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Ernie Garcia

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60
first
2021-08-05
most recent
2021-08-05
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1
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podcast

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  1. “Take on. And it's because those problems are oftentimes glorified and they're appreciated by their peers for how interesting they are. But like the truth is every problem is interesting. Just to dive into one, finding a way to title cars effectively and register cars effectively across 50 states with DMVs in every state that have different processes and you're interacting with a customer who's entering information into a fixed interface and then ultimately it's got to go to the DMV who's going to interact with it manually. That problem, there's nothing on the surface that's sexy about that problem. There's not a single thing. But it's incredibly interesting when you dive in. And I think that's another like really important thing in trying to be successful is when you find these complexities. Can you find great people that want to tackle superficially sexy problems? And can you get those people to be like, hey, but wait a minute, this other problem that has no sex appeal whatsoever is actually even cooler because it's got the same complexity as the sexy person.”

    2021-08-05 · Invest Like the Best · Ernie Garcia - Disrupting the Auto Buying Experience - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 45] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “Exactly. Do you know how hard it was, you wouldn't do it, but it's also a thing that causes you to choke at some point because you bit off so much more than you realized. And I think that trying to recognize that that's the truth as quickly as you can and then trying to figure out, okay, like what does this mean? What do we have to change? This is more complicated than I thought and it's harder than I thought. And I can't make all these decisions anymore. You have to constantly be learning and changing and you have to be surrounding yourself with great people and you have to be willing to give them the ability to make their own decisions and move quickly because you just can't. Like the problems get so big. Some of the decisions that have to be made and the complexity that just constantly grows and emerges is so great that I think you have to find ways to tackle that once you've accidentally jumped and you find yourself in the middle of it. You have to find the best way you can to manage it. Another thing that I think has been really interesting is a lot of times really thoughtful, smart, high achieving people, there's like certain types of problems they want to solve.”

    2021-08-05 · Invest Like the Best · Ernie Garcia - Disrupting the Auto Buying Experience - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 45] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “So we talked about this general concept of complexity, which you can kind of see from the outside, it's not that hard to say business A is probably more complex than business B. What I think is generally true of all people, but I think it's really true of ambitious people is while we might be able to say A is more complex than B, we massively underestimate the complexity of both A and B. And once you zoom in and you try to take the problem on, you just start to realize like all of these parts are so complicated. Little things that you may have given two words in your high-level description of a business all of a sudden become massive undertakings that are super complicated. And the deeper you get into that undertaking, the more you appreciate that there's 10 more undertakings underneath that that you didn't even know to articulate in the first place. And so that's something that's so interesting. And I think it's important for entrepreneurs to be aware of because you're always taking on more than you think you are. I think that that's like generally true. And I think that one of the things that in a way like.”

    2021-08-05 · Invest Like the Best · Ernie Garcia - Disrupting the Auto Buying Experience - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 45] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “Flexity is kind of a function of how big a swing you want to take to some degree, but maybe that's how I think about that.”

    2021-08-05 · Invest Like the Best · Ernie Garcia - Disrupting the Auto Buying Experience - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 45] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “I think big is good, obviously. I think lack of change is like a really strong indicator. At a high level, what the best business model for customers should be, it's a function of the technologies available and where customer preferences are. And technology is constantly evolve forward. Customer preferences constantly evolve. So if you see a business model that is stagnated for a long time, there's a good chance that there's a way better way to approach that market today than there was when technologies were different and preferences were different. So I think stagnation is a good sign. I think complexity is to me a really good property if you're trying to build something really big, but it's also a property that decreases your odds of success. I think that it's like complexity generates a higher likelihood of failure, but it also generates, in my opinion, the most important and persistent and durable mode once you clear it. So I think to me.”

    2021-08-05 · Invest Like the Best · Ernie Garcia - Disrupting the Auto Buying Experience - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 45] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Me start with the previous jobs that I had prior to Carvana. I would always be at companies that had values written on walls. Okay, this is the thing we have to be purposeful about. You have to actually live it and make it part of what you do and part of your language every day. And starting at the top but trickling all the way down, I think people have to really use the language of your culture and values. And when someone violates it, when someone does something different than is normalized behavior inside of your culture, it needs to catch everyone off guard and seem weird. And everyone needs to kind of feel like it's weird. And if they don't think it's weird, then your culture is not strong. It's not like embedded in the way people are making decisions every day.”

    2021-08-05 · Invest Like the Best · Ernie Garcia - Disrupting the Auto Buying Experience - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 45] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “To current position of the company and then the quality of people that you're interacting with, and then the culture that company has. But I think those are probably the most important things.”

    2021-08-05 · Invest Like the Best · Ernie Garcia - Disrupting the Auto Buying Experience - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 45] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “We would start with where is the business today? That's a pretty good indication of average decision quality with variation off of average decision quality being driven by luck and just reality that cause things to move. But I think that's a good place to start. And then I think we'd be looking at the people. Obviously kind of the senior people you get more exposure to matter a lot and you want to believe in them and respect them and trust them and think that they're thoughtful, smart people that are learning as they go. I also think you'd want to see their interactions with the rest of the people on the team and you'd want to see as best you could the way the rest of the team feels and how they feel about the journey that they're on. Because I do think that part of building a great company is about getting this groundswell of all the people inside the company that believe in what you're doing and feel good about it and care about it. And so I think you want to look at how the entirety of the team, how they feel about the mission that they're on. I think that's really, really important. So I think we'd start there. So really that does reduce.”

    2021-08-05 · Invest Like the Best · Ernie Garcia - Disrupting the Auto Buying Experience - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 45] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “That really accompanies thousands and thousands of decisions that get made over time. And some of those decisions gets you to the spot where you are. I think the most important thing you can do, like you need to make sure that big foundational conviction decisions are really good. What market are you going after? Why are you going after that market? How are you going to approach it? What's centrally important to you? What things will you trade off on? Will you not trade off on? What are your principles and values and things that you're going to adhere to through thick and thin regardless of what direction maybe numbers might be pointing you in the moment those are really important things, but the rest of it is just about great people that are learning along the way that are trying to figure things out. And I think to me, like I think there's a little bit more randomness and luck to it than maybe the stories appreciate. If I were an investor with my extremely limited experience then I were trying to make good decisions based on that experience set, I think I would be looking for people that I believed in to constantly learn and make good decisions along the way. And I think I would know.”

    2021-08-05 · Invest Like the Best · Ernie Garcia - Disrupting the Auto Buying Experience - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 45] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “To me, it's not about an investor era. I think it's about a human era. I think all of us love narratives and love tight logic that explains the world around us. And I think that we seek that and we seek the simplicity and the comfort that comes with feeling like we understand everything. Just observationally, you know, being inside of a single company and then having conversations with investors and seeing where sometimes my view diverges a bit from theirs. I just think oftentimes it's spreadsheet versus reality is another way to collapse it. And I think that the truth is going from idea to something successful that works at scale is just a really long path with a lot of things you have to figure out along the way. There's a lot of hard times and there's just so many lessons that you've learned and there's so many decisions that you make and so many of them are right and so many of them are wrong. And I just think that in my experience to me, if I had to pick a direction that I think many people from the outside make in terms of their errors, I just think that they try to oversimplify.”

    2021-08-05 · Invest Like the Best · Ernie Garcia - Disrupting the Auto Buying Experience - [Founder’s Field Guide, EP. 45] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source