Driving Towards Greater Transparency and Sustainability in the EV Market with Davide Giacobbe and ScoutIt

Founder Shares – Davide G_mixdown

00:00:01 – Davide Giacobbe

I really, really hope that they will make it because they are bringing greater evolution to the automotive industry and building great product and are figuring out other ways to make EVs profitable. That has been the biggest problem in the last decade because of the shift into batteries and into software refined vehicles that has happen.

00:00:32 – Trevor Schmidt

Hello and welcome to the foundershares podcast brought to you by Hutchison, a law firm in Raleigh, North Carolina that helps founders and entrepreneurs in technology and life science companies start up, operate, get funded and exit. So whether you’re already an entrepreneur or want to be one someday, or are just fascinated by the stories of how a business goes from idea to success or not such a success, this podcast is for you. Today’s guest is Davide Giacobbe, the CEO and founder of Scoutit. Davide’s journey to entrepreneurship began with a love of cars and a passion for mechanical engineering, which led to a dream of working in the automotive industry. Dreams he fulfilled with roles at large companies like Lamborghini. However, his drive didn’t stop there. Davide decided to start his own company, scouted to tackle one of the biggest challenges in the emerging electric vehicle market and that’s transparency with regard to EV battery health.

00:01:26 – Davide Giacobbe

I believe in this transition towards renewable energy and electric vehicles and being an engineer, you. You have to learn how to do sales, you have to do how to commercialize your product and to communicate in a good way. So I’m not a salesperson. I really work a lot on myself in order to get the skills that I needed to transition between being an engineer to an entrepreneur.

00:01:55 – Trevor Schmidt

In today’s episode, Davide shares his experiences transitioning from an engineer to a startup CEO, the hurdles he’s faced, and how he’s leveraging technology to provide solutions for the used EV market. He discusses the importance of battery health, transparency, and how his company is making it easier for dealerships, wholesalers and repair shops to assess the value of electric vehicles.

00:02:16 – Davide Giacobbe

I started this more or less four, five years ago back in Italy and my very first experience with these support groups was a community that helped people to tap into entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship program. So that was my really starting point, my real starting point with entrepreneurship. And at that time I learned a lot about company structures, how to get funding, how to structure your relationship with co founders, and also the first, the very basics about sales and marketing and all that stuff. So yeah, that was thanks to communities and support that I found back in Italy. But I realize and I figure out that here in the US that the presence of these support groups is really way bigger and you can really benefit from all those groups. So it’s, I would say that it’s easier to tap into entrepreneurship and to transition between being an engineer or a having a full time job to an entrepreneur.

00:03:26 – Trevor Schmidt

So let me ask you that, because you said you moved here from Italy, did you ever think about starting the company in Italy or was it always going to be here in the States?

00:03:34 – Davide Giacobbe

No, at the beginning I, my first idea was to start a company back in Italy. Then after almost one year when I was into the process, and also because of some reasons related to my family, my wife’s job and so on, I thought I could take the opportunity to explore another country. And immediately I thought at the US Because US for me is all about technology and entrepreneurship. And it was always my dream to at one point in my life live in the US So thanks to this basically trial that I wanted to do, and thanks to also the family situation, I was able to move here and to start my company in 2022 in.

00:04:27 – Trevor Schmidt

The US that’s great. So like you mentioned the fact that this was a dream of yours in part to I guess to be here, but also to continue to work in the automotive industry and all of that. So if you could have a conversation with your younger self, what do you think he would think about what you’re doing now?

00:04:45 – Davide Giacobbe

Yeah, my younger self would never recognize myself at this point because yeah, if I think of my almost or. Yeah, or we’re talking about 20 years ago. So when I was in high school, I, I never thought about starting my own company or being an entrepreneur in this space. As I said before, my, my dream was becoming an engineering automotive industry. I was always passionate about cars and motorcycles as well. I can define myself as a car guy. And this, this was my dream. So to my younger self I would say that it could start before to get interested in entrepreneurship as opposed to just thinking to be an entrepreneur, an engineer. Sorry.

