Founders - #406 Christian von Koenigsegg: It is impossible to lead by following – therefore I am different.

Episode Date: December 3, 2025

Christian von Koenigsegg is unapologetically in the pursuit of greatness. Koenigsegg builds some of the fastest and most expensive cars on Earth, has a cult-like following, and relentlessly seeks out challenges he can innovate on. After building his company for more than 30 years, his love and passion for his craft is still as strong as ever. This episode explores some of the most important ideas I found from studying his life and career. It's perfect for anyone that wants to live their dream. Episode sponsors: ⁠ Ramp⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ gives you everything you need to control spend, watch your costs, and optimize your financial operations —all on a single platform. Make history's greatest entrepreneurs proud ⁠⁠⁠by going to Ramp and learning how they can help your business control your costs and save time and money.⁠⁠⁠ Automate compliance, security, and trust with Vanta.⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Vanta helps you win trust, close deals, and stay secure—faster and with less effort⁠⁠⁠⁠. ⁠⁠⁠Find out how increased security leads to more customers by going to Vanta⁠⁠⁠. Tell them David from Founders sent you and you'll get $1000 off. ⁠⁠⁠https://www.vanta.com/founders⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠ Collateral⁠⁠ transforms your complex ideas into compelling narratives. Collateral crafts institutional grade marketing collateral for private equity, private credit, real estate, venture capital, family offices, hedge funds, oil & gas companies, and all kinds of corporations. Storytelling is one of the highest forms of leverage and you should invest heavily in it. You can do that by going to ⁠⁠https://collateral.com Sources: Apex: The Story of the Hypercar Koenigsegg Documentary Ultimate Koenigsegg Factory Tour With Christian Von Koenigsegg BMW Podcast Episode 75 Chronicles of Koenigsegg: The World's Fastest Car Company How To Build A Koenigsegg - NEW Factory Tour How Koenigsegg Sets Hypercar World Records! | Beyond Victory #19 | Nico Rosberg Inside Sweden’s Innovation Factory Christian von Koenigsegg Talks About the Future and His Nerves Leading Up to the Speed Record Christian von Koenigsegg Interview: The Technical Power of Lateral Thinking Interview with Christian Von Koenigsegg Cars and Culture #25 - Koenigsegg Automotive AB CEO & Founder Christian von Koenigsegg Hypercar Boss Chat! Fixing Jaguar, Horsepower Wars & More Koenigsegg History

The first person to tell me about Christian von Konezeg was actually Daniel Eck, who's the founder of Spotify. And Daniel was kind enough to be the first guest on my new show. And after we got done recording the conversation that we published a few months later, Daniel was telling me about a bunch of founders that he thought that I would like. And one of them was Christian von Konezeg. Konezeg builds some of the most expensive and highest performing cars in the world. And then a few months after that conversation, somebody on X suggested I should do an episode on Konezeg. And then they sent me a message with a bunch of cars.

of source materials, including like a documentary and a bunch of interviews that Christian has done. And almost immediately, as soon as I started hearing Christian describe his products, how he thinks about building his business, I knew I had to make an episode on him. So then I went and searched and I added about another dozen interviews and videos and essentially just consumed, spent a week consuming almost everything I could find on him and how he built his company. And then I spent the last few days organizing on my notes until a list of about 100 ideas that I think are very interesting and that jumped out to me while I was studying Christian von Konaseg. So the first thing to know is that Konaseg Automotive, it's a company founded by a man

whose desire to build the world's best sports cars reaches all the way back to his childhood. He's been running his company for over 30 years, and this is something that he's been repeating for at least a decade and a half. He says, for as long as I can remember, I've been totally fascinated by cars. When I was five, I went to the movies with my father and saw a Norwegian stop-motion movie. It was about a bicycle repairman who decides to build his own car to race against the established teams and he won. I was intrigued by this movie. I said, that looks like a lot of fun creating and building your own car with a lot of unique inventions and then to go and compete with it

against the establishment. I remember that very clearly. I felt I wanted to do what the bicycle repairman was doing. Build his own car with a little team and do something fantastic. And so his entire childhood, he's obsessed with cars. And he talks about the very unique way that he learned how to build a car, and it started before he was 11. He says, I had stacks of car magazines in my room when I was a kid, full of posted notes of what I liked and didn't like, so he would go over every single car in the magazine and just constantly ask questions. The word why might be the one that he repeats the most.

So he would ask, why does the hinge look like that? Why are the brakes like that? Why is that mirror different? Why did that car choose to do it this way, and this car chose to do the same thing a different way? He said he had stacks of car magazines meters high in his room. He says, I was a car nut. When I got older, I had no choice. That is one of the most important ideas that repeat over and over again.

It is very clear. This was a compulsion. This is another example of the truthfulness of that saying by Jeff Bezos, that we don't choose our passions. Our passions choose us. When I got older, I had no choice. And so he is going to start his car company with no experience at an unbelievably young age of 22 years old.

