company, Losing 99% and Coming Back | Ernest Garcia: Inside the Mind of the Most Misunderstood CEO in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that we hope it's many millions. I think that we are built today. We have infrastructure in without diving too much into the details of what this means. We have infrastructure that I think clearly supports 3 million. And I think that the reality of how these things work is, you know, if we go backwards in time to kind of like think about how we'll project the future, I think at 100 cars, it was easy to see 250. And at 250 cars, it was easy to see 500. And at 500, it was easy to see 1,000, 1,000. It was easy to see 10,000 at 10,000. You could imagine 100,000. Everyone always wants to look from the moment you are to what the finish is going to be. But you have to remember that where you are is going to keep changing. If the trajectory is positive, then your position in space is going to keep changing. And I think what looks possible is always kind of like a multiple, depending on how big your eyes are. It's a multiple of where you are today. You know, I think our goal is to keep making progress. And if we keep doing that, regardless of what the multiple is that people have.”
2025-04-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Carvana CEO on Buiding a $50B Company, Losing 99% and Coming Back | Ernest Garcia: Inside the Mind of the Most Misunderstood CEO in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No idea. No, there's nothing spicy. I just think it's early. I think we're always running experiments and trying to learn. And I think that it's extremely early. And so I think that we should save our words for when we've got very concrete things to say.”
2025-04-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Carvana CEO on Buiding a $50B Company, Losing 99% and Coming Back | Ernest Garcia: Inside the Mind of the Most Misunderstood CEO in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My natural drift is capabilities first, scale second, blocking and tackling third. And for two years, we focus on blocking and tackling. And we had tremendous success as a result of that. I'm always worried in myself of drifting too far in the other direction.”
2025-04-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Carvana CEO on Buiding a $50B Company, Losing 99% and Coming Back | Ernest Garcia: Inside the Mind of the Most Misunderstood CEO in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm worried about allowing a shift in the thing that you're focusing on to lead to diffuse focus everywhere. Because what I think can happen is when you say we're going from just focusing on this one thing to, hey, we're going to work on this, but we also have this other goal and this other goal, it gets really easy for everyone to say and, right? Okay, so we're going to do this and this and this and this and this and this and this. And they just keep adding more things. I think when you shift the thing that you're focusing on, you have to make sure that you're taking things off the board that were pointed at that focus and replacing them with things that are pointed at the new focus just to make sure that you just don't just and yourself to a million projects and get nothing done. That's the hardest thing about managing a change in like the area of that you're focused on.”
2025-04-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Carvana CEO on Buiding a $50B Company, Losing 99% and Coming Back | Ernest Garcia: Inside the Mind of the Most Misunderstood CEO in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Two things I'll say there what I've come to believe over the last three years is that focus is very important and that foreign ambitious company, it basically requires constant tending, like every three months you have to uncomfortably take things off of your board that you're working on because I think that it's very, very hard to stay focused. I think that companies naturally drift away from focus trying to continually manage that takes, I think a lot of effort. And then I think that we as a company not to like dive too deeply into the specifics of us, but I think we face a two-year period where he focused on nothing but profitability. And I think that we've more recently been trying to find the right balance between profitability, growth, and continuing to build a machine that is even more differentiated than the machine that we had before. And I think that we're at a place where it makes sense for us to be shifting some of our finite focus toward growth.”
2025-04-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Carvana CEO on Buiding a $50B Company, Losing 99% and Coming Back | Ernest Garcia: Inside the Mind of the Most Misunderstood CEO in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's like the practical area where I think is my relative weakness. And then I think like every time you find like a clip on a Twitter or whatever with like little nuggets of wisdom from Steve Jobs, I just think that like the depth there is like unbelievable. And it stems from like a deeply human place. And I think a very deeply driven place that I think is remarkable. I think Elon Musk is like, has there ever been a greater builder? Has there ever been someone who's faced more zero percent likelihood of success problems in a row and continually succeeded? I think that that's unimaginably impressive. And I think you have to try to learn from that. So I don't know. Those were incredibly expected answers. So my apologies.”