00:05:40 – Trevor Schmidt

So when you were younger, was there one specific car or motorcycle that fueled this passion for.

00:05:45 – Davide Giacobbe

Yeah, always. Yeah, I worked for Lamborghini in the past. So Lamborghini was always my dream together with Ferrari. These are like the two. I don’t have a. Maybe the F40 was the real really car. The Ferrari F40 was my dream car that brought me to start to get interested in mechanical engineer. But yeah, I knew all the cars at that time as a little kid, I knew all the cars that were around. I was really, really passionate. So just. Yeah, if I have to identify just one is the Ferrari F40.

00:06:19 – Trevor Schmidt

Okay, so tell us a little bit about scout it. So what is it that you’re trying to do? Because as I understand it now, you’re trying to enable transparency in the EV battery health for the EV market. So tell me a little bit about what that means or what problem you’re trying to solve.

00:06:32 – Davide Giacobbe

Yeah, so with scouting, the used EV market is a market that is just starting off right now because EVs came more or less 15 years ago as new, as a new solution on the car market. And because of this wave of used EV that will start now and will continue in the next few years, there is a high need, a big need of transparency about the battery health. Because in the same way we are trying to understand what is the health on internal combustion engine vehicles and to pull some, a lot of different data points from traditional cars to understand the value with EVs, the most valuable component of the car of the electric vehicles is the battery. So the problem we are solving with scouted for these entities like dealers and wholesalers is that they require solutions that are at the same time fast but also highly accurate in terms of understanding the battery health. Because at the moment dealers and wholesalers, especially dealers and service shops already have solutions to test the battery health and to test batteries and understand the health. But they usually requires longer times. So up to three, at least three hours, up to 24 hours. So they are not. This type of solutions are not suitable for appraisals or trade ins operations. So what we provide to them is a solution that connects to the OBD2 port that is a standard that is present on every car manufactured after 1996 and pulling data directly from the batteries and feeding our algorithm analytics with this battery data we are able to generate highly accurate battery state of health reports that dealers can provide to accurately assess the value of EVs and also price those EVs when they are reselling those cars.

00:08:45 – Trevor Schmidt

So maybe for me personally and for kind of our listeners, help us understand like when you’re talking about battery health, I mean what does it cost to kind of replace a battery in an EV and what is kind of the range of I guess lifespan like I mean we’re all familiar with our phones kind of dying.

00:09:02 – Davide Giacobbe

But yeah, those are great questions that we got asked a lot of times in terms of cost of replacement of an EV batteries it can span from $10,000 up to $20,000. So they are highly expensive operations. And that’s why I said before that the battery is the most valuable component of the car. And it’s key, it’s a key topic to understand the battery health in a very accurate way. As for the lifespan of the battery, we can talk about. So what has been demonstrated in the last 15 years is that batteries lasts longer, usually longer than what it was expected. So we are talking about at least 10 years, up to 15 years. And about battery circular economy and other topics that we explored also in the past. There are also a lot of different valid opportunities for repurpose these batteries in other sectors like the energy sectors, because these batteries are lasting longer than what it was expected and when they still hold enough charge, they are super valuable for other less demanding applications in the energy sector to store energy, for example from solar panels and then release this energy during the day when it’s needed.

00:10:33 – Trevor Schmidt

So it sounds like, at least from your description here, the product that you’re making is primarily provided to businesses, but is there like a at home component to it as well? Could I just buy one and plug it into my euv?

00:10:45 – Davide Giacobbe

Yeah, we are exploring the route for consumers as well because basically our device, the device they’re using is a very easy to use and compact and small device. We want to tie this device and these analytics together with extended warranties, especially for batteries. So we are exploring the route for consumers as well. But at the moment our main focus is on the B2B side, targeting entities like dealers, wholesalers, repair shops.

