Cofounder, Tesla
Search every verified Marc Tarpenning interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Marc Tarpenning, co-founder of Tesla, has been active in interviews and public appearances discussing the company's early history and offering his perspective on its current trajectory. In several 2024 and 2025 interviews, Tarpenning has stated that while he is proud of Tesla's role in accelerating the electric vehicle industry, he believes the brand has been "tarnished" by what he described as the "antics" of CEO Elon Musk. He has said that Musk's political activism has "entangled" the brand in a way it "shouldn't be," and contrasted his own approach, stating that most CEOs do not go out on a "political limb" due to fiduciary responsibilities to shareholders and employees, adding, "I would never do that." Tarpenning has also reflected on the company's founding, emphasizing that he and Martin Eberhard started Tesla in 2003 before Musk joined as an investor and later became the company's fourth CEO. He has noted that the mission was to reduce oil consumption and that the company's early success was built on word-of-mouth and a product that "delighted the customer." In his current role as a venture partner at Spero Ventures, Tarpenning has said he is focused on investing in sustainability-related areas, including synthetic biology and agricultural technology, and has advised entrepreneurs to work on problems with meaning and to ensure their product is compelling on its own merits.
“Most CEOs don't go on a political limb and they certainly don't endorse various radical political views, and I think it is because they have a fiduciary responsibility both to the shareholders but also to their employees to not threaten the existence of the company. I would never do that.”
“The thing that made the US extraordinary for all this time has been that we had great science institutions. We really need to keep that up, not cut it, not zero it out like the current administration is trying — that's silliness and self-destructive for our future, and we should attract the best and brightest to come h...”
“Right now we're in the middle of this AI revolution. We don't really know where value is going to accrue, who the winners and losers are going to be, or what the winners or losers are going to be — but it's going to be everywhere and change everything, so be really flexible and play with AI in whatever your discipline...”
“If you look at Sora 2 that came out this week, or whatever, and the videos that it can create, they are watermarked conveniently at the moment, but it's indistinguishable from reality — it's beautiful, and it's going to make trying to figure out what's real and what is fake nearly impossible.”
“Between Uber and, frankly, Waymo — which is super fun — that really to me enabled a kind of public transit; I could imagine that when you rent a car you might get a rental that doesn't have a steering wheel and it just drives itself as a paid service, though the buy‑your‑own self‑driving car might not be for a long tim...”
“The idea has to be compelling in some way — someone would want to buy it if it existed. It can be cheaper, faster, prettier; I don't care which — but too many pitches are solutions looking for a problem.”
“We thought we'd be able to buy all the same stuff the big car companies buy, but many suppliers said you have to order in 100,000 quantity — we were making like 5,000 a year — and that made it really hard; getting the supply chain figured out took way longer than we expected.”
“The board is supposed to help — ask the right questions, get you the right connections, help you raise money — but it becomes contentious when they won't allow you to hire somebody you really want because they're too expensive; the board must approve packages, stock grants and salary and that can block crucial hires.”
“Everything we had the engineers do had to be manufacturable from the very beginning — we fed the learnings from the Roadster into the sedan project so we'd have a ground‑up design that could be produced at much higher volume.”
“One thing that's great about the car industry is it's regulated in a sense — every car gets registered so you can actually look at consumer data and see exactly where people are buying what cars; you could see that really expensive sports cars had customers willing to pay a lot for performance, so we targeted those cus...”
“In K–8 education someone said the students entering kindergarten will graduate into jobs where more than half the jobs don't exist; what's really important is to teach how to learn, how to be curious, and how to keep learning all the time because the actual work they do will often be unrelated to what they learned earl...”
“I wanted to reduce our oil consumption purely from economics and national security. Just I thought it was wrong for the US to be consuming so much oil.”
“I would hope that Elon will dial down his political activism because it's entangled in the brand in a way that it just shouldn't be.”
“We spent nine months coming up with a business plan trying to figure out exactly how you're going to make a car and then we went looking for money. One of whom was Elon Musk.”
“It was clear to us that it had just crossed over the point where you could make a compelling car using lithium ion cells and that the great part is that it's the most expensive part of our product. And every year that component of your car gets cheaper and better because it's being driven by this enormous market force...”
My eyes are on Marc Tarpenning, the co-founder of Tesla. Before Tesla, he co-founded NuvoMedia, which sold for over $180 Million.
You create your future by the things you do. So as an entrepreneur, you change the future with your product.”— Tesla co-founders ...
Marc Tarpenning ( / marctarpenning ) is Co-founder of Tesla and a venture partner at Spero Ventures (https://spero.vc/) . In 2003, Marc and Martin Eberhard saw two signals: GM killed its beloved EV1, and Californians snapped up Toyota’s Prius despite its compromises. They realized the market was ready for an electric car that was better than gas, not worse. Their breakthrough: 7,000 off-the-shelf laptop batteries powering a sports car that outran a Porsche and drove over 200 miles. The Tesla Roadster was born, before Elon Musk joined the company. Marc shares how his time in Saudi Arabia e…
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In this exclusive interview, Marc Tarpenning, the original cofounder of Tesla, shares the untold story behind one of the most iconic companies of our time. Before Elon Musk joined the company, Marc and Martin Eberhard were building the foundations of what would later revolutionize the electric car industry. Marc dives deep into the early days of Tesla, the challenges of building cutting-edge technology from scratch, and the real story of how Elon became involved—as the fifth CEO, not the first. 🚀 In this conversation, we cover: • How Tesla really started • The mission and vision before Mus…
Elon Musk je bio prvi kupac automobila "tesla" - ali ne i osnivač Tesle. Zapravo, Marc Tarpenning je suosnivač kompanije Tesla ...
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One of the original co-founders of Tesla, Marc Tarpenning is no stranger to world-changing tech startups. Tesla set the pace for electric cars and forced the automotive industry to change focus to electric vehicles. Since leaving Tesla, Marc has been searching for the next big step in sustainability acting as advisor and investor to startups seeking to make a lasting impact on the world. Chatting with an emerging entrepreneur Egzon Delija, Marc Tarpenning shares his thoughts and predictions on the next big thing and his advice on how founders can make sure they make a lasting impact across in…
Marc Tarpenning, along with Martin Eberhard, was the cofounder of Tesla Motors back in 2003. But before that, Tarpenning and Eberhard were also the cofounders of NuvoMedia, which produced one of the world's first ebook devices, the rocket eBook. So, for the first part of the episode, Mark recounts the story of NuvoMedia and then about 25 minutes in we begin the founding of Tesla, in my opinion, perhaps the most amazing startup story of the last 20 years. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy (https://art19.com/privacy) and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-no…
On this episode of the show I interview Marc Tarpenning who Co-Founded Tesla. Listen to find out more about the early stage of ...
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