Building an Electric Car Startup

With Richard, a recent ex-MBB consultant and Firmsconsulting Case Coaching Alum, we co-launch an start-up to build an electric car.

We are attempting to build a real automotive business.
We are attempting to establish all the technology and infrastructure that decision entails.
As we encourage clients to pursue significant goals, we want to show you how it can be done.

This is the 2nd business we are co-founding to demonstrate how a strategy partners’ thinking would guide a start-up. Yet, unlike the Luxury Brands Digital Start Up with Tati, this new company is larger, with employees and backed by generous funding from the Chinese government.

Both programs teach valuable lessons that we do not repeat. So you should watch them both.

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We will capture all our steps, insights, analyses and lessons and you can follow us along. Our goal is to teach you to think the way ex-strategy partners do, introduce you to advanced problem solving skills and teach you how to build a business, or work inside a high-tech business in a brutally competitive space.

You will see the process is disciplined in its thinking, but messier than a consulting engagement.

We are chasing a deadline. You will follow us, in real time, as we make some very important decisions on what/if/when/how we will design, assemble and/or manufacture? How will we start the process? What will be our first product? What market will we target? How will we set up manufacturing? There will be many more tough questions we will answer in the program.

Richard, a joint business and engineering graduate, moved to Asia upon joining MBB. After spending 4 years at the firm, and being promoted, he chose to bypass the MBA route and co-found a automotive start-up. This program focuses from the period when we decide to seek funding and build the business.

As you will see, it is an incredibly tough task in a very crowded field, with significant technical and regulatory hurdles along with steep capital requirements.

Disclosure: When we admit clients to this program, Firmsconsulting assumes a controlling equity stake in the business.

The content is exclusively available to Firmsconsulting Insiders.

We work with ex-partners of McKinsey, BCG et al to teach you critical thinking, strategy, operations, and implementation skills. We teach you how to apply their skills. We teach you to apply those skills within case interviews. We teach you how to apply those skills to solve complex consulting assignments. We teach you how to apply those partner skills to transform your career. These startup programs continue the theme of teaching you to apply the analytic and problem-solving skills of partners to set up and build businesses, be it a startup or building an existing business within a large company. We are always teaching you to apply those skills.

THE PROMOTION

The Promotion is an original Firmsconsulting program which teaches you how to apply all the skills a McKinsey, BCG et al. partner would use to fast-track a career in corporate, launch a start-up from a zero base or build a profitable business.

In Season I of The Promotion, How to Sell Multi-Million Dollar Consulting Engagements, you can follow us as we help Andrew, a senior manager / associate principal at a major international professional services firm, become an equity partner in 3 years by following a highly unconventional path: by re-building the firm’s failed innovation practice.

Starting with a total budget of just $150K, and signing authority of < $5,000, we take you through every meeting, dinner, coffee chat, obstacle, plan, tactic, pilot, proposal, marital problem, client push-back, strategy, success, failure etc. to achieve total revenue of >$30MM within 3 years.

Life After McKinsey is Season II of The Promotion.

Season III is split into two programs. In the first, McKinsey to Private Equity, we detail follow the tough journey Lisa took to move into private equity. The other program, USA vs CA/AU/UK Residency/Citizenship, explains the unusual strategy we used to help Lisa obtain her green card in about 1 year 4 months.

In Season IV, The Start-up: Building a Luxury Brand, we will help Tatiana, a Wharton MBA graduate and scion of a prominent Asian family, build an ultra-luxury brand from literally nothing.

In Season V, The Start-up: Building an Electric Car Start-Up, we help Richard, ex McKinsey associate, launch an electric car business in China.

In Season VI, The Start-up: Building a Cosmetics Startup, we help Amy, senior legal counsel at a major tech company, prepare to leave her full time job as she launches a major cosmetics brand.

Due to client confidentiality, as always, we have altered some of the details.