00:11:17 – Trevor Schmidt

So I think you touched on this a little bit in your comment. But has this always been the focus of scouted or is this a newer development?

00:11:23 – Davide Giacobbe

Yeah, no, this is a newer development because it’s a result of a pivot that we have done in the last year. Mainly we have focused on electric vehicle battery circular economy. Before this pivot and what I mean by battery circular economy is a concept that allows these batteries that are coming from the mobility sector to be used again in less demanding applications in the energy sector such as battery energy storage systems. And these battery energy storage systems are usually applications that are connected to the renewable sources of energy like solar panels or wind power generation to store energy for example during the day and release it during the night or release when there is peak demand of energy. So this has been the first focus of scouted last year starting from end 2022 and the whole 2023. And about that we built what we call second life EV battery marketplace. So we built a platform that was an online marketplace for second life batteries. And our main purpose was to enable a true battery circular economy connecting these two different sector spaces that are one is the mobility space and the Other one is the energy space.

00:12:54 – Trevor Schmidt

So what I guess led to the pivot or talk about that a little bit, was it hard to make that shift? How have you been navigating that?

00:13:05 – Davide Giacobbe

Every pivot is hard because it requires a lot of conviction and also the clarity in your mind that at some point you need to shift into something new because the results that you were expecting or that you were assuming are not coming. So when we realize, and we figure out that the market of second life EV batteries is not there yet, and because, especially because of lack of volumes, lack of high volumes of end of life batteries, we are just starting with the used EV market. So, and I told you before, electric vehicle batteries are lasting longer than what, than what was expected. So the main problem is that the sources of end of life batteries are all coming from production scraps or testing activities made by auto manufacturers. And this is the main problem that we encountered. So lack of sources. Also a very emerging and nascent market. And for a small startup and a small team, it’s not enough to thrive and survive.

00:14:22 – Trevor Schmidt

Yeah. So do you think it’s, it’s still on the shelf and may come back out in a future day or.

00:14:26 – Davide Giacobbe

Absolutely, it’s still on a shelf because I still believe in the marketplace in that model. I still believe in the second life opportunities as repurposing opportunities for electric vehicle batteries and backing these batteries by data, that this is what we’re going to do with our solution. That is, that is envisioned to track battery health in this way. We are going to create like even a more powerful marketplace because it’s going to be backed by data and all the berries will, will be backed by data that we’re going to collect in. On the field. In the field, yeah.

00:15:06 – Trevor Schmidt

So tell me a little bit about your why for doing this. You may have touched on it a little bit, but like what kind of gets you up each morning to, you know, commit so much time and energy into a startup like this?

00:15:16 – Davide Giacobbe

In general, I really, what I told you before is that I really believe in this transition into renewable energy energy and electric vehicles. So climate change is something that we, we need to be aware and we need to be aware of. And it’s something that already came and we need to realize that we need to shift our transportation and generation of energy into new forms and new ways. So having the power generation that will come from renewable energy together, coupled with electric vehicles, it can open even bigger opportunities for both industries, energy and mobility. And what I want to solve are the biggest problems of the sector. I know the most, that is mobility and automotive, to accelerate the transition of electric vehicles. This is the main why I have that helped me in the past also overcome a lot of challenges and difficulties with Pivot, also with the business. And this is what helped me move forward with the company and to.

00:16:36 – Trevor Schmidt

Yeah, okay, so talk a little bit about the challenges that you face now. So you’ve made this Pivot and you’ve got the, you know, the effort to give insights about the EV battery health. So what are some of the challenges that you’re facing now?

