“Ambition Without Execution is Delusion", Form Energy CEO Mateo Jaramillo on Starting Form Energy

0:00Mateo Jaramillo:And that was the badge that one of his grandfathers used to badge into the factory when he would work at the iron mill. And it was a sign of respect and absolutely was a challenge. In other words, don't let me down. There's a lot of writing on this. Welcome back, Mateo. It's great to be back. We had a great time chatting last week about form energy and the future of storage. We're going to take a slightly different tack this week and talk about more, Mateo, you as a person. So he asked this question of every guest that comes on Giant Ideas. If you had to pick three photographs of your life that define your life, what would they be?

0:38And what have you learned from them?

0:40Mateo Jaramillo:I'm not going to go with, you know, the kids, I have three kids. I'm not going to do the kids being born one or me getting married. I sort of assume that those are. They have been done on this show before. So that's good to hear. They haven't done. Yeah. But let me let me start with one that is maybe relevant for the for the conversation.

1:04Mateo Jaramillo:So when I after I left Tesla, I was thinking about what does come next for energy storage. And I'm very continue to be super curious about that. And as that thought experiment, it was really trying to figure out, you know, what kind of battery could compete with fossil fuels on the grid. And and I did come across this iron air chemistry that was in the public domain. And I was fortunate enough to be able to sort of run that thought experiment in a fairly controlled environment. I was an entrepreneur residence at something called, it's called Activate Now. It's called Cyclotron Road then, but it's sort of, you know, hard tech incubator for essentially PhDs.

1:39Mateo Jaramillo:And it was founded by a friend of mine, Ilan Gur, there in Berkeley. And it was just a place for me to sort of counsel younger entrepreneurs kind of early in the stage there. But they did have a very rigorous process for sort of evaluating hard tech ideas. And Elon brought a lot of structure to my thinking about that. And I have the fortune of having some amazingly smart friends who I could bring in and sort of red team it with. And we did a very formal process around it. And I sort of reached the end of it. And I had never – it sounds a little naive. I never really thought about founding a company.

2:17Mateo Jaramillo:but after I the smartest people that I could bring in ran through a very rigorous process I sort of was looking at the page and you know my friend Ilan was right there and he's like I think you need to start the company I just I remember looking at the battery specification that I had come up with that that was represented by this iron air approach I just like it just became clear as day like I we happened to do that at Stanford there was a There was a conference room that we were all in doing this red team, blue team exercise. And I just like I can picture the windows and the light coming in the windows and sitting at that desk looking at looking at the specification on my computer.

2:54Mateo Jaramillo:I was like, I think I need to start a company. And that was like, you know, sort of, you know, eyes closed to take the snapshot moment there. And I had no idea what was going to come next. But that part was extremely clear. Love it. Accidental entrepreneur. Yeah, exactly. So I've been in batteries even before Tesla. I was at a company called Gaia Power Technologies in New York. And we sold lead acid batteries, essentially, to behind-the-meter applications. We're doing demand charge reduction back in early 2000s. And I was technically the COO of the company, but I was battery installer. I was battery maintainer.

3:31Mateo Jaramillo:I was like customer, business development guy. I was doing all of it. and uh and and i remember installing batteries in a starbucks you know at 1 a.m because you had to do it off off hours and in manhattan and like you know taking these heavy batteries down the down the very precarious stairs you know in in in midtown and uh i remember sort of having a very crisp moment to myself. I was like, have I, have I committed to the wrong thing? Cause coming out of divinity school, I, it was my first job in storage. And I got, I was sure that it was, you know, sectorially, I was sure that it was the right bet.

4:15Mateo Jaramillo:Like we had to have a better way to store energy. And so I committed this, this company as my first, you know, first storage job. And as a fears in and just like doing things, I never imagined that I'd be doing it. Like really having that moment, like I wasn't getting paid because the company was having a really tough time getting through and like from from the altar to uh to the to the staircase carrying carrying battery storage yeah exactly it's like what you know what choices have led me here you know to be carrying batteries down there down a hatch off of a midtown you know street here in manhattan you know middle of the night and like what am i doing here um and that was like you know really those moments create the resolve i suppose uh but but i you know i can still i sometimes still actually go past that Starbucks when I'm in Manhattan.

5:00Mateo Jaramillo:It's like, there's the reminder there that like, you know, the road is not linear for, you know, by any stretch of the imagination and you can end up, you know, in some strange scenarios. I had a funny, slightly similar scenario where immediately after graduating from Princeton, um, also with a, not, not, not, not studying to be a priest, but with a degree in philosophy and religion, I was gigging around New York with my band and I was um signed up to be I say snuck in to be a bartender at Webster Hall because I didn't really have the uh the credentials for it and I was there on the night delivering uh making drinks and it was a hip-hop night and I didn't know I didn't actually know many of the drinks that were being ordered and it was a it was a somewhat disastrous evening where I also sort of had a moment of being like whoa was was this the right decision um anyway here we are now yeah those those are the impactful ones uh and then you know maybe a little bit more recently um you know we built a factory here in west virginia formed it and it's on an old steel mill site uh you know the steel mill produced for 100 years and you know 12 000 jobs that went away 25 years ago and uh the state of west virginia really committed us committed to us to bring us here.