2025-04-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Carvana CEO on Buiding a $50B Company, Losing 99% and Coming Back | Ernest Garcia: Inside the Mind of the Most Misunderstood CEO in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, God, I hate to say such expected things, but I will say we've studied Amazon forever as just kind of like it's an incredibly analogous business to our business. There's a lot of like moving things. There's a lot of very similar problems that you face. And so I think we've always paid a ton of attention to that business. I think someone who I was lucky enough to meet, so I'll bring up someone that I met. I was lucky enough to meet Brian Nichol a couple times in my life. And I think that he's now the CEO of Starbucks and was previously the CEO of Chipotle. Like to me, Chipotle is one of the most amazing operational machines I've ever seen. Like you walk in there and you have an unbelievable burrito bowl in 30 seconds. And it's like, you know, there's no wasted movement in that entire place. It's unbelievable. That's something that, you know, you try to learn from because I think it's like an area.”
2025-04-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Carvana CEO on Buiding a $50B Company, Losing 99% and Coming Back | Ernest Garcia: Inside the Mind of the Most Misunderstood CEO in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No worth of it. That one, no one. I think that comes down to people too. I think my wife is someone who she's probably the most present person that I know. She's probably the person who is most likely to be 100% engaged with the people around her. had the benefit growing up of she clearly has a family that unconditionally loves her and so i think she's a confident and happy person and i think she defaults to positivity uh which i think you know different people default in different ways there that makes it all i think pretty easy so i think i i think Yeah, in my mind, I think that like the foundations of people are unconditional love, the confidence that emerges from that and the ability to be happy that emerges from that confidence I think is like kind of the building blocks. And I think if you have that, I think you're in a good spot.”
2025-04-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Carvana CEO on Buiding a $50B Company, Losing 99% and Coming Back | Ernest Garcia: Inside the Mind of the Most Misunderstood CEO in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, the pause here is a very arrogant pause. That's my first thought. I'm trying to think of the place where I'm least resilient. Man, I eat a lot of salty food at night. I don't know why that is. I'm not a sweet guy. I eat a lot of salty food at night. I have some things I could bring up. I think any good relationship, you've got your recurring battles. Me and my wife have a recurring battles where I'm probably less resilient. I'm going to stay away from that one. I'm going to stay away from that one. There's got to be some lines. Somewhere, there have to be lines. So I'm going to stay away from that one. But I think there's some areas where I'm probably less resilient than I should be there.”
2025-04-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Carvana CEO on Buiding a $50B Company, Losing 99% and Coming Back | Ernest Garcia: Inside the Mind of the Most Misunderstood CEO in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Dumb as well because we are naturally storytellers. And when you get these little examples that you care so much about that are running around constantly displaying to you what the human animal is, it's like a very helpful reminder that I think helps you manage better. I think it helps you understand customers better. So I think there's at least an offset there.”
2025-04-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Carvana CEO on Buiding a $50B Company, Losing 99% and Coming Back | Ernest Garcia: Inside the Mind of the Most Misunderstood CEO in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That comes across. It's very, very clear. No, well, by the way, I think that's a very good question. I think that there's In support of that perspective, like I've even seen papers about professors, the number of times that their papers are cited is, I think, like it goes down when they get married. And I think it goes down again when they have kids. So I think that there's like data that supports that. I also think kids are like at least an offset is they remind you of what matters and what humans really are. It's very easy as you get older to drift into highly intellectualized views of the world. When you see your five-year-old kid explaining to you why something just happened in a way that is so obviously wrong, it's unbelievable. You remember that like, okay, this is obvious to me because I have a lot more experience and I'm a lot smarter than my five-year-old kid right now. So I know this story is nonsense. But like a much higher intelligence than me would probably look at all the things that I say all the time and would view a lot of it as complete.”
2025-04-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Carvana CEO on Buiding a $50B Company, Losing 99% and Coming Back | Ernest Garcia: Inside the Mind of the Most Misunderstood CEO in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I believe people matter a lot. The underlying capabilities of the person matters a lot more than the experience. I'm not sure how many people around me don't believe that, but certainly a subset do.”
2025-04-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Carvana CEO on Buiding a $50B Company, Losing 99% and Coming Back | Ernest Garcia: Inside the Mind of the Most Misunderstood CEO in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To get to a place where you could cover the interest. And that pressure, I would like to believe that we could have created it for ourselves, but I don't think we could have. And I think that like we're a group of people that put a tremendous amount of pressure on ourselves, I really do believe that we're relatively unique in that way. But there's no substitute for huge cash flows that have to be covered in a market that's telling you you're stupid every day. That generates a type of pressure that is extremely valuable. To me, like that was not the plan, right? Like we weren't like, hey, let's take out this debt because it's going to create this near-death experience. It's going to be great for us in the long run. Like that wasn't our story. So we don't get to take credit for that. But I think that there were positives that came from it.”