00:16:50 – Davide Giacobbe

Challenges are still that even if we pivot to a solution that we consider that is needed right now, as opposed to what I was describing before about the first phase of scouting, that was more on something that needs to come in the next few years. So the challenges are still that the used EV market is still a nascent market. This could be an advantage because if you are tapping into these opportunities faster than others, you build your competitive advantage. But on the other side, you have to educate, for example, your customers or potential customers into these new opportunities. For example, with electric vehicles, a lot of dealers still don’t have high availability of these vehicles. So they can perceive the problem that they have in appraisals and pricing EVs, but not in the same way in which they could have with internal combustion engine vehicles and high volumes of this. So one problem is education. So one challenge is education of the market. And the second biggest challenge is that being a small team, you need to focus what matters the most. So first of all, you need to use your resources in the best way you can and not get distracted by too many opportunities that are coming with EVs and this energy transition. But focus on what really your customers is asking that is specifically at the moment, a very easy to use, fast and reliable application to understand battery health.

00:18:40 – Trevor Schmidt

So is this a problem that other countries have managed better than the United States, or is this potentially a global issue that you can, you can meet that market?

00:18:50 – Davide Giacobbe

So about battery health in general, what I, what I, coming from Europe, what I, what I saw and what I noticed is that it’s a common problem, that there are no other areas in the world that have managed better than the United States. So what I, what I think is that we are now in the phase in which we are realizing that barrier is in general, both in the mobility industry and energy industry are becoming more and more important day by day because they are playing vital roles in several spaces for several applications. So what I think is that it’s just China that is a little bit ahead compared to the United States and Europe in understanding berry health. But this is what we are seeing with the EVs as well. So the industry is more developed, more advanced compared to the United States because there are more vehicles because they started before US and Europe and these led the market to figure out also new applications for battery health before the, before the US and Europe.

00:20:10 – Trevor Schmidt

So you’ve mentioned a couple of times that you got a relatively small team. How big is the team right now?

00:20:14 – Davide Giacobbe

So the team at the moment is still made by my co founder and I. So a team of two and then we have also part of the team of the development team that is a partner company in Italy back in Italy and two advisors here in the U.S. one in California, one here in Raleigh.

00:20:35 – Trevor Schmidt

How did you and your co founder start working together?

00:20:37 – Davide Giacobbe

Yeah, that’s a great question. So we were during COVID period. So 2020, 2021, thanks to these support groups and the communities I mentioned you before and thanks to some connection with my ex colleagues in the automotive industry, we started these like we call brainstorming group and we were talking about some problems that we identified in our experience in the automotive industry. With a weekly appointment on a weekly basis we started talking and this group went on for I think at least 1.5 years. So at least one year and a half. And then the only two survivors of this group were me and my co founders.

00:21:27 – Trevor Schmidt

Oh wow.

00:21:27 – Davide Giacobbe

Okay. That’s the story of scouted. That’s how we started. And I started on my own by myself we can say alone in at the end of 2021 with some ideas. I quit my job then and at the beginning of 2022. And then Nicolo, my co founder came full time at the end of 2022. And yeah, it was a great surprise for me because I didn’t expect him to join, but it was really, really.

00:22:01 – Trevor Schmidt

So what were some early wins that helped shape the course of the company or where are you getting some traction now? That’s encouraging you.

00:22:08 – Davide Giacobbe

We are getting amazing traction with the market segment represented by dealers because this problem is real and is becoming real like day by day. Unfortunately they experience high losses with EVs especially in the last year because they were not able to understand the value of these vehicles. And it’s a new market and understanding battery health in a couple of minutes is a no brainer for this. This was the first thing that after the pivot make us really, really convicted in keep going and pursuing this opportunity. And the second factor is that despite what we heard especially during 2024 that EV market had a slowdown. The EV market in terms of new cars is still growing. It’s not growing at the same pace it was growing a couple of years or three years ago, but it’s still growing. So there’s going to be more and more used EVs that will need to be tested and these will represent vast majority of the market in 10 years. So in the same way we are using some third party certification companies to get the data from internal combustion engine cars, we’re going to do the same with EVs and data will be needed on the battery health as well.

00:23:40 – Trevor Schmidt

Yeah, so this may be a silly question, but I mean how do you get in front of the dealers? You just kind of roll up to the dealership and knock on the door and be like, hey, check this out.

