Written by: Techub News Organized

In a recent dialogue at a16z, two hard-tech entrepreneurs who graduated from Elon Musk's "school" — Galvadyne (next-generation missile propulsion systems) CEO Chandler Lujitza and Mariana Minerals (critical mineral supply chain) CEO Turner Caldwell — shared their core operational philosophies learned at Tesla and SpaceX, as well as how to apply these methodologies in their respective entrepreneurial practices that disrupt traditional industries. This conversation not only delves into Musk's management thoughts but also serves as a practical guide to hard-tech entrepreneurship from 0 to 1.

From "Impossible" Goals to Replicable Practices

Chandler Lujitza served as the propulsion system head in SpaceX's Starship project, while Turner Caldwell was responsible for the battery supply chain, minerals, and metals at Tesla for nearly a decade. Both mentioned that upon entering their new fields (missile propulsion and mineral supply chains), they observed a common sight: industry giants adhering to decades-old traditional methods, resulting in insufficient product quantity, excessively high costs, and slow production speeds.

Chandler discovered that the missile industry faces a triple dilemma: insufficient quantity, excessive costs, and slow production. Drawing from his experience in liquid propulsion technology accumulated during his time at SpaceX and university, he firmly believes that advanced liquid propulsion technology can be applied to missile systems to bring about disruptive change.

Turner's experience reveals another bottleneck in the critical mineral supply chain: extreme software scarcity. While Tesla attempted to secure mineral supply for battery production, he found that large mining and refining companies often have histories spanning 50 to 100 years, are large and conservative, and cling to old models. The real challenge lies in coordination and orchestration — how to manage complex large refining plants and mining operations with an increasingly shrinking talent pool? His answer is: fully leverage the advancements in autonomous technologies in the automotive and bionic robotics fields and apply them to refining and mining operations.

Both realized that to achieve radically different outcomes, they must adopt radically different approaches. Their "methodological arsenal" comes from their refining at Tesla and SpaceX.

Flat Organizations and Decision Speed: The Dual Engines of Information Flow and Execution

When asked about the most important principles learned at Tesla or SpaceX that they still apply every day, both focused on organizational structure and decision-making culture.

Chandler emphasized the extreme importance of flat organizations. The core purpose is not to flatten for the sake of flattening but to achieve rapid information flow and democratization of collaboration. Any junior engineer should be able to directly converse with any executive or decision-maker and collaborate with other teams within the company without going through layers of management. This ensures the efficiency and accuracy of information dissemination, forming the foundation for rapid company growth.

Turner added the key premise for a flat organization to operate successfully: decision velocity. The organization needs leaders with a high level of conviction who can make decisions quickly. Rapid decision-making accelerates development speed and production cycles, allowing everything to move faster. He even cited the recruitment aspect: at SpaceX, high-stakes decisions abound. If high-conviction leaders can make decisions swiftly, they can alleviate numerous risk concerns for junior engineers on the ground, allowing them to proceed confidently.

“If a junior engineer just joined SpaceX or Tesla is anxious about a potentially costly decision that may involve hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars, and a leader can intervene, make a decision, and say, ‘Go ahead,’ to alleviate their concerns, then the entire process will speed up significantly,” Turner explained. Decisions often do not require waiting for all information to be available; many times, you only know if it’s correct after making a decision, trying it out, and iterating quickly. The goal is not to be right all the time but to maximize the percentage of correct decisions made. It’s all about “betting,” and speed and excellent execution are key.

Of course, rapid decision-making requires information support. You need to accumulate information as much as possible within a self-imposed timeframe and then make a decision, learning from that decision and absorbing new information. This is a dynamic cycle.

Addressing Scaling Challenges: Breaking Down Data Silos and Building a Unified Operating System

As engineer-born CEOs, both understand that while solving specific technical problems is challenging, coordinating a large group of people to tackle these "first-time" issues is the real challenge — friction between teams often arises from this.

Even when efforts are made to accelerate decision-making and enhance communication, it is crucial to ensure that all teams' goal vectors are aligned and working towards the same direction. When Turner created Mariana, he particularly focused on how to democratize information access among teams to avoid forming data silos. In teams of 10, 20, or 30, this may not be an issue, but once the team size exceeds 100, data silos will naturally form, even if the executive layer explicitly requests their dismantling.

Therefore, they embedded this concept into their core operating system: all information is published through web applications, and internal access controls are largely eliminated. Core engineering information is not stored on any hard drives nor found in emails that are only sent to specific individuals and need to be forwarded to disseminate. They focus on building a integrated data framework that allows anyone to access and understand the context and content of decisions.