2025-04-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Carvana CEO on Buiding a $50B Company, Losing 99% and Coming Back | Ernest Garcia: Inside the Mind of the Most Misunderstood CEO in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think debt is dangerous in general, and I think it's more dangerous for a company in a phase that we were in where you're not like positively cash flowing. I think those things are definitely true. I also think in this case it worked out. Like had we raised equity in the same dollars at the same time that we took out debt, we would have taken a lot more dilution than let's say that we just like raised equity today and paid it off just to like, you know, allow you to do that math. We would have taken quite a bit more dilution had we done it the other way. So I think it like it worked out. And then I think which doesn't necessarily speak to whether or not it's good in general. Like, you know, you observe one case of the world, but the world is complex. The other thing that I think was interesting about the debt, it was almost like being super public because it's created like a way bigger pressure. We were not a positive cash-flowing business. And then all of a sudden, the market said, we're not giving you money. And not only did you have to get to break even, you had”
2025-04-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Carvana CEO on Buiding a $50B Company, Losing 99% and Coming Back | Ernest Garcia: Inside the Mind of the Most Misunderstood CEO in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I think it was one that I had to learn the hard way for sure, not a natural one for me. Like I want to take as little dilution as possible the entire time. But I think, yeah, then those things are going to happen. Like never expect, like I said, no one's ever going to clap for you. Think about all the most amazing companies in the world today. Are people standing up clapping? Like maybe in the tiny world of investors and people that like study businesses, maybe there's like some applause that occurs. But for the most part, like read the news, look at public sentiment every day. It's like no one ever stops and says great job. It's like you just got to keep marching and build a thing that's valuable and productive and useful. If you allow yourself to need outside validation, I just think that you're putting yourself in a weak spot.”
2025-04-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Carvana CEO on Buiding a $50B Company, Losing 99% and Coming Back | Ernest Garcia: Inside the Mind of the Most Misunderstood CEO in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think one of the things that I have grown to believe is that the market can be more volatile than I ever thought. And so I think you want to build in resilience in whatever ways you can. I think the most important resilience is people. It's people that have had hard days. It's ideally teams who have had hard days together and made it through. And so I think when those things happen and the market tells you that you're wrong, those people have like reps that they can go back to, they've made it through before and they can probably make it through again. So I think that's important. I think resilience also ideally, especially in build phases before you are generating cash, means like a little bit stronger balance sheet than you think you need because if you find yourself in a moment where results are a little worse than you thought and the market's a little worse than you thought and you face another bump that you didn't foresee, that can be a problem. So you want to like minimize the odds of like those existential moments, which I think honestly is like a lesson that I'll never fully”
2025-04-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Carvana CEO on Buiding a $50B Company, Losing 99% and Coming Back | Ernest Garcia: Inside the Mind of the Most Misunderstood CEO in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I don't buy into that. I think price it as high as you can price it. I don't think that it's very likely. So let's take our example. You're not supposed to say this. So like, sorry to everyone where you're not supposed to say this. I just don't think that the standard view is right in my opinion. We went out at 15 bucks. We opened at 12. It's a complete disaster. We're down to eight like a week later. Do you remember? Do I remember? Who cares? Do our investors today care? No one cares. No one cares. But if we would have priced it at 10 or 8 or whatever to try to get some magical bump, we would have gotten a lot less money and we would have been more likely to not make it across the line. And we would have taken more dilution for all of our pre-existing shareholders who we also owe something to. And then everyone's going to forget anyway because Mr. Market's wild. So to me, it's like the results are going to matter. Get the money where you can get the money and go build the thing. That's my take.”
2025-04-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Carvana CEO on Buiding a $50B Company, Losing 99% and Coming Back | Ernest Garcia: Inside the Mind of the Most Misunderstood CEO in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, yeah, yes. And like, you're not supposed to say that. I don't understand why any rational person would take any other view. If we all.”
2025-04-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Carvana CEO on Buiding a $50B Company, Losing 99% and Coming Back | Ernest Garcia: Inside the Mind of the Most Misunderstood CEO in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You jump in there and you do it, and it was the right thing to do. And it did, it went well, but you're building resilience, like personal resilience you're building, but you're also building company resilience because you just had a moment where everyone questioned you and you all came together and you have an honest conversation about it and people decide whether or not they believe your answers and then if they do, you're all now a little tighter because you just fought something together. And so to me, like that helped to build a kind of resilience like as a private company, what do you do when you go through a tough time? Like for the most part, what do you do? You don't talk about it because there's no forcing mechanism to make you talk about it. You just keep going. It's like, you get to avoid building resilience. So I think that I think going through it was like it wasn't fun. It was superficial, like superficially, it was massively dopamine reducing. But I think deeply, it allowed you to find the expensive dopamine. So I think it was better.”