And he always quotes the day. He goes on the 12th of August 1994. I said, I'm going to build the car. It is a challenge big enough for a lifetime. This is a tangent on really what I want to talk to you about, but it really just jumps off to the page because, you know, I've read, I don't know, probably 30 pages of notes of Christian in his own words. And it is very clear if you just search online,

he has a cult-like following. And part of the reason I think he's able to do that is because of his incredible communication skills. He doesn't just express ideas. He makes them memorable. It reminds me a lot of Charlie Munger. Minds me of Elon Musk. It reminds me of Steve Jobs. It is a challenge big enough for a lifetime. And so there's all these profiles written about Christian throughout the years that just do a great job of describing him. This is the brainchild. They're talking about his car company. This is a brainchild of a 22-year-old with no background in the automotive industry, driven by a single motivation, a lifelong ambition to make the greatest

supercar in the world. So think about this. No engineering experience. No manufacturing background. Limited funding. And he talks about what he was thinking when he was 22 years old and he starts the car company. I wanted to build cars. I realized it was probably going to take a very long time before I succeeded, but I was young and I didn't have any obligations. I thought that if I didn't do it then, I never would. And he sets the bar incredibly high from day one. This reminds me of James Dyson. if you study him, and I just spent a bunch of hours with him, which I'll tell you about later. He demands difference. He refuses to make Me Too products.

He has a crazy line that he says it has to be different even if it's worse. And Coniseg is constantly saying that we will be different no matter what. He says, I thought this is a, he's describing himself at 22. He's still like this at 53. I guess this is something I want to tell you because you're going to see me repeat a bunch of these things. I just had drinks with this very well-known legendary investor. And I always ask these kind of people, like, out of all the founders that you've backed, like, who are the most spectacular? Like, what are the outlier of the outliers?

And I won't repeat who this is, but he's been working with this person for 20 years. And he says, if you go back and you look at notes from our first meeting, this founder was saying the same stuff that he's saying today. He just never stopped executing on it day after day, month after month, year after year, decade after decade. There is a lot of that with Connissig. And this is the first mention of this. I thought I could make something different. He wanted to make individually handcrafted machines. And at the beginning, he had to do everything.

I did everything, designing, drawing, creating a business plan, a development plan, finding people around me who could help out. I had to find a chassis engineer, a designer who could help me make models of my sketches. It took me two years from the day I decided to do it to have a full running car prototype. Talks about these early days over and over again in all these interviews. We didn't have any engineers. A truck driver from the company next door had half an engineering degree and started helping by working nights.

He had a father who was an engineer Volvo. And so we got a drawing table from him and a book on drawing principles and details and tolerances. I started drawing the suspension. I became a modeler. I modeled the CCAS myself with two other people. We did not have any computers for engineering work until 1997 or 1998. By then, we had to do.

already built a couple of prototypes. If you listen to Episode 400, this is very similar to Jeremy Frye, who mentored James Dyson. Don't sit around and constantly plan out what you want to make. Start experimenting immediately. Action produces information. And then another thing Christian has in common with the people that are really great at what they do, they just love. They love what they do. There's a great exchange I found in this interview of Kobe Bryant a long time ago when he was asked,

like, what is the one quality that all the great ones have? And without hesitation, Kobe said, It's love. It's not rocket science to me, man. The quality that we all share is that we love what we do. We absolutely love it. And it's a pure love. It's not the fame. It's not the money. It's not even the championships. It's loving what we do and we do it all the time. We study all the time. And as a result, the championships come. You're going to hear a lot of comments from Christian von Koneysig like that. After seeing this is what he said. After seeing his prototype, after two years of incredibly difficult work, I remember a big. smile on my face. I was aroused with emotion. I had a pinch myself sensation from a different interview that I found. They were talking about, you know, it starts the company in 2022. Unbelievably difficult. No resources from the, they was asked like this years of intense struggle, right, these years between 1994 and 2002. What were these years like when this is a period where you were struggling financially and had no product to offer customers yet? This

is what he said. In hindsight, it was fantastic in many ways. Very tough at times, but also joyful and very creative. I was fortunate enough to have a few willing souls and friends helping me out with little or no pay. I made a bit of money doing speeches and seminars. It was difficult, but I expected it to be. That's such an important sentence. It was difficult, but I expected it to be. Perhaps I didn't imagine it taking eight years, but I had a clear vision of making a fantastic car whatever it took. To run out of money was one. aspect of the whatever it took part. I look back at those years with satisfaction and joy, even though it was extremely tough. I remember it as a very positive experience. This is so

important. If you want to become an entrepreneur in a field where you have to break new ground and where no one is actually asking for the product, then yes, an experience like the one I went through can be very valuable. He talks a lot more about how he got from prototype to his very first production model in the years that it took. Before I get back into this incredible story, I want to tell you about the presenting sponsor of this podcast, which is Ramp. Christian von Konezeg, as you'll hear today, is personally involved in every step of the process. And he says he loves details. That is something that he is in common with a lot of history-graced entrepreneurs. They know their business from A to Z and their costs down to the penny. Ramp makes doing this

effortless. Ramp gives you easy to use corporate cards for your entire team, automated expense reporting, bill payments, accounting, and cost control. These corporate cards are fully programmable. You can set limits so the spending of your team never gets out of hand, while most companies only find out about excessive spending after the fact. With Ramp, you stop it before it happens. The chief accounting officer of Notion said this about Ramp. Ramp is the only vendor that can service all of our employees across the globe in one unified system. They handle multiple currencies seamlessly, integrate with all of our accounting systems and thanks to their customizable card and policy controls, were compliant worldwide.

