Today Chris sits down with Justin Lopas, Co-founder & COO of Base Power Company. On Monday Base announced a $1B Series D at a $13B post money valuation.

Justin spent his early career at SpaceX, where he helped lead the Brownsville site that became Starbase, then ran manufacturing at Anduril. Base puts large batteries on homes, owns and operates them, and uses the fleet to support the grid.

This is a conversation about speed, and about how much of it turns out to be a decision rather than an effort level.

They discuss:
• Why he wanted their first battery installed fast instead of right
• Why he thinks good manufacturing is decided during design, not on the factory floor
• Why he does not push his suppliers as hard on price as he could
• Why SpaceX put him in charge of building the Starship factory two and a half years into his career
• The question he asks to find out why a job is really taking so long
• How a battery company ended up training its own electricians
• Why he calls Base an infrastructure company and not a product company

Timestamps:
(00:00) Intro
(00:48) From Late-Night Research to an Office in Austin
(07:55) The First Battery Install Was an Epic Failure
(09:15) Finding a Battery Supplier Who Would Let Them In
(15:47) Killing Gen Two and Skipping Straight to Gen Three
(22:52) From a Hundred Requirements to Cardboard Cutouts
(26:02) Good Manufacturing Is Won or Lost at the Design Stage
(32:48) How to Build a Supply Chain From Nothing
(40:51) Negotiating With Suppliers and Deciding What to Build Yourself
(44:58) The Turtle That Marks the Slowest Team
(47:39) The SpaceX Lessons on Talent and Speed
(54:09) Building a Regulatory Team and Choosing the Next State
(58:19) Managing Complexity Is the Whole Job
(1:03:20) Tesla Sells Products, Base Owns Infrastructure
(1:05:24) Training Electricians and Staying Out of Commercial

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