00:23:46 – Davide Giacobbe

Yeah, at the moment we are doing a lot of still founder led sales. So walk ins, cold email connection, warm intro with our network as well. This helps a lot. But yeah, in general is founder led sales. That means everything. Usually workies could be also very, very interesting. Unless that you don’t show up on a Saturday that he’s right when he’s trying to settle.

00:24:17 – Trevor Schmidt

Yeah, makes sense. So is there anything that from the start that you wish you had done differently or thought about before kind of jumping into the startup?

00:24:25 – Davide Giacobbe

There are some things I would have done differently. Not on the creation of the team because I’m very happy with the relationship that my co founder and I have created and I’m really considering. So I’m really grateful to have met Nicolo because we are working really good and considered and we are working remotely because he’s still based in Italy. And but about things that I would have done differently is first of all, the first month of Scouted. So Scouted actually was incorporated in the Bay Area. In the Bay Area. And we spent around three months at the end of 2022 in San Francisco trying to follow that dream that describes like the founder that lands in San Francisco and raise a lot of money and everything is easy. Everything comes really easy in an easy way. And you can start building like a great company without basically no effort because everything is coming from investors. And that was my very first mistake, our very first mistake because not knowing enough what we were experiencing. And this was the biggest mistake at the beginning because it made us lose some time, also spend a lot of money and we can say waste a lot of money into something that was not the highest priority at the beginning because at the beginning you need to focus on understanding, better understanding the problem that your potential customers will have or have and trying to understand what is the easiest solution you could build to at the beginning, solve their problem and get the first revenue or get the first validation from the market. So the biggest mistake at the beginning was focusing on, for example, getting funding when we didn’t have the numbers and losing time and losing money in this. In that period of time.

00:26:35 – Trevor Schmidt

Yeah, I think that’s a great point. So did you at some point then move out of the Bay Area and kind of re. I don’t want to say restart, but just kind of shift there.

00:26:44 – Davide Giacobbe

Yeah, that was, that was also a great opportunity because at the end of 2022, also thanks to my family situation because my wife at the same time got relocated from Italy to North Carolina.

00:26:59 – Trevor Schmidt

Okay.

00:27:00 – Davide Giacobbe

For her job. So she got a permanent offer to stay here in North Carolina. And at that point I was concluding my experience in the Bay Area, but I still wanted to open my business in the US So at that point, I have to say I didn’t know much about North Carolina coming from Europe, but we land here. I started to like the place to meet the people, to understand that the Triangle is a great spot to build a tech business. And that’s why then I reconsider focusing in a different area of the US and that’s why I’m here.

00:27:42 – Trevor Schmidt

That’s great. So you had mentioned at the outset that you’d spent a number of years with these big automotive companies. I wonder if you could speak to things that you learned from that experience that you feel are applicable to what you’re doing with the startup today.

00:27:54 – Davide Giacobbe

Yeah, absolutely. So there are a lot of things that I, that I still use in building my startup that I. I learned in automotive industry. And because my position, especially when I was at Lamborghini, was more like a managerial position, still in the R and D department, but managing different relationship with different entities in the. In the company, inside the company. So, for example, I was on the R and D side by talking with all the different departments, starting from purchasing to project management to logistics and quality. That experience brought me a lot for my current experience as an entrepreneur, because what I learned is that when you have a company, you have to think about a lot of different areas at the same time. So you need to figure out how to get your payroll, to do sales, to build the product, to follow the technical development, all the different things, all these different things that are different among each other. And that experience came from what I learned in automotive Industry because having the possibility to interact with different entities inside the company really helped me manage different entities in developing the product. And I took this experience to the entrepreneurial experience as well. Sorry, this part was not.

00:29:29 – Trevor Schmidt

I got no problem with it. So. So what would you say were some of the biggest differences between kind of working big corporate versus your startup life?