Matt Paulson, who's the founder of Marketbeat, recently switched to Ramp, and this is what he said about it. Ramp is the best. The amount of money you will save from unwanted renewals and employees who think company credit card equals buy whatever you want will far exceed the best credit card reward programs. Matt just sent me another message. Told me that Ramp has helped him save $420,000 a month and he has the documentation to prove it. Take the time and set up a demo of the product and you'll see why many of the world's top founders, including many people of the top founders that I've profiled on this podcast, are running their company on Ramp. Go to Ramp.com to learn it that can help your business today. That is ramp.com. Now let's get back

into this crazy story. Six more years pass before the KonaSig CC8S. This is their first production model. And the first time it was revealed was at the Paris Auto Show. In the interim, Konisig survived on the income from his business, grants from the Swedish technology development board, a bridge loan from his father, which we'll get into more. His father had sold his company retired and thought that money was for retirement. Turns out it was it was essentially key for Kona's sake to stay alive. And then he raises funds from venture capitalists after that. Now, when they save funds from his business, when he's a teenager, like 17 or 18, something

like that, he starts a trading company. This is what he says about this is I just looked for any opportunity I could find. And I found it selling ballpoint pens and plastic bags and frozen chicken. It was the early 1990s and the collapse of the Soviet Union had opened up new markets in the Baltics. And so Christian sees the chance to export everyday goods to Estonia. And so he built what's called this odd little trading company, which made him enough money by the time he was 22 to take the next step towards his true passion. He was not passionate about his trading company. He did that as a means to get to the ends that he wanted, which was, I want to build cars.

I've been thinking, I'm 22. I'm still young, but I'm thinking about this since it was five. Now, I do want to focus on the first thing that he said that I thought was really, really smart about the benefit of just starting a brand new company against all of his competitors were incumbents. He could just start with a blank sheet of paper. And so he says, I didn't have any heritage controlling what my next step would be. I could start with an open book and dream up the car I thought would be perfect. And so he starts out making everything by hand. And as he continues, he learns this is a huge advantage. She says a labor intensive process makes us more adaptable. We don't have to change huge reduction lines or machines just because we change the

model. There's no machines. He says perfecting the curves of the car. take craftsmanship and then they interview one of these documentaries they interview the person actually molding the curves and he says I feel it by hand and I think this also speaks the idea it's like well you know yeah it's labor intensive more difficult but let's look at the bright side I think that he's just a pervasive optimist and what was so fascinating is this is one of my favorite parts of the story is the fact that he's starting a company 94 this is a downturn in the economy and everybody says the sports car is dead this is what he says I am extremely stubborn and I don't like to give up. It's just not in my DNA. So I was reading about other car companies. When I started,

there was a downturn in the economy. The media said that the sports car is dead. Many of the famous brands were struggling. Well, what am I supposed to do? I am going to build my car. Listen to what he says here. This gives me goosebumps. It is worth it. Even if it took everything I had, I am just going to do it. I need to do it. I need to get it out of my system. I believe. I believe. I could build a car that was interesting that someone would want to buy. I think this is the absolute dream if you're an entrepreneur and a founder, craftsman, artist, athlete, doesn't matter what it is. It's like, what is it that there's something inside of you.

It has to come out. It is a compulsion. I need to do it. I need to get it out of my system. I think it's obvious if you listen to a bunch of my podcast. Clearly podcasting is like this with me. If you go back and look, founders was not what I called the podcast when I started almost a decade ago. The first name of this podcast was one of the worst names of a podcast anybody who comes

could come up with, but the meaning behind it was very important to me. The first name of founders was not founders. It was autotelic. Autotelic is an activity done for the sake of itself. I was saying from day one, even if nobody listens to this, I have to do this. I have to get it out of me. And I think this is related. Like the reason I want to spend, when I think about the products that I want to buy or the

services or the companies that I want to patronize, there's a line. Steve Jobs said, I think is really, really important. And he was talking about, like, you can really tell when the builder of a product cares. And he says, the older I get, the more I see how much motivations matter. If you don't love something, you're not going to go the extra mile. And so eventually, Christian's cars are very complex. There's like a thousand different parts, something like that. He figures out a way to manufacture almost all of them himself. I don't think he can help himself. I don't think this is a choice. I don't think he can go through life any other way. And so he was asked the questions, like when you start, out, you know, other mega, they're called the car, this, this cost of car, sometimes they're called mega car, hypercar. I'm obviously not going to talk anything about like the mechanics of it. I don't know anything about it. I'll leave a link to a bunch of the sources if you're interested in that and you have a knowledge base. It'll make his accomplishments even more impressive. But what was fascinating is if you have a new upstart and you want to build a mega car and even if you want to build it by hand, they usually try to immediately partner with a bigger corporation.