2025-04-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Carvana CEO on Buiding a $50B Company, Losing 99% and Coming Back | Ernest Garcia: Inside the Mind of the Most Misunderstood CEO in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know. Like, I was a deer in the headlights trying to make stuff up and talk fast. As is my habit. So I don't know. Try to do the best you could. But you get back to the office where it actually matters because it's the people that are going to build the thing for a long time. And it's the people that believe in what they were building. And it's the people who bought into that it matters and it's the people who aren't close to investors. And they think that the fact that investors are rejecting us means that we're not good. And so now they have a moment of questioning it. And you walk in and you feel the energy, right? You feel that the energy is like this was supposed to be a party and it's not. That's like, that's tough. And so I got a text message from someone who was like, hey, listen, I think we have to address this. Like we have to pull everyone into a room. And I remember I saw the text message and I was just like, because I knew it was right. And I just, I was like, I just lost like 10 pounds on the road for last week. I just, you know, had like the worst, you know, like day ever trying like when the socks doing the opposite thing of what you're hoping. And I got to, you know, try to jump in a room and like have energy and have this conversation.”
2025-04-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Carvana CEO on Buiding a $50B Company, Losing 99% and Coming Back | Ernest Garcia: Inside the Mind of the Most Misunderstood CEO in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Some did, some did. But I think it's, I mean, it's hard, right? We're an unknown entity out of Phoenix, Arizona with none of the hallmarks of success. We don't have any of the big funds where they can go, yep, that's smart. And I can call this investor that I deal with 50 times and they can tell me about the company. So it's like, we're coming in and they're like, who are you? What's going on? How do I check on you? I don't have any idea. So that was like a lot to ask of investors. And I think that's part of why we immediately dropped afterwards. But you go through that period, you know, you go out, you imagine like ringing the bell and the stock goes up and everyone hugs and it's a party. And it's like they can't even open the stock because it's like no one wants to buy.”
2025-04-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Carvana CEO on Buiding a $50B Company, Losing 99% and Coming Back | Ernest Garcia: Inside the Mind of the Most Misunderstood CEO in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't, but again, like, you know, subject to retrospective rationalization and my own storytelling, but it created pressure. And I think it made us more resilient. Like I remember, you know, we went public at 15 and we came, you know, we were down to eight within a couple days. And I remember walking into the office, you go on this roadshow and it's like you have 45 minute meetings where you have smart people just asking you everything about the business and then you jump in an elevator, you run downstairs, you get in a car, you drive for five, go to the next meeting. You're trying to find two seconds in between to go to the bathroom. And it's like you have 10 of them a day and you do it for a week straight. I lost like 10 pounds. And so that's like the pre-IPO process. And then you go public.”
2025-04-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Carvana CEO on Buiding a $50B Company, Losing 99% and Coming Back | Ernest Garcia: Inside the Mind of the Most Misunderstood CEO in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I do believe in his belief. I think that it's, I think like the market and capitalism and like I don't mean to, I don't know, like fall into the expected trope of all the things that I would have to believe. But I do think they're true. I just think that they're like beautiful organizing functions for people. And I think as long as you believe people are smart, markets will make all kinds of mistakes. But I think that they progress on average. Like I think on average, they weigh. I think it's like a wonderful, I don't know if it's a coincidence. I would need to think through it more carefully, but I think it's a wonderful coincidence that like people pursuing their own goals in a free market necessarily serve the interests of others. I think that that's wonderful. That's like a beautiful truth.”
2025-04-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Carvana CEO on Buiding a $50B Company, Losing 99% and Coming Back | Ernest Garcia: Inside the Mind of the Most Misunderstood CEO in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Market will weigh you. Build the things you think matter. Use the pressure the market provides to find the things that they may be right about, that you're hiding from because it's not comfortable or because it's not what you're naturally good at or what you're naturally interested in. And then go just try to do your best over and over again and make peace with the fact that the market's going to move around and you can't control it.”