6:16Mateo Jaramillo:And there was a bill that was passed in the legislature, in fact, to fully fund the economic development package that they put in front of us, which is$290 million, a very meaningful amount from the state.

6:32Mateo Jaramillo:And there was a signing ceremony and we went to the signing ceremony and our local state center, this guy named Ryan Weld. He's from here. His grandparents, his grandfathers worked in the mill. And he introduced me at that signing ceremony. He was on stage in Charleston, West Virginia, which is the capital of the state. And as he was walking off stage and I was walking on stage, and Ryan's an Air Force guy. And as folks may know from people in the military, there's the challenge coin. So, you know, from the branch that they represent or generally or their division, there's a coin to, you know, the size of a sort of large silver dollar.

7:14Mateo Jaramillo:And the tradition is to sort of, you know, you palm it when you shake somebody's hand and you receive that challenge coin. It's, you know, very much a sign of respect and honor. And I've had the honor of receiving a couple challenge coins over the years and their tradition of the military. And as I shook Ryan's hand as he was coming off stage, there was a coin that he palmed for me. And he came in close for a second. And I looked at it. It was not a military challenge coin. It was a badge with a number on it. And that was the badge that one of his grandfathers used to badge into the factory when he would work at the iron mill.

7:58Mateo Jaramillo:and he said uh there's a number on there he said jim zirkle as his grandfather would be proud and it was a sign of respect and ryan you know because he's savvy about these things absolutely was a challenge in other words don't let me down right stay this community you there's a lot of writing on this and uh and that was you know sort of the the responsibility and the and the way the moment really was there but it was also just an extremely genuine you know human moment coming from from ryan the last question to wrap up this episode what is it about mateo yourself that's allowed you to be so successful in life and modesty is not not allowed in this answer we We want you to be, uh, for some lead boastful.

8:47So yeah, you've done a lot. Um, what do you think is about you that's allowed you to do that?

8:52Mateo Jaramillo:Uh, I think it's a combination of my personality, which is, uh, I, I am pretty low key. I'm pretty even keeled. In fact, you know, very even keeled. Um, that, that's one thing I hear from my team frequently is that, you know, the fact that I don't sort of, you know, get too high or too low is, is important there. and at the same time and i will not pretend to be humble about this i am insanely ambitious the powerful combination i don't want to work on something it doesn't matter i don't see why we can't go you know build literally build a trillion dollar product uh i know we can i know it's possible uh and i also know that it's uh sometimes it's to get there you just kind of have to keep going and the small stuff you know it's like the the vicissitudes of day in, day out, like not worth reacting to.

9:44Mateo Jaramillo:Just keep plugging away. Don't ever give up. And keep your sights, you know, set on the highest possible outcome that you can. And that's where, you know, you asked a little bit about the culture before it formed. I think there's one thing that characterizes maybe why we have collectively been successful is, you know, there is an insane amount of ambition and for the amount of ambition, a relatively low amount of ego. And that's also how I've tried to select for people on the team as well as like that right quotient, right? It's like just incredibly ambitious for the company and for even for yourself, but your own personal ego has to be, you know, just a notch below that, right?

10:23Mateo Jaramillo:That ratio is super, super important. I think that's a key ratio, isn't it? The ambition to ego and you want, you want the ambition to be as high as possible, the ego to be as low as possible. When those two start to invert, that's when you get in trouble or if the ego just gets too close to the ambition and that's the other area you have trouble yeah yeah that's right and so i think that has enabled me to you know very immodestly talk about goals like what we're talking about going and building a trillion dollar product um and still attract people who really want to work hard right and be a part of it i guess the third part of that triangle is you need the ambition skill needs to match the ambition as well because if you have ambition without skill then I think it can, it can also fall down.

11:01Mateo Jaramillo:Delusion. What's the phrase? Ambition without execution is delusion. Yeah. It's like, or vision without execution is delusion. You know, to some extent, like, you know, making sure that we were never too far apart, right? On that vision and capability, right? Thin line between genius and folly, I guess, right? So thank you so much for joining us on Giant Ideas again, Mateo, and sharing these wonderful snippets of your life. Very excited about Form Energy and its future. And it's been so great chatting with you. Yeah, Cameron, it's been a pleasure. Thanks so much.