And so Christian was asked like, why didn't you do that? And he says, listen to this. My aim was to make the most extreme sports car there ever was. For anyone buying anything from an unknown brand, it has to stand out. This is genius marketing in his part. If I wanted a more powerful engine than anything that had existed, I can't buy it from an existing manufacturer. So if my aim was to make the most extreme sports car that ever was, and I wanted to make a more powerful engine than anything that ever existed,

how the hell can I buy that? It doesn't exist yet. I have to be the one that makes it. Besides, my budgets were very limited. I had to make do with myself. I like to come up with technical solutions our way, not the way any other company does it it is important that everything is not the same this is why i keep talking about dyson over and over again he says this over and over again it's important

that everything is not the same it is what makes conisig different and the reason i think most people don't do this is one you have to have that love and that drive and you have to really want difficulty and challenges and they're usually scared of problems and listen to how he talks about problems i love problems because it gives the company a chance to solve them i prefer to call problems challenges life is just a big challenge. You should not see life as a problem. I think less so with entrepreneurs and founders, but regular people, general population,

I think a lot of people see life as a giant problem and even renaming things. This isn't a problem. This is a challenge. Life is just a big challenge. You should build yourself up into a formidable individual to handle bigger and bigger challenges as you go along. Now, this is where I want to take like this weird tangent.

It's not even weird tangent. I don't know why I'm saying this. One of the most interesting things that popped up over and over again is this saying that Christian von Konezeg has, which is the show must go on to the point where I'm watching, you know, I watch a bunch of his like factory tours and I'll get into like the fact that it's on this air base, which former Air Force base was just so cool to me. I want to go there. But he has like even like in the, in his headquarters, he's got giant signs on the wall that say the show must go on. And again, this, I don't say this is my, this might be my favorite thing about studying him. And I don't think this mindset. comes natural. I think you develop it. Acquiring this skill is one of the most important things that you and I can do. The show must go on. Christian von Konezeg uses the phrase the show must go on as a core operating philosophy, a mentality that combines resilience, improvisation and an almost

theatrical commitment to developing and delivering excellence no matter the obstacles. Hypercars push the boundaries of physics engineering. Things will go wrong. What matters is how you respond. One of my favorite sayings that I say to myself over and again, problems are just there to be solved. Problems are there to be solved. And so this goes into the show must go on philosophy. Here's one. Problems are not surprises. They're inevitable.

Kona Segg has said that building a car with a thousand unique components, most of which you design and manufacture yourself guarantees a never-ending list of challenges. Materials fail. Prototypes break. Supply chains collapse. Regulations change. Customers expect perfection. Instead of complaining, he expects his team to pivot instantly. keep momentum and treat failures as part of the process.

The show must go on is an antidote to paralysis. The show must go on is also a cultural motto at Conisig. People inside the company say Christian repeats that line whenever something breaks during testing or a deadline looks impossible. Just think about, like, we'll talk about his views on leadership later on. But imagine you want to follow somebody and something breaks. He repeats the show must go on. It means we'll find a solution as opposed to like he's staying calm.

He's somebody panicking, freaking out. So the show must go on is his show. shorthand for it. We don't stop. We find a way. We keep moving because the mission matters. This is why the engineering culture at Conaseg is fearless. At Conaseg, the mentality is solve it today or solve it tonight, but solve it. And if you think about it's the perfect mental model for a tiny company, and now it's a bigger company. I think they have like 600 employees, but still relatively small. At the beginning, it's like five people. They start out with like five people. We're like, hey, we're going to go compete against Ferrari portion McLaren. You can't afford excuses if you're doing

that. Your prototype engine's probably going to blow up. The body panel was not going to fit. Your gearbox supplier might have went out of business. What are you going to do? The show has to go on. Christian went through years where the company nearly died. He had fires. Bankrupt suppliers. The global financial crisis. All of these things threatened to kill his company each time he refused to stop. The show must go on. It's not bravado. It's survival. And when he says it, he's expressing the essence of his entrepreneurial religion, relentless resilience, continuous forward motion in delivering greatness even under chaos. The people I most admire, they all think this way. There's another great line from Kobe's like when you're going through something, what's the

alternative? Other than to keep going through it, when I had dinner or Charlie Montgomery before he died, I spent three hours with him. I did not look at my phone once, even though before I got there I had like a list of questions. Didn't even pull out my phone. But as soon as I left his house and went back to my hotel, I took all these notes and thank God I did this. Read from these notes all the time. And the first thing that is in the notes, my biggest takeaway from spending three, hours with my hero. One of the people I most admire that I've ever come across, living or dead, was Charlie has an almost complete indifference to problems. Troubles from time to time should be expected. This is inescapable. So why let it bother you? And then wrote this into a maximum

that I could remember. And I said the most important lesson I learned from Charlie, spending that night, spending that night having dinner with them at the house, was go for great. I'm going to read this to you. In typical Charlie fashion, it is a combination of four simple ideas. Charlie looks at everything through the lens of history. Human nature does not change the same behaviors repeat forever. That's the first one. Number two, Charlie has a complete indifference to problems. Troubles from time to time should be expected. This is an inescapable part of life. Number three, wise people do not whine about problems. They prevent them. Charlie had the perfect quote on this. Three words, wisdom is prevention. Wise people don't whine about problems. They

prevent them. Number four, great businesses are rare. Great people are two. Great people and great businesses produce fewer problems. Your mission in life is to get into a great business and stay there and build relationships with great people. Doing so will prevent the majority of problems that are under your control. All of this can be remembered in a simple maxim go for great. So I love this idea of the show must go on. I want to get into how he organizes his company. He's a huge admirer of Elon. He actually bought Tesla shares at IPO, and I don't think he ever sold them, by the way. So it was amazing foresight on Christian's part. But he talks about when they're doing these factory tours and these videos that I'm watching,

he talks about his love of in-house engineering, how it may have started out as a need, and then he understood the benefit later on. And I'll talk about how he organizes and he doesn't separate engineering design, which again, Dyson doesn't either, Elon doesn't either. And now you say it again, that same idea with Konasig. But they're asked, like, you know, you're doing all this in-house engineering. Like, why did you do this? He said, for many reasons.