As teams grow, the number of connections between people skyrockets, which is precisely why project execution becomes challenging. Therefore, democratization of information access must be achieved. Turner used the execution of large capital projects as an example: there exists a massive data silo between engineering, procurement, and construction teams. A completely new operating system must be built to ensure that the history of each independent decision is tracked and visible to everyone.

Today, with the help of large language models (LLM), you can run them over data warehouses; if someone does not understand the folder structure, they can directly query the LLM and quickly navigate to the needed location. Mining is essentially a prolonged, ideally never-ending construction project that faces similar challenges among geology, mine planning, maintenance, mine operations, and processing facilities. If employees are not provided with the complete decision context for the entire operation or project, they can only make decisions based on the limited data at hand. Therefore, the goal is to accelerate decision-making while enabling everyone to make globally optimal decisions.

Critical Paths and "Whack-a-Mole": The Art of Resource Focus

Chandler shared from another perspective about the daily routines of SpaceX and Tesla engineers: chasing critical paths and acting as "firefighters". A critical path refers to tasks or procurement activities that drive the timeline and are essential to unlocking the next phase or achieving the ultimate goal.

Although Galvadyne is still young, chasing critical paths and playing "whack-a-mole" is the norm, aimed at pushing the company into the next phase or reaching the next milestone. But the challenge lies in: how to keep the team focused on the critical path without delaying the next decision after the critical path?

Chandler provided a vivid analogy: you cannot have everyone swarm after the ball like in a second-grade soccer game. A corresponding system must be established that can mobilize the core team to tackle the critical path while not allowing other tasks to fall behind. This often means forming small “SWAT teams” that can independently and concurrently handle tasks.

This way, those tasks not currently on the critical path can still advance without diverting all resources. For tasks that are not continuously monitored, people can easily be drawn to the heat of the critical path because it seems like the most urgent matter — “this directly relates to the rocket launch or production line blockage.” But leaders must concentrate resources to ensure that the next item does not prematurely become the new critical path.

For early-stage companies, there may only be one critical path. Galvadyne currently has just six team members, making it relatively easy to control. They form initial teams based on disciplines or fields; for example, having an avionics engineer solve engine design problems may not be meaningful, as it does not help the critical path. However, as the team rapidly expands, vigilance against resource wastage must be maintained.

Practical Tactics: Email Updates, Rhythm, and Milestone Setting

Regarding specific processes and rhythms, the two founders shared practical tactics inherited from Tesla and SpaceX.

Chandler advocates for high-signal, low-noise email updates, especially concerning critical path updates. Usually, there is one primary person pushing a specific issue or task, who sends high-frequency email updates. This not only keeps the team informed of progress but is also crucial for the person responsible — writing down progress itself is a process of reflection and calibration. Chandler himself carries a notebook to jot down notes at any time. Writing allows one to see whether direct progress was made towards the goals throughout the day, facilitating adjustments for the next day.

Turner introduced the concept of pass down common in manufacturing processes. In day-to-day operations, handover reports are issued between shifts and sent via email. If the process development and R&D are to be managed similarly to manufacturing processes, the best enforced function is to generate content akin to a handover report at the end of each day: what we did, what we plan to do, and why. As teams grow and matters increase, manually crafting reports becomes burdensome. Their solution is: if all information enters the same aggregated data backbone, most of the report contents can be auto-filled, transitioning the human role to reviewing, editing, and adding comments rather than starting from scratch. Even in large operations, handover reports tend to be very manual, but the data is already collected. Their focus is on how to automatically generate these reports while still retaining ownership and accountability among personnel — they still need to click send.

Another emphasis is on establishing a sense of rhythm for the company. Without rhythm, people may not be clear on the direction forward. The rhythm provides some structure for a flat organization, letting everyone know that decisions will be aggregated at a certain rhythm. Of course, flexibility is also required, as there will always be super critical decisions needing to be made that day. But providing a structure and rhythm allows everyone to advance effectively at the same pace.

As for the “sprint” commonly used in software engineering, they reserve it for truly critical milestones for the company. If there is a major milestone to achieve, they will call it a “sprint” and have the entire company push towards it. However, the rhythm for constructing large infrastructure differs significantly, as that may involve a 12 to 18 months project, contrasting with the daily software releases associated with cloud development. Another purpose of establishing rhythm is to give oneself time to celebrate interim victories. In long cycles, it’s easy for people to forget the significant progress made. Rhythm acts like a reward function for the team, informing them they are doing the right thing, progressing in the right direction, and receiving regular calibrations.