2025-04-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Carvana CEO on Buiding a $50B Company, Losing 99% and Coming Back | Ernest Garcia: Inside the Mind of the Most Misunderstood CEO in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that's Benjamin Graham. And I think 100%, I just think that whole analogy through that book is like Mr. Market, which is this crazy thing that you get to trade with every day. I think that there's like a recognition. The sum of investors is a volatile thing. And I think that when you're evaluating something that is necessarily true under high potential is high volatility because high potential means high upside, but it also means probability of downside is greater than in many other cases. If you have something that is high potential, you're probably going to have high volatility. Like sorry, I think that's just part of what it's going to be. And you just got to deal with it. But in the long run, it's like it works. We went public at 15 bucks. And like the vast majority of the time, the stock has looked pretty good compared to that. Like if you're just connecting dots that are very far away, it's looked pretty good. We've had moments where it didn't look great, right? Which is actually hard to do from some of the places that we were just mathematically, but we did. We found that a way to do it. But I think on average, it's like, you know, the.”
2025-04-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Carvana CEO on Buiding a $50B Company, Losing 99% and Coming Back | Ernest Garcia: Inside the Mind of the Most Misunderstood CEO in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Questions about. And then is that something where the market is just wrong and we don't care, which many times that is the case. And it's like, just don't worry about it, move on. But absolutely on occasion, you're like, that's not perfect. What's going on there? Like, let's dig into that. It does matter to the long-term trajectory of Carvana. It does mean that this is an area where we can put more focus. You have to sift through the pressure because the pressure comes in all kinds of crazy directions.”
2025-04-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Carvana CEO on Buiding a $50B Company, Losing 99% and Coming Back | Ernest Garcia: Inside the Mind of the Most Misunderstood CEO in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I think everywhere. And I think that that's like a useful, I think that that's a useful thing for us to dive into because it kind of like contradicts my previous answer. In good times, in like in 2021, what percentage of investors said that they weren't long-term focused investors? It was zero. But the reason was because it was in their short-term interest to be a long-term investor in that moment, right? But then you find out who the real long-term investors are when it's not in your like short-term interest to be a long-term investor. That's when you like know if it's real or not. We went through a moment where I think that became exceptionally clear. And you see who people are and what they care about in moments of strain. It becomes very clear. And I think the market, in my opinion, is constantly kind of panicking about everything. It's constantly like over-evaluating all these kind of micro data points. You don't want to overreact to all of that. You need to have your convictions and beliefs, but it is useful to sit there and be like, okay, but what is the one thing we're going to get?”
2025-04-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Carvana CEO on Buiding a $50B Company, Losing 99% and Coming Back | Ernest Garcia: Inside the Mind of the Most Misunderstood CEO in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I disagree, but I respectfully disagree. Let me tell you why. And I have a ton of respect for them. I think that when you're public, effectively there's almost zero relationship influence in the way people are reacting. Like the stock does not care about who you are. It doesn't care about your relationships. It just doesn't care. When you know someone for a year or two years or five years, they do care who you are. You can evaluate someone on intentions. You can evaluate someone on their actions or you can evaluate someone on their results. Being public, it's just results. When you have a relationship, there is some portion of the way you're evaluated that is based on intentions and actions. When you're public, it's just cold. It's ruthless. It's just results. It's very hard to replicate that. Everything, everything before the butt is nonsense, right? And I think being public, like I said, I think personally it's not perfect.”
2025-04-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Carvana CEO on Buiding a $50B Company, Losing 99% and Coming Back | Ernest Garcia: Inside the Mind of the Most Misunderstood CEO in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I think that's right, but I think you, I don't think you need that to push you in general, but I do think it helps to push you specifically. And what I mean by that is like earnings prep is, I think, viewed by many as like a waste of time, right? Like every quarter, you got to go sit in front of analysts and investors, you got to answer these questions. You have like a day afterwards where you talk to all your big investors for half an hour and you got to answer their questions. But to me, it's like my natural way to approach the world. I like to go sit at like I said, behind someone, understand a problem, think about like the fundamentals, what are the moving pieces, what are the people, what are the processes, think about things functionally. I don't think about things from an accounting perspective. But then I think when you have to.”
2025-04-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Carvana CEO on Buiding a $50B Company, Losing 99% and Coming Back | Ernest Garcia: Inside the Mind of the Most Misunderstood CEO in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Superficial answer to that is no. I think it's a cost of the goal basically. You know, my advice to any person out there considering like going public would be what's more important to you is, is it important to succeed or is it important to have the best personal life that you can have? If success is more important to you, I think you want to be public. I think that the things that people say about being public are true. Like there are bad things, right? People are short-sighted and they focus on things that don't matter that much. But on average, I think it's very, very helpful because it creates pressure that I don't think you can create otherwise.”