It started out that we couldn't afford for one of the large engineering houses to help us. we did not have the budget. It turned out that we could do a lot ourselves. And not only we could do it in house, we could do it better. We make our own wheels, brake calipers, seats, wings, mirrors, all electronic controllers, all the software, cloud connectivity, infotatement systems. There is very little we don't do just because we can and we can improve on what is already out there. And it's amazing. He never says this, but thank God I was actually watching the screen because imprinted on one of the parts they make is one of my favorite phrases and sentences from all this research on him. It is impossible to lead by following. Therefore, I am different. And you go back to what Steve Jobs

said. Motivations matter. You'll know if somebody actually cares about what they're doing, if they actually have love for what they're doing. And so in Christian's business, he's constantly trying to figure out how to increase power and decrease weight. I think the business equivalent of this is increased powers. Revenue, decrease weight is costs. And I think, think there's an interesting analogy there, but listen to what he does. We weighed every nut and bolt on a scale. At first, it always seems impossible to decrease more weight, but then we find a way to cut off a few millimeters of each screw. We could change out this aluminum bracket for a carburefiber one. We could spin out this part of the body. He's always finding opportunity for improvements.

In fact, there's a great line in one of these interviews where it says Christian von Konas is above all a restless innovator. And he talks more about this. I studied how everyone else built cars. I figured out I could absorb what everyone else did and try to figure out why they did it a certain way so then I could figure out how I would do it my way. You can call that a crazy approach, but I think it set the tone and the mindset for how we operate. Come up with our own way of doing it, and we hope our way is better. I love technical solutions that make one thing do several functions to save weight. I love details. He's asked again the fact that he started a company during a financial downturn, during a time where other car companies, We're failing. This is what he said. Anything is possible if you really want to do it. If the market is dead, then I have to recreate it. I will build something amazing and someone will want to buy it. Anything is possible if you put your mind to it and you're willing to sacrifice anything normal about life. My philosophy is in the end we're all dead anyway. So I try really hard to work my ass off to make it work. When you have that mindset, you're unstoppable. What is the work? that could happen. I could live in a tent in the forest. And so he talks about the fact that he's making

all these parts. You know, they're crafting their own seats. They're sculpting their own manifolds. They're building their own engines. And he says, was I schooled in engineering? No. Did I have a manufacturing background? No. Did I have access to unlimited funds or a factory that could turn out my designs? No. What I had was a friend with a garage and a passion for cars. I had no choice but to build what I thought was the best car I could make by hand. This guy just gets me fired up. Before I get back into this incredible story, I need to tell you about two tools that I highly recommend that you should be using for your business. The first one is Vanta.

Vanta helps your company prove that you're secure so more customers will use your product or service. Customer trusts can make or break your business. And the more your business grows, the more complex your security and compliance tools will get. And this growth turns into chaos. Vanta helps you tame that chaos. You can think of Vanta as you're always on AI-powered security expert who scales with you. Vanta automates compliance, continuously monitors your controls, and gives you a single source of truth for compliance and risk. So whether you're a fast-growing startup like Cursor or an enterprise company like Snowflake, Vanta fits easily into your existing workflows so you can keep growing a company your customers can trust.

Many companies won't sign contracts unless you're certified and that is causing you to lose out on sales. That is why the average Vanta customer reports a 526% return on investment. after becoming a Vanta customer. Vanta will hope you win trust, close deals, and stay secure faster and with less effort. Make sure you go to vanta.com forward slash founders and you'll get $1,000 off. That is Vanta.com forward slash founders. Another valuable service I want to tell you about is collateral. Most companies have a hard time telling their own story as you're seeing here. Kona SIG is a master at this. He intuitively understood how important telling your story effectively is. Learning to tell a story is incredibly important because that's how the money works, the money

flows as a function of the stories. In fact, one of his employees says later on that you're actually buying a story. You're not buying a car from them. You're buying a story. And this is exactly what collateral does. Collateral transforms your complex ideas into compelling narratives. Collateral crafts institutional grade marketing collateral. And they do this for private equity, private credit, real estate, venture capital, family offices, hedge funds, oil and gas companies, all kinds of corporations are using collateral. I will leave a link down below, but make sure you go to collateral.com. That's collateral.com. And prove the way that your company tells its own story.

Storytelling is one of the highest forms of leverage, and you should invest heavily in it. And you can do that by going to collateral.com. So let's go back to the very beginning of Kona 6 company, where he's finding out a way to finance this. It takes him two years to build a prototype. So he has 200,000, he made $200,000. He had $200,000 of his own from doing the trading company. He uses that as seed money.