Regarding milestone-setting, Chandler acknowledged the challenge of "Elon time," as he tends to set very aggressive goals. He believes the true purpose of setting aggressive goals is to force the team to think very carefully and identify what cannot be accomplished within that aggressive timeframe, providing a prioritization list. If there are 1,000 tasks to complete and the aim is to finish them in six months, out of which 900 tasks may be feasible within that timeframe, but another 100 cannot be done, then those 100 must be tackled or simply discarded. This serves as a forcing function.

Avoiding Team Burnout: Mission Alignment and Reducing Friction

Tesla and SpaceX are renowned for their high-intensity work culture; how to avoid team burnout? Both answers point to mission alignment.

Chandler believes that if work is enjoyable, it does not feel like work. For those who strongly identify with the company's mission, such as SpaceX's goal of "making life multi-planetary," long hours and late nights do not have a significant impact. What he is currently contemplating is how to instill enthusiasm for defense in those who have never considered the field. The reality is, significant talent is concentrated at companies like SpaceX, Rocket Lab, Firefly, and Relativity, and there is a need to attract them to resolve defense-related challenges. The key is how to establish a mission alignment as fervent as SpaceX’s on these new problem sets focused on "American vitality," allowing everything to feel like fun rather than suffering.

Turner believes that the real causes of burnout are friction and a lack of a sense of progress. If people are working towards objectives and feel tangible progress, then solving challenges can be exciting. Factors that make work tedious include erratic decision-making that leads teams to move in different directions (which is difficult to completely avoid in fast-paced agile startups), as well as company politics, data silos, and "hoarding your Legos." All these create significant friction. When people have to deal with these instead of focusing on "I have a problem to solve, the path is clear, the decision is obvious, and the priorities are set," their enthusiasm for work will be destroyed. People will get excited about seemingly impossible goals because they want to prove their feasibility, provided that while the goals are aggressive, they must stay within the realm of possibility. Setting overly aggressive goals with no technical paths to realization will also dampen morale. Therefore, the key is to eliminate friction as much as possible and set inspiring rather than demoralizing goals.

Vertical Integration: Strategic Choice, Not Romantic Fantasy

Vertical integration is one of the most notable principles at Tesla and SpaceX, yet it is heavily debated due to its expense and complexity. Should all hard-tech startups vertically integrate? When and where should vertical integration occur? How to balance speed, capital intensity, and operational risk?

Chandler supports the view that it must be "strategically imperative." He believes that the idealized notion of "we must vertically integrate" is almost naive. Vertical integration is not easy, even though they come from places that make it seem easy. From the outside, it looks romantic, but it is filled with pain. His perspective is: those components that will quickly become bottlenecks in the supply chain or production line should be internalized. For Galvadyne, some large welding components are relatively easy to internalize, but the process is complex. If internalized, it can solve one problem in achieving the goal of producing 10,000 missiles per year. Currently, there may be about five such bottlenecks "screaming for help." These are obviously the prioritized targets, which can then be analyzed for the capital intensity and time required for realization. Vertical integration must be strategic. Many claims of "we are completely vertically integrated" will ultimately just cost a lot of money.

Turner agrees and proposes a more fundamental decision framework: each vertical integration decision (which could be thousands) especially in early company stages should boil down to one question — if you don’t decide to vertically integrate, will the company survive? This might be driven by several factors: components don’t exist, technologies don’t exist, or costs are too high for the company to survive. If it doesn't meet this "company survival" test, then vertical integration shouldn’t occur just to save 5%, 10%, or even 50% of costs. In the early stages when resources are limited, vertical integration should only occur for matters with binary outcomes concerning "company survival." Subsequently, as the team grows and starts driving unit cost reductions, cost-driven vertical integration becomes meaningful, but at that stage, risk transfer must be heavily considered: the risks that suppliers bear now shift onto your own shoulders. You are not eliminating a link in the supply chain; rather, you are extending supply chain interactions, because upstream integration means you must absorb their own supply chain. Mariana decided to become a software company that builds and operates mineral infrastructure precisely because pure software companies find it challenging to penetrate the mining sector, and technology adoption speed is limited by customers. For them, if at any point they are not both a software company and a mining company, Mariana cannot exist. Once this decision is made, the next question is where to build collaborations and in which areas there exists a sufficiently rich ecosystem and competition to ensure the cost of some sub-components or parts of the software stack can decrease.

Talent Recruitment: Depth of Technical Assessment and Value of Internship Programs

Tesla and SpaceX are renowned for the quality of talent they recruit. Partially thanks to mission alignment and partly because people want to work with smart individuals and learn from them. How do these companies attract top talent? How do the two founders bring these experiences into the new company?