2025-04-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Carvana CEO on Buiding a $50B Company, Losing 99% and Coming Back | Ernest Garcia: Inside the Mind of the Most Misunderstood CEO in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's like a little competitive and wants to figure things out, and you see people seeing you differently, and you just wish that they didn't. And I think that trying to fight that as best you can is important because I think that you don't want to be a reaction to other people's reduced view of what you are. And so I think that the reality is as things change as your title changes or your financial situation changes, I think that the way you feel inside changes a lot less than people think. And so, and I think that that's important. I think that's probably the healthiest way to approach it.”
2025-04-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Carvana CEO on Buiding a $50B Company, Losing 99% and Coming Back | Ernest Garcia: Inside the Mind of the Most Misunderstood CEO in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That was my second thought. My first thought was what's the answer to that question? My second thought was actually exactly that. You are who you are. It's hard to change who you are deeply and meaningful ways. And I think it takes real effort. One of the things that's weird, whenever like any outside story labels get placed on you is you see that you change in other people's eyes in a way that you haven't changed in your own. So like an example of that would be Carvano when it was 20 people, 50 people, 100 people, I never feel like I was the CEO. I felt like I was earning, right? I felt like it's like you walk in a room, you sit behind the person, you figure out the problem. And then all of a sudden when you're a thousand people, 10,000 people, you kind of see the way people are looking at you and you see that you're the CEO now. You've become this label. You've become this reduced concept. It's like a bummer, to be totally honest, because it's like inside, you know, you're still like, you're still that 15-year-old kid like looking out your eyeballs at the world.”
2025-04-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Carvana CEO on Buiding a $50B Company, Losing 99% and Coming Back | Ernest Garcia: Inside the Mind of the Most Misunderstood CEO in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think being present is the most important thing. I think the quality of the time, I think, is more important than the time. I think we have a million things on your mind. It's really easy to go lay on the couch and be deep in your head with kind of glazed over eyes. I think with your kids, it's most important that when you're there, you're there. It can be moments that are seemingly unimportant, right? It's like picking them up from practice and driving them home or whatever it is. But I just think when you're there, it's like, you know, engage with them. Don't like accept the how is school good. You know, how is soccer good? How'd you play? Good. And then like, how do, okay, cool. I'll go to my mind. You go into yours and I'll see you later. Like, don't accept that. I think try to engage. And I think as long as you, that's where you show that you care, right? That's where you show that like the love is deep and unconditional. So I think quality is more important than quantity, in my opinion.”
2025-04-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Carvana CEO on Buiding a $50B Company, Losing 99% and Coming Back | Ernest Garcia: Inside the Mind of the Most Misunderstood CEO in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I mean, I would say model the behavior and have them want to, right? Go in the backyard and throw football with them and let them know when they drop it. And then if they react to it the right way and they think that that's fun, they don't want to drop it anymore and they want to go out and play again more. It's like, so I think sport is great and I think try to make it fun and try to make them want to do it. For people to be impacted by things in positive ways, they have to want to. So I think you have to make it fun”
2025-04-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Carvana CEO on Buiding a $50B Company, Losing 99% and Coming Back | Ernest Garcia: Inside the Mind of the Most Misunderstood CEO in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It doesn't matter where you woke up this morning or where you go to bed tonight. It's like they want to win and you want to win. And only one of you is going to. So I think sport is one of the few places where we can go collect extremely real experiences very quickly. So I'm a huge fan of sport and competition for kids. I think that it's very useful to help them like figure out how to navigate the world.”
2025-04-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Carvana CEO on Buiding a $50B Company, Losing 99% and Coming Back | Ernest Garcia: Inside the Mind of the Most Misunderstood CEO in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's brutally hard. Your palpable story is laying in bed wondering if you're going to lose everything. Like humans are impacted by those moments. So I think that when those moments aren't happening, it's going to be a little different. I think as a parent, I heard a quote the other day that I thought was a good one for as long as time has been going, children have not listened to their parents, but they've never failed to observe what they do. I think that that's pretty true. The actions you take every day matter. I think that your kids are watching. And I think that what you value, they will value. And so I think having stuff and being around stuff is one thing. But modeling for them that that's important, I think, is a much more dangerous thing than being around it, but both are probably not perfect for kids coming up in the world. I think that's hard. I think that the best answer, in my opinion, is sport. Not everyone loves sports, but the thing about sports is someone wins and someone loses every single time. And it doesn't matter where you start.”