Starts going through that rapidly. The next year, his father loans him another $300,000. This is what he said. My father didn't know it then, but he would over the next few. years invest his life savings of about $2 million. Naturally, my mother freaked out. It is remarkable that his father did that because there's no way at that point in time it looked like the survival or the future success of the company was a sure thing. A few years later, Konezig is able to convince a group of about 20 investors, these venture capitalists, they invest another $2 million into his company.

He would also finance it by giving shares of the company to some suppliers instead of cash. Now, much later on, when they start making more money, what was interesting because you can probably tell this guy's obsessed with control, he actually buys back shares from his investors using the cash flow of the company. And this is what he said. The ethos of the company has always been all the money we make. We throw it back into the cars because that is our best investment. Now, in the early days of the company, the headquarters is this renovated farm building that had a thatched roof. The entire building is going to go up in flames. This happens on a Saturday, but everybody's still working. So they were actually able to get most of their prototypes and their tooling out before everything burned.

This wind up being a blessing in disguise because the Swedish government then offers them space at a recently decommissioned airbase. He just had to move the company to this area, because I guess the area around the air base, had really low employments. And so the Swedish government was trying to entice companies to move there to hopefully hire the people. living around that area. And so you think about his idea of the show must go on, you know, your headquarters burns down on a fire. It's probably the worst thing to happen to your company up until that point, and yet it winds up becoming a blessing in disguise. So he says, our factory is a former fighter jet squadron hangar. This is the benefit. We can, it's, and it looks really cool. So we can test 24-7 whenever we want with very little planning. They're using the former

fighter jet runways to test their cars. As soon as we come up with an idea for an engine tweak, a gearbox, brake pads, aerodynamics, whatever. We can just go out and test. Again, this is James Dyson and Jeremy Fry. That is quite unusual even for a large car manufacturer to have that opportunity. This has really shaped what we are doing. It is one of the reasons our cars can be so extreme as they are. Anytime we want, we can test.

Then he talks about the advantages. Remember everything's like you're going up against all these incumbents. They have heritage. They have money. And he thinks actually being a smaller founder-led company is a huge advantage. If we come up with an idea, there is no one. stopping us. We have the freedom of trying things that would be difficult in a bigger organization. And so he's giving the tour of where all the people work. And this is what I

mentioned earlier, how everything's organized. He's listing out all of these different departments making different things that are right next to each other. So mechanical engineering, transmission, engines, bodywork, chassis, carbon fiber, simulation, electronic software. They all sit in the same place. This sounds exactly like Elon. We want our engineers to be close to the parts They develop. Everything is tied together. And so when you watch these videos, all the people making it, they can actually see where the cars are assembled. Their offices are right above where the cars are being assembled. You can see it with your own eyes. Then he goes back to demanding difference. This is a genius of marketing. And I think it also is tied to the fact that, you know, if you love what you do, you don't want to just make Me Too products. The cars need to stand out. They need to have unique features and functions to be lighter, stronger and more exciting. The only way to achieve that is going into the depths and extremes in as many areas of the product as possible. That is his quote. And the way he does this, the way he transfers that belief into the company, you see it.

He walks around. He's looking at everything. He's talking to everybody. He's saying, this is not good enough. Why do we do this? Why do we do that? Let's redo that. Let's aim for hire.

There's a bunch of other hypercar manufacturers and founders in these documentaries. One of them is Pagani. And he hits on the importance of differentiation. He just described in KonaSegg. He's like, this is a guy with huge. passion. And one of the things that you see is because all these brands are, most of them, are founder-led, even if the founders are getting older now. But he says all these brands of hypercars have their own purpose. He's speaking to the differentiation of not only what he's making

a Pagni, but what Konaug is making a Konezeg. And he says they put their names on the cars for a reason. It is personal to them. Christian von Konezeg is personally involved in every step of the process. And you go back to him describing in all these interviews. You'll hear him talk about every little detail of the car. In one case, the interviewer says, I'm getting goosebumps from your passion and your unbelievable talent for details. Passion is infectious.

It doesn't even matter. I'm not a car guy. I frankly don't even give a shit. But now I want a konezeg just because I know what goes into it. And by telling people how your product is made, what goes into it makes them, it increases the value in the buyer's eyes. And so he does this over and over again.

He says the entire car is made out of carbon fiber. We have the most carbon fiber intense road car on the planet. That makes it lighter, stronger, stiffer than any other car. We only use the most extreme type of carbon fiber material available, which is called prepag. It is the same that is used in Formula One,

fighter jets, and spaceships. We wouldn't be here if we were aiming for second position. So then Coniseg describes the type of people that he hires. Super dedicated people that bring all their energy and love into getting this done. This is now one of the people he hired, describing him. He's the guy that thinks nothing is impossible. That's how he works. Working for him is not for everyone. He puts a lot of pressure on you. He has high expectations. The product

needs to meet a very high standard. Another employee hits on what I just referenced. You buy a story. You buy a dream that we try to create. And how effective is this? Now this happens all the time, but even in the first few years, they're not doing huge runs. Some models, I think they only maybe like 20, maybe like 60. But because the storytelling is so good, because the communication is so good, Koniseg's entire run of some models would sell out, sight unseen. One of the things that his employees talk about that is so attractive is that you're working for someone who deeply cares.