00:29:35 – Davide Giacobbe

Yeah, no, it’s totally different. You need to refocus. So immediately after I quit my job, I started to refocus as much as I can from the corporate experience to the startup experience. Because as I said, you need to think about a lot of things you are not used to think when you are in a corporate. So you need to build your own routine as an entrepreneur in order to be focused on the. On the things that really matters for your business as opposed to in your corporate job. If you are in a technical position, as I was, you just need to focus on that part. You have full responsibility on that part, but you don’t think about getting the payroll at the end of the month or making really creating the possibility to get you the payroll and all different entities paid taxes for your business, do the tax return for your business and all different things that you are forced to do when you are, when you are an entrepreneur.

00:30:49 – Trevor Schmidt

So if you were advising a young person who’s like either entering college, has come out of college and they’re like, hey, should I go to the startup route? Should I go get some corporate experience and then go the startup route? What do you think is best?

00:31:02 – Davide Giacobbe

I think that go to the startup route at the beginning, immediately after college could be the best option because it gives you that kind of glimpse at the beginning that will help you like in both experience, either you will choose a corporate job or a startup job. You have that trait that allows you to deal with different things inside the business. Right, right. As opposed to the corporate job really shapes you in a way in which you become more and more specialized towards one thing as opposed to another. So yeah, I really suggest at the beginning to pursue the startup jobs. And actually before the automotive industry, even for just a few months, I work for a startup in the biomedical space. So that helped me because I was a mechanical designer. Coming from mechanical studies, I was a mechanical designer. I developed like a solution for a mechanical solution for the biomedical space. But at the same time I was dealing with, I was pitching orthopedics clinics for the products we are, we were developing.

00:32:29 – Trevor Schmidt

Right.

00:32:29 – Davide Giacobbe

So I was doing also some sales and we were also doing some manual stuff. So mounting the parts that we were realizing and designing. So it was just for a few months because then I pursued my dream to go in work for Yamaha before and then Lamborghini. But yeah, that experience really gave me that trait. To deal with multiple different things inside the business. That is not what you learned usually in a, in a corporate.

00:32:58 – Trevor Schmidt

Now do you have a favorite part of kind of the business now? I mean you’ve been an engineer, you’ve been a manager, you’ve been in sales. You kind of set in strategy now as the CEO.

00:33:09 – Davide Giacobbe

Yeah.

00:33:10 – Trevor Schmidt

What’s your favorite and what’s your least favorite part?

00:33:12 – Davide Giacobbe

I have to say that I really like do strategy sometimes too much. Sometimes strategy can be distracting and bring you to things that are, that don’t, don’t really matter at that time. So you have to prioritize your strategy. But yeah, I really do. I really like strategy. I, I’m still a little bit struggling with sales and I can say that these are part of that. The same, the same thing that is fundraising as well. But yeah, I really like the strategy and also building the product.

00:33:50 – Trevor Schmidt

Okay. Yeah, that makes sense that sales is a tough role.

00:33:54 – Davide Giacobbe

Yeah.

00:33:55 – Trevor Schmidt

So do you think of ScoutIT as a software company, a hardware company, an automotive company, a green company? Does, does, does that matter to you as you, as you think about the company or as you kind of market it to potential investors or customers?

00:34:08 – Davide Giacobbe

Yeah, yeah, it doesn’t matter too much. But I don’t, I don’t want to restrict ourselves just as a we can say software company or automotive company. I think that we are working in the world of batteries and energy. So yeah, this is the way I will classify ScoutIT as a renewable energy company.

00:34:32 – Trevor Schmidt

So are you in the process of fundraising now or.

00:34:35 – Davide Giacobbe

Yeah, we are in a process of fundraising and yeah, we have an open round.

00:34:40 – Trevor Schmidt

Okay, how’s that been?

00:34:42 – Davide Giacobbe

Just started, but yeah, just got some soft commitments. So yeah, we are proceeding fast.

00:34:47 – Trevor Schmidt

Very good. So what do you see as some of the biggest barriers to greater EV adoption in the United States and how do you, how do you think about that as kind of affecting Scout it?