Turner points out that the key to the recruitment process at Tesla and SpaceX is the in-depth technical assessment. Candidates for engineering positions may need to engage with six engineers, and are almost certain to undergo technical tests to demonstrate their problem-solving thought processes and abilities. This technical rigor is very extensive and may require 8 to 10 rounds of discussions to secure an offer. This might slow down the recruitment process, but it is essential to maximizing the assurance that new joiners can work independently, balancing authority and responsibility, meaning they must possess a deep technical understanding of the area involved. Mariana emulates this but needs to explain to candidates, given the lack of Tesla or SpaceX brand attraction: joining a high-risk startup also requires understanding the team. The process is two-way. Turner finds that an extremely rigorous and challenging interview process positively filters out those motivated by it. Top engineers want to work with other top engineers and want to know that other engineers went through the same screening process. Designing such an interview process is very challenging and demanding of interviewers.

Chandler added the immense value of the internship funnel. Thanks to brand effects, these companies receive an astonishing number of internship applications. The internship programs offer potential full-time employees a 3-month trial period. Those who perform well often stay. He himself interned at SpaceX four times, unable to leave, even considering dropping out (but company policy did not allow it). He believes that among those who have completed significant work on Starship, Dragon, and Falcon rockets, the conversion rate of interns to full-time employees is very high. This program is critical to forming the final engineering team as it provides people the opportunity to truly showcase their abilities. Thus, Galvadyne has just launched an internship program as well.

For small teams, Chandler still personally speaks with every candidate, conducting behavioral and in-depth technical interviews. He typically starts with a broad question, digs deep, and explores the problem set the candidate is solving. Through 15-20 minutes of reviewing a problem-solving process, he can quickly gauge whether a candidate is outstanding. In formal recruiting, they conduct 2-3 rounds of screenings followed by group interviews. His philosophy is: introducing candidates to the team. The team is small and requires constant interaction, so it is crucial to ensure mutual satisfaction. For interns, they are still exploring, but the current priority is finding individuals passionate about missile engineering who can commit fully. They seek interns from various backgrounds, including formula racing, drone systems, and particularly rocket teams. He even found a domestic rocket team that uses the same propellant and is currently targeting recruitment at that school.

Startup Advice for Young Engineers: Be a “Sponge” First, Then Build the Base

Both founders began their careers at Tesla and SpaceX while relatively young. For young engineers considering one day leaving to start their own ventures, they offered pragmatic advice.

Turner believes that if you are in a company with a very high talent density, where you can feel growth every day and see a project evolve from early chaotic phases to mid chaotic phases to deployment chaotic phases, this end-to-end experience is invaluable. Multiple experiences from concept to deployment with the best people in the world is a unique experience that prepares you for future entrepreneurship. But he does not advise rushing out, because your credibility is crucial for attracting talent. A company is essentially a collection of exceptional talent, driven by a collectively exciting mission. Convincing people to join a mission filled with pain and risk is easier if you have multiple execution cycles of experience, genuinely understanding how long each part of the process takes, allowing you to set goals with greater credibility and construct the team around them. Therefore, maximize leveraging ecosystems and companies that provide such experiences. As long as you gain increasing power, responsibility, and scope within the company, it will be a valuable experience laying the groundwork for your future success.

Chandler strongly agrees. He joined SpaceX at 18 and told himself from day one to be a "sponge," absorbing information from优秀的人. This should not be limited to the internship period but should be a lifelong endeavor. He suggests, how to place yourself among the world’s finest and get involved in a project from start to finish, repeating that experience. He also acknowledges that newcomers may not know what “good” looks like. Therefore, he recommends relying on your network, peers from school, classmates who have interned at other places, professors, or others who can provide perspectives on companies, missions, and products to engage in meaningful dialogues. While this may seem daunting, once you find that right position, go be a "sponge."

Turner concluded, you will never be fully ready to start a business. There is no fixed formula or recipe of “stay somewhere for 10 years then start a business.” Different people have different views on when they feel confident taking risks. But he generally believes that before learning all aspects of building a company, you hope to have the strongest possible technical foundation. Ensuring excessive investment in technology is key. Because once you start a business, you will keep learning how to recruit, how to fundraise, and how to build the ecosystem and infrastructure needed for the company. Chandler resonated with this: learning about funding and other matters while already possessing a technical foundation is already challenging; he cannot imagine doing the reverse — mastering sufficient technical capabilities while entrepreneurship. Therefore, he prefers to first have a technical foundation.

This conversation ultimately returns to a simple truth: don’t try to learn how to build rockets while also being a founder. For hard-tech entrepreneurs, a solid technical foundation is the greatest assurance against all uncertainties.

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