This is Koniseg, this is Christian Von Konaseg describing his feelings when he sees a car is done. It's so emotional. I just want to get in and drive it. That's all I can say. It gives this fantastic feedback. I know what has gone into it. I know this is so for real. Another person describing him.

Christian has more drive than his cars. Challenge is his constant companion. He is a man with many rivals, but only one enemy. Compromise. He is one of the things I think was so attractive and so interesting and kind of filled me with energy and inspiration this week is I love people that are unapologetically in pursuit of greatness. Christian von Connoisseg is unapologetically in pursuit of greatness.

He has this great line. Perfection is a moving target. We put so much passion and energy and time into every little molecule of our cars. I believe that is what it gives us the right to exist in this very tough market. We try to leave nothing to chance. We put our best effort into every aspect. That line, I believe that's what gives us the right to exist in this very tough market is excellent. It's worth taking a few moments.

to think about what is giving you the right to exist in the market that you're competing in and what you could be doing better to answer that question. That has a very powerful idea to me. At this price level, and I've heard all kinds of rumors. Some of these things change hands on private markets, so it's just a rumor. But anywhere from like $2 million to like $17 million, I think people have paid for one of his cars. And so he talks about this. At this price level, everything has to be beautiful and at the same time cannot sacrifice performance.

At this competition level, there are no excuses. It has to be perfect. So we are trying as hard as we can. We set the bar super high. Otherwise, there's no reason to do it. Keep in mind what I am reading to you. This comes from a dozen different sources spread across a decade and a half at least. This is what I mentioned having drinks with the very well-known and successful investor.

And what he said about the best founder ever worked with. He just executed on the same thing from day one. Day after day, month after month, decade after decade. I see the same thing in Christian von Konissig. He goes back to this. Comfort makes you dumb. Why are we doing this? It is so hard, why are we doing it?

We're doing it so you have something to tell your grandchildren about. That is literally, Bezos says this exact same thing. We did this in a small town in Sweden in basically a potato field. We put a steak down in the ground and said, this is what we are going to do, and we did it. And in one of these interviews, he's asked this question. Would you describe your work ethic to your passion for building cars or was discipline ingrained in you from your parents?

He says a little bit of both, but perhaps more from the first. Already in the early stages of building Kona Seg, I understood the value and importance of perseverance. This is one of my favorite things he ever said. No matter what it takes, and regardless if there's any light at the end of the tunnel, you need to keep on walking where other people might have stopped. That is what will make the difference. I'm going to repeat that.

No matter what it takes, and regardless if there's any light at the end of the tunnel, you need to keep on walking where other people might have stopped. That is what makes all the difference. I am not your typical discipline guy. I'm more of a creative persona

that can focus on many different things at the same time. But I do possess a certain level of perseverance. Now, this is very fascinating. He's asked a follow-up, what makes a great leader in your opinion? I guess there are many different types of leaders. As for myself, I don't know if I would call myself

a great leader necessarily. I am probably more of an inspiring persona who runs fast in the direction I want to go and pave the way and help out more than being a strategic leader in the conventional sense. One thing that greatly benefited him is the fact that he says,

remember, he's over 30 years into building this company. I have never lost the passion over the years. I think I had no choice but to build a car. Kona Segg has no conventional sense of where the boundaries are, or what should and shouldn't be done when designing an ultra-high performance car. This is what he says. I always ask the question why. And when I get an answer,

I ask, so why is that? So if you've listened to this for a long time, you understand that James Leicin is the number one person I wanted to meet. He's undoubtedly my hero. I've read his first autobiography five times. I've read his second one, two or three times. I read his, he wrote a freaking encyclopedia about the history of great inventions. I've read that and marked it up just like any other book. And I just spent several hours with him. It could not have gone better. We recorded this incredible conversation, which will be out soon. It's not going to be on this podcast feed, so make sure you're following the,

just search of David Senra in whatever you're listening to this on. You can follow it. It'll be out in one week. But this, one of the most interesting things that I don't even think I understood by read. You know, I spent, what, 200 hours in the mind of James Dyson, something like that. It's a crazy amount of time.

When Koniseg says, I just always ask the question, why? And then when I get the answer, I ask, so why is that? What James said on the podcast and we got to talk after, too, It's just like his entire driving principles very simple. He just looks at a product and it's like, why can't this be better? And then he makes it better. And then he looks at it again and goes, why can't this be better? And then he makes it better.

And he just does it over and over again. He never interrupted the compounding for 45 years. I see the same thing in Konezeg that I saw in Dyson. And what ties them together is this like this demanding difference. He goes into this. Conaseg says that he doesn't see a reason to always do things differently. But if there's a chance at taking a challenge and different way, a better way than he strives to achieve it. I could have made my life easier

if I only did half of the strangers that we have done would have been enough. But innovation, along with performance and function is what drives me. And he's willing to change. So in 20 years, the first 20 years, they built like 250 cars. And these cars are constantly, you know, taking all the speed records and just when all these Guinness Book of World Records. records. But what's interesting is right now the company's actually gearing up in the last few years, they're going to build 1.5 times as many cars in the next three years as it has in the past 20. Very similar to Todd Graves and Raising Keynes. He's been running his business for almost 30 years. He's opening more stores in year 30 than he ever has. He's growing faster in year 30 than

he ever has. To the degree that I have any influence over anybody doing anything in the world, it's this. Find what you love to do, find what you're compelled to do, and don't stop. There's so much interesting value that occurs 20, 30, 40 years into the future. James Dyson is 78 and he's still at it every day. He still is passionate and fired up at 78 as he was at 45. At 32. How many people get there? So many people stop.