00:34:55 – Davide Giacobbe

Yeah, the biggest barriers are primarily charging infrastructure. So the diffusion of charging infrastructure and of a high quality charging infrastructure. Because it’s not just a matter of having multiple charging points all across the US or in Europe. It’s basically the same thing all across the world. But it’s a matter of having high uptime charging infrastructure like the Tesla Supercharger is a model for that has a up time higher than 99.5%. So very impressive. And it proved that when you have the right infrastructure, you can really build great things that are loved from your customer base. But it’s not enough because Tesla is just one player of the EV market. So we need to figure out how to replicate that model in a fast way and in a way that allows to have these high quality and high uptime charging infrastructure that is definitely needed to enable EV road trips or replace in a full way transportation that is based on internal combustion engines.

00:36:24 – Trevor Schmidt

Now is that, this just shows my lack of knowledge, but is there any sort of uniformity across different types of EVs with regard to batteries or does Tesla have a certain battery pack and Rivian has a different battery pack?

00:36:36 – Davide Giacobbe

Yeah, there is not a high uniformity. So in general what we, what we can say is that there are chemistries that are most used and less used. We have seen NMC chemistry, so nickel, manganese, cobalt that has been used for a long time and are still used by the vast majority of manufacturers. And there has been a recent transition in into lithium, ferrum phosphide. So LFP batteries and LFP chemistries most recently. But in terms of battery pack construction, design, use of the modules or differences, there is not a homogeneous situation all across the market.

00:37:22 – Trevor Schmidt

Does that make a bigger challenge for you or is that still because it’s the same chemistry scatter can kind of work through?

00:37:28 – Davide Giacobbe

No, actually it’s a big opportunity for us. This, a big differentiation is also a big opportunity because yeah, it’s a big effort in order to, when we are trying to understand battery health, we have to build reverse, we have to reverse engineer the protocol of communication with each make a model that is on the market. So the point is that having different models and having different makes that are using different batteries allows us also to build our competitive advantage with, with our other competitors or other companies on the market because there is this not homogeneous situation. So if in case every car will have the same battery, it would be easier for anyone to tap into this market.

00:38:19 – Trevor Schmidt

Right, Makes sense. So at the risk of offending somebody listening. Do you have a favorite EV or a favorite EV company?

00:38:26 – Davide Giacobbe

Yeah, I mean I don’t have a favorite one, a favorite brand or ev, but I think that Tesla is still the most advanced manufacturer in building EVs. They have proven that building together a great product and a great charging infrastructure can bring great results and great satisfaction from the customers. Tesla Model Y has been the highest sold vehicle in the market in 2023 in terms of technology. This shift not just into EVs but to software defined vehicles that Tesla and Rivian also has created has brought the automotive industry into like a big period of change, a big transition that we are, we are all leaving.

00:39:21 – Trevor Schmidt

Two questions, I guess. One thing is do you think any of these other kind of more recent startups like Arivian or Lucid have a chance to make a go of it? Or are they too late to the game? And then I guess maybe I can ask it a separate question after that.

00:39:35 – Davide Giacobbe

But yeah, no, absolutely. I think that Rivian and Lucid, both companies built an amazing and super impressive product. The point is that they’re still struggling with profitability and they’re still losing a lot of money as opposed to Tesla, that has overcome that problem. Right. But because both companies, so both Trivia and Lucid has invested so much in creating this like foundation based on this concept of software defined vehicles, I think they are really, really close to reach that, to overcome this transitional phase in which they are not able to make money out of a vehicle. And I really, really hope that they will make it because they are bringing great revolution to the automotive industry and building great product. So I think that we’ll need in general more EV manufacturers that are capable of doing what Tesla has done. And also the legacy automakers are catching up and are figuring out other ways to make EVs profitable. That has been the biggest problem in the last decade because of the shift into batteries and into software refined vehicles that has happened.