2025-04-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Carvana CEO on Buiding a $50B Company, Losing 99% and Coming Back | Ernest Garcia: Inside the Mind of the Most Misunderstood CEO in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think happiness is probably the unit that we should all be chasing. But I think that there's superficial happiness and there's deep happiness. You know, like there's cheap dopamine and there's expensive dopamine, stock goes up, cheap dopamine. You know, like jump on Twitter, read that.”
2025-04-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Carvana CEO on Buiding a $50B Company, Losing 99% and Coming Back | Ernest Garcia: Inside the Mind of the Most Misunderstood CEO in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So great example, right? Like it's very easy to see the problem with climbing trees. It's not easy to see the fifteenth order impact of climbing lots of trees. You know, do you want your kids to climb trees or not? I don't know. You want to love them for sure. And you want them to know their love for sure.”
2025-04-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Carvana CEO on Buiding a $50B Company, Losing 99% and Coming Back | Ernest Garcia: Inside the Mind of the Most Misunderstood CEO in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, let's dive into that one for a second. And that's going to go back to what's good. My guess without confidence would be knowing that you could lose it all every night is not good for your happiness and for your mental daily well-being. It's probably very good for your ambition. It probably hardens you and creates character that you couldn't otherwise get. So to me, like, is that one good or bad? I think it depends on what you're aiming for. What I think I believe in deeply is basically two things. We talked about one of them. Make sure your kids know that they're unconditionally loved. And then I think give them a chance to go explore the world. Give them a chance to go fall down and figure things out. Because I just think that that's how we learn as people. You can't tell people all the rules. People have to go learn things themselves. They have to go figure stuff out. To me, like those are the two things that I feel strongly about in parenting. And then I think the rest, I feel like I don't know. Because it's just too complicated. But those two things I believe in for sure.”
2025-04-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Carvana CEO on Buiding a $50B Company, Losing 99% and Coming Back | Ernest Garcia: Inside the Mind of the Most Misunderstood CEO in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If I got to live a thousand lifetimes, I don't think I would be likely to be part of something as big as Carvana in very many of those lifetimes. There is luck in the world. Like I just think that there is. And I think that there's prerequisite skills that a group of people has to have to have a chance at success. But I think that that opportunity does have to kind of meet like with some luck to ultimately manifest in success. And so I think what I would say is for every Steve Jobs out there that's out there and has done an amazing thing. There's probably 100 people of similar quality that haven't had anywhere near the same level of success. And so there aren't people nodding their head every time they talk because they don't have that superficial proof that what they do is exceptional. So I do think there's a lot more exceptional people in the world than there are exceptional outcomes because I do think that luck plays a part in all this.”
2025-04-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Carvana CEO on Buiding a $50B Company, Losing 99% and Coming Back | Ernest Garcia: Inside the Mind of the Most Misunderstood CEO in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think, I mean, the reason I'm pausing, I'm trying to decide is it please impress or beat. And I think I'm positive that it was beat. But I think there's no doubt that please and impress are in there. But sure, I think that's like there, right? Like I think we're all humans. Like it's not all conceptual. Some of it's like emotional and just inside. And I think that's true.”
2025-04-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Carvana CEO on Buiding a $50B Company, Losing 99% and Coming Back | Ernest Garcia: Inside the Mind of the Most Misunderstood CEO in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You would just stop putting yourself in a position where that's even a possibility. But I think truly competitive people, they can't stop putting themselves in that position. They have to compete. And I had to compete, but I also just hated losing. And I think that transferred a little bit into like, okay, like if my dad can do it, I can do it and I can do it better. And so I think from a very young age, I felt like people always have these founding stories that are about their specific problem. I think for me, it was way more, and like I said, I hate to say this because I don't think it's like an obviously noble thing, but it was like, if he can do it, I can do it and I can do it better. And so I'm going to do something. I don't know what it is, but I'm going to do something.”