Let's go back to what I wasn't even thinking about tying these things together. Think about what Conan Seik said earlier. No matter what it takes, regardless of if there's any light at the end of your tunnel, you need to keep on walking where other people might have stopped. That is what will make all the difference. How many freaking people are going to stop before you're 30? Almost everybody. Almost everybody.

I love these stories. I just love these stories. And so then the last thing is this interview. And it's really interesting, you know, because you look at these people and I've been fortunate enough to talk to a bunch of them. And you think, oh, like they're wealthy beyond, you know, their dreams, their, their companies wildly successful. Like, they must be happy and content.

It's just like, man, no, we're humans. We all have these same emotions. You're going to have the same emotions you have now forever. You're going to have to see better at managing them and, you know, what he was saying earlier, flipping a problem, rename a problem into a challenge and actually seeking discomfort because I think that's like what we're doing. Like, why would we be doing any of this stuff? So there's this interview he does where he sets this land record.

I think the car went like, I don't know, like 287 miles an hour or something like that. It's just crazy. And so they talk about the future of his company, right? Now we're much, we're 25, maybe 28 years into the history of the company and how nervous he was leading up to the speed record. But there's just a couple of things from these interviews that I thought was interesting. And the way it started was fascinating. He says no one was prepared for the disruption

Koniseg would have on the supercar segment when the company first emerged from Sweden's dark and mysterious forest in 1994. Neither was the world prepared for the sheer intellect and force of will of Konisik's founder. We sat down with Christian two weeks after one of his creations and Agar Ars, broke five world records, including becoming the fastest production vehicle on the planet.

I love how Konisig started this. He says, we've been chasing the demons of speed. I have always wanted to build my own sports cars, since I was a young boy, but when I started, no one was asking for a Swedish supercar. I had to solve the problem of how can I make people interested. What came across as the correct strategy, but may not have been the easiest road to travel, was to outdo everyone else in what a sports car can do. The person interviewing says, we remember the first time we saw one of your cars and said,

whoa, what is that? Christian replies, that's exactly the reaction we were going for. Again, I'm sorry to bring up Dyson so many times. The parallels are so obvious. It's like jumping off the page and hitting me right in the freaking face. we are now this is very fascinating we are living during the times where there's the most opportunity for technology

to be integrated into cars in more interesting ways than ever before I just love it this era is the perfect storm to create extreme interesting and unusual things if you go back to the episode I just did episode 4 or 5 how Rockefeller worked one of the things that Rockefeller had in common

with Christian Von Connoisseg with most of the great founders is when they're starting their business they find ways Rockefeller would leverage technology to build a business that was not possible before the invention of that technology. Christian's saying the same exact thing here. He's asked another question. Has anyone ever tried to stop you in the company's history and say, Christian, this is way too crazy. We can't do that. Christian says, yeah, I've heard that a couple times, but I know why we are here. I know why we are where we are. And it's because we did these

kind of over-the-top things. We did them well. And that's who we are. We can't change from one day to the other. We are here to push boundaries. And that's what I like in the end. Sometimes it's frustrating and painful, but that's who we are. One thing if you listen to the conversation I had with Dyson, he said right to my face, which was very fascinating. And I've been thinking a lot about the last couple days. He says, risk has become a thing I have to live with. I need to live on the knife's edge all the time. It doesn't make me unhappy. Don't get me wrong. But I like living for the moment in danger. Christian Roncona says, I'm here to push boundaries.

That's what I like. Sometimes it's frustrating. Sometimes it's painful. But you're alive. And if that's who you are, you have to be who you are. And the final question he's asked is, where do you see the company 10 years from now? And he says, that's a tough one. I never say that we have this amount of turnover, meaning revenue, or this amount of cars

sold. But I expect us to have moved forward technically and continue to make inspiring and exciting products. most likely sports cars are perhaps a spin-off of what we do now. I also hope that we will have grown a little bit because there are only two natural states for a company and that is either growing or shrinking, and I'd rather grow than shrink.

Everyone thinks that I'm living my dream, and I agree. And that is where I'll leave it. If you want to see all the sources, I'll list them below. You can watch all these videos. You can watch documentaries. I already mentioned a few times. I would really appreciate if you get any value out of my work, if you would please follow the new podcast I made.

Nothing is changing your founders. I'm going to do founders till I die. I'm reading these books. I love this. I'm obsessed with this. You just heard me talk about it over and over again this episode. But I'm also completely addicted and inspired and thrilled to sit down with some of the top entrepreneurs in the world and have these intense multi-hour conversations.

Those conversations moving forward will only be available on the other feed. So whatever you're listening to this on, YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, wherever. Just search David Senra. You will find my big giant head. And you could follow that podcast feed. I've had some incredible conversations. I've loved them all. I would listen to every single one.

I promise you. I think it's a good use of your time. And please do not miss the James Dyson one that is coming out soon. Search and follow David Center wherever you're listening to this. I really appreciate your time and I really appreciate your support.