00:41:03 – Trevor Schmidt

And do you think competition from the Chinese EV market will kind of spur growth in the United States or is that going to represent challenges to the success of these companies?

00:41:13 – Davide Giacobbe

It’s a very tricky point in general. And I think that competition from China could be a big challenge for legacy auto manufacturers, but at the same time a great opportunity for consumers and for customers to tap into EVs and to transition into electric vehicles. So this is what I think this is already happening in Europe, for example. All the biggest Chinese manufacturers like BYD are already coming and are creating biggest, bigger, are creating big challenges to the European car makers. But that doesn’t mean that European car makers will be completely, we can say, destroyed in terms of competition by these Chinese auto manufacturers. They just need to figure out better ways to make EVs profitable. Because the reason why these legacy car makers are struggling is that they made a lot of money on not up to date platforms back in the days. And they are still making, for example, if we think about all the different trucks that are available here in the U.S. so Ford and GMs are making a lot of profits out of those cars still. And it’s not the same that is happening for EVs. But Chinese auto manufacturers could represent a challenge for those carmakers, but also like a further push to bring them to develop new technologies to figure out EV’s profitability.

00:42:54 – Trevor Schmidt

Yeah, that’s what I’m hoping. It makes them kind of make that transition faster and more successfully. So what are some issues that keep you up at night as the CEO or that you wake up in the morning thinking about?

00:43:05 – Davide Giacobbe

I mean one is all the time is money and funding. And funding. So you constantly struggle on how to use the resources in order to make something new for the product or use the money to do sales or to promote your product. But at the same time you have to keep your burn rate low if the company is still not making the revenue that you are, you are expecting or it’s not getting funding from outside entities or getting funding from investors. So one challenge is always money. And the second one, the second one we are still suffering from is we are running a team that is basically remote. My co founder is still in Italy. We have to figure out the immigration stuff with him. And this could be, could seem like a small challenge, but in fact is a major challenge because when we had the opportunity to work together we really realized that everything was faster. And yeah, this is the second big challenge. So working together, figuring out how to expand the team and create a team here, establish here in the US that is capable of going faster.

00:44:40 – Trevor Schmidt

So we are the founder Shares podcast. So I always like to ask all of our guests if you had one piece of advice that you could share with somebody who’s thinking about starting a company, what would that advice be?

00:44:51 – Davide Giacobbe

A piece of share A piece of advice to share with someone that wants to start a company is start from, start small. At the beginning, just figure out what is the need that your potential customers have and focus on the problem you want to solve. Focus on that. Don’t get distracted by go find capital, don’t get distracted by other like lower hanging fruit that could seem really more, really easier to get. But focus on the basics, focus on understanding the problem, figuring out the solution. The easiest and simpler solution you could bring to market with less amount of capital and then validate this concept and start the business.

00:45:53 – Trevor Schmidt

That’s great. I really appreciate this. I’ve enjoyed the conversation so much. How can our listeners connect with you?

00:45:59 – Davide Giacobbe

You can visit scoutedweb.com and follow also our latest product VolTest or you can connect me with. You can connect with me on LinkedIn. My name is Davide Giacobbe.

00:46:11 – Trevor Schmidt

Thank you so much. I appreciate the time.

00:46:13 – Davide Giacobbe

Thank.

00:46:21 – Trevor Schmidt

That was Davide Giacobbe. To learn more about ScoutIT or Davide’s work, visit their website at ScoutITWeb.com that’s ScoutedWeb S C O U T I-T-W-E-B.com thanks for listening to this episode of the Foundershares Podcast. If you’re a founder or business owner and need legal advice, be sure to check out our team@hutchlaw.com that’s hutchlaw.com we have the capacity to help you out with just about any legal need your company may be facing. We’re passionate about the innovation economy and ready to help you on your entrepreneurial journey. The show was edited and produced by Earfluence. I’m Trevor Schmidt, and thanks for listening to the Founders Shares Podcast.