2025-04-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Carvana CEO on Buiding a $50B Company, Losing 99% and Coming Back | Ernest Garcia: Inside the Mind of the Most Misunderstood CEO in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I don't know if it's good or bad in the same way you don't know if your situation is good or bad. But I've always been a deeply competitive person. High school football, like every time we lost, I would go sit in the back of the bus by myself. I wouldn't talk to anyone and I would sit there and cry like, you know, but like a tough cry, like a cry that would make you proud. But I couldn't take it. My stomach just hurt. I would sit by myself and like I said, I wouldn't talk to anyone. Everyone knew to leave me alone. I hated losing. You would think if you hate losing so much that you would”
2025-04-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Carvana CEO on Buiding a $50B Company, Losing 99% and Coming Back | Ernest Garcia: Inside the Mind of the Most Misunderstood CEO in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because I like. Yeah. By the way, that sounds like a very deep question. And I think therapy. Yeah, yeah. I think you'd have to define what's good and bad to even answer that. Because I think that there's probably different answers depending on different definitions of good and bad. But to me, once I became aware of what my dad did, like I would say the biggest benefit of that was I saw that he was successful and I saw that he was human. And I believe that if he was successful, I could be successful. That made it less scary. I think for a lot of people, like they think that other people that are successful are made out of different stuff than they're made out of. And I think if you have an example, it's very close to your life where you know who that person is as a person and you see them being successful, it gives you the belief that you can do it yourself. So I think that was tremendously helpful. The next thing that I'll say, which I think is my version of the motivation that you just described in yourself, which was like seeing difficulty, I don't know where it comes from.”
2025-04-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Carvana CEO on Buiding a $50B Company, Losing 99% and Coming Back | Ernest Garcia: Inside the Mind of the Most Misunderstood CEO in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Wow. That's a hard question. Let me start with this. I think any questions that you ever ask to any person about themselves are subject to the story they tell themselves. And so it's hard for anyone to even know the truth about themselves. We're complicated creatures with very high quality storytelling capabilities that exist in our brain. So you're hearing people's stories. And so trying my best to separate from that. I mean, here's what I would say. I think I think that I have been unimaginably lucky in my life in so many ways. I think like where does the willingness to take risk come from? I think one of the places as a parent, I've got three kids. I think the number one thing you have to do as a parent, in my opinion, is you have to make sure that your kids know their unconditionally loved no matter what happens. I think that if they know that one thing, they always have a foundation to come back to. Like every tough thing they go through, which they will go through.”
2025-04-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Carvana CEO on Buiding a $50B Company, Losing 99% and Coming Back | Ernest Garcia: Inside the Mind of the Most Misunderstood CEO in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've made peace with the fact that people are going to question you if you're ever doing anything that matters. And I don't think there's a path from the beginning to the end where they don't question you. What matters to me in my life is I've got a family with three kids. I've got Carvana and I've got pickleball. I don't care that much about the rest. I focus on those things and it is what it is. I don't know. You can't stop it. You just got to keep going.”
2025-04-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Carvana CEO on Buiding a $50B Company, Losing 99% and Coming Back | Ernest Garcia: Inside the Mind of the Most Misunderstood CEO in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's no stories of companies that make it with no volatility. There's no stories of companies where people just cheer the whole time and it's like a standing slow clap that never ends. That's just not how it goes, right? Like the reality is every single company has stories where they were questioned over and over again. And so you just kind of need to recognize that that's just truth. Like that's just what it is. So if it's true, don't worry about it. Of course, you want to try to learn from the world around you. So you got to listen a little bit. But my personal view is people listen too much to the world around them who's further away from the problem and they should listen less. They should build what they believe in and they feel like they deeply know and not worry about it. And I think we try to get that going inside Carvana across all levels. It's not easy, right? Wake up and you read a new article about how you're going bankrupt and what you're working on doesn't matter and consumers don't want it. It doesn't fit the new whatever. You're going to go through those times and those times are tough, but you need to just know that there's no avoiding that. And if you know that, then it's like when.”
2025-04-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Carvana CEO on Buiding a $50B Company, Losing 99% and Coming Back | Ernest Garcia: Inside the Mind of the Most Misunderstood CEO in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that it's a group of people that are not motivated by status as much as most are. A lot of times what creates the moments of change, like where people bounce from company to company, it's when the company faces difficulty and the people disintegrate as a result, like blame starts to show up and it starts to feel like this is no longer great for my resume. This is, you know, this isn't what I signed up for. This isn't like the A-path that I was on my whole life.”
2025-04-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Carvana CEO on Buiding a $50B Company, Losing 99% and Coming Back | Ernest Garcia: Inside the Mind of the Most Misunderstood CEO in America · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source