Turner Caldwell

Engineering Manager, Tesla

Search every verified Turner Caldwell interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Turner Caldwell, cofounder and CEO of Mariana Minerals and a former Tesla engineering manager, appeared on the a16z podcast on March 27, 2026. He discussed lessons from his decade at Tesla, where he worked across the battery supply chain)Skip, and his time on the Starship program at SpaceX, which he joined four times. Caldwell described his focus at Tesla as identifying how to debottleneck the mineral supply chain to keep pace with battery production, and noted that the industry is "massively software deficient" and faces challenges in managing complex refineries with a shrinking talent pool. Caldwell emphasized the importance of building a strong technical foundation before starting a company, stating that founders should "overindex on the technical side" before taking on company-building tasks like hiring and fundraising. He also described how Elon Musk's aggressive targets force teams to think deliberately about which tasks cannot be completed within a given timeframe, and advocated for eliminating unnecessary requirements as quickly as possible to enable speed and a production-focused mindset.