Local Motor : Designed by the Crowd, Built by the customer
Jay Rogers scurried through the hallway at Local Motors (LM) Wareham, Massachusetts corporate headquarters as he coordinated with employees about the day’s hectic schedule of events. Fortunately, the hallway was only about 15 feet long and included just three offices. LM’s 3,000 – square-foot office and garage space seemed a humble place from which major innovations impacting the automotive sector – one of the world’s largest industries – might emerge.
But sometimes, small can be beautiful. Especially when the giants are stumbling.
As Rogers returned to his office, he picked up a sheaf of printouts. The first sheets included articles about General Motors’ emergence from bankruptcy. On that very morning, GM’s CEO Fritz Henderson announced the finalized structure of the deal that would make the governments of the United States and Canada, along with automotive labor unions, the primary owners of what had until recently been the world’s largest corporation. The phrase ‘’leaner and meaner ‘’ seemed to be a rallying cry as GM executive and government officials alike expressed their goals for the still deeply troubled company. ‘’It is a new era, and everyone associated with company must realize this and be prepared to change, and fast, “ Henderson said (see Exhibit 1 for U.S. auto industry statistics)
Rogers wondered whether GM and other major automakers around the world could ever truly change enough to embrace the kind of product and service model he envisioned for his company. Local motors planned on using online talent and customer communities to develop new car designs and regional “microfactories”in which the buyers of these new cars would participate in assembling them. LM’s strategy and business model bore no resemblance to the typical car industry – or even to the models of other upstarts in a topsy-turvy auto sector. That might have been why Local Motors was attracting so much attention. Rogers’s second set of printouts dealt with that days visit by a creew from The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, a nightly national broadcast on PBS. The NewsHour would be discussing the potential for nascent firms sush as LM to transform the American auto landscape.
Unfortunately, Rogers’s third set of printouts dealt with matters much less grand, though still of great import to LM. One of the company’s key engineers had sent a series of e-mails informing Rogers of his intention to take up to a month away from work to undergo surgery. Because Rogers knew the engineer’s absence would make it impossible to roll out LM’s first model, ‘’The Rally Fighter, “on time , he had been pleading with him to delay the surgery .’’I don’t know if Local motors will be here in a few months to pay for my coverage, ’’replied the engineer.
Indeed ,LM’s cash would be running short in a few months and follow-on fundraising efforts were taking more and more of Roger’s time; he was considering pursuing very non-traditional resource for financing . Additional funds were needed soon to build the company’s first microfactories and execute the marketing plan, Even as film crews set up the lights for that night’s hight-profile broadcast ,Rogers wondered how long he could keep the lights on at Local Motors.
Building a company
Profile of the Founder
A graduate of Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of International Affairs, John (Jay) Buryon Rogers cut this entrepreneurial teeth helping his father build a biomedical testing business in China during the mid -1990s. (His family tree included another prominent entrepreneur as well ; Rogers’s grandfather, Ralph Rogers, ran the Indian Motorcycle company in the 1940s.) Later,he become an analyst at an investment bank , eventually moving on the work in private equity and venture capital . In 1999, with an offer of admission to Stanford’s Graduate School of Business in hand , he decided he wanted to pursue an officer position in the United States Marine Corps . When Stanford denied his request to defer admission, he joined the Marine Corps anyway.
Approaching his fifth year in the Marines, Rogers began to think about contributions he would like to make in civilian life. He had been following a series of articles in the financial press about the huge losses being posted by the U.S. car industry. He recalled :
You learn in be Marines to ‘’ be humble, but think big,” I had loved cars deep in my heart since I was a kid. I had the background in the entrepreneurship. That and my work in finance would mean I would be able to raise money. And I had led a lot of people ; as a company commander , I was in charge of 300 Marines. I thought, ‘’Who better to make a difference in the car industry?”
During his tour of duty in the Middle East, Rogers became convinced that America’s approach to transportation ultimately threatened its long-term security.” Basically , I saw the roots of the major conflicts coming down to oil. And our dependence on oil was totally driven by our choices with vehicles. We had to change our approach to cars to improve our security,” stated Rogers. He began to refine his thoughts about lighter, more fuel-efficient cars- as well as a totally difference kind of automotive operation to build them.
Local Roots
Rogers entered Harvard Business School in the fall of 2005 .From day one ,he was focused on taking classes and pursuing other activities that would help him further develop his ideas about opportunities in the auto industry. During the summer between his first and second years,he worked for MaKinsey & Co.’s automotive practice.
In the second year , Rogers and a classmate with significant experience in the car industry won a $20,000 grant from the school’s Social Enterprise Initiative, which was targeted toward students who wanted to lunch socially responsible business. “We said, ‘Look, we can make a huge impact; we can reinvent the automotive industry’, ”said Rogers.
Rogers and his partner visited a number of auto companies to interview executives; those companies ranged from industry stalwarts such as Ford to niched players like the profitable kit-car maker Factory Five and teach – oriented start-up like Tesla. ”Basically , we found all of them were very willing to talk with an HBS team, ”he recalled. “The thing I saw missing is that except for one company, none of them really knew who the customers were going to be for their new cars. They were just making extraordinarily expensive guesses, ” The company that Rogers felt knew its customers best was Factory Five, based in Wareham, Massachusetts. “They had basically stumbled said. The key was community. They didn’t mean to create one, but they did.” Rogers was blown away that at any time of the day,700-100 people were actively participating in the online forum that Factory Five had developed; this represented participation among Factory Five customers and potential customers that far outstripped the rates of other popular communities created by major players like Ford and Volkswagen.” They were both customers and future customers.They would talk about both the most banal and the most exciting things, including products they wanted to buy for their cars and ways they wanted to adapt them,” remembered Roger. “We knew we wanted community as a part of our plan, but we didn’t know the extent to which it could shape our business.
Rogers and his partner continued to develop their business plan with the intention of seeking funding after their graduation. As Boston’s dreary winter grave way to dreary spring, the partners needed to finalize their plans. Rogers remembered:
My co-founder showed up at my door the night before I had to decide whether I would go work for McKinsey, work for a private equity firm, or go start Local Motors. We both sat down and committed to each other we were going to lunch this company. Then he showed up at my door at 9.30 the next morning, grim-faced and worn out from a sleepless night , and said “ My wife and I are just not sure we can make this kind of commitment.
Soon after he was left by his partner to go it alone, Rogers phoned Mark Smith , the founder of Factory Five, to give him an update on both the auto-industry research project and his career situation. Smith hopped on his motorcycle and travelled up to Boston to meet with Rogers. At lunch Smith asked Rogers what he could do to help get the embryonic business off the ground. Rogers’s answer : “ Investment . Smith offered to invest in the venture and provide office and garage space next to Factory Five’s manufacturing facility . He also promised access to engineering and design talent. Additionally, Smith would provide relevant operational and manufacturing information and contribute the time , advice , and credibility of Factory Five’s senior management team. Three weeks later, Rogers and Smith agreed to value Factory Five’s contribution at $1 million and Rogers’s enterprise value at $3 million , giving Factory Five a 25% post-investment ownership stake in the new venture.
Several months after the initial investment , Rogers travelled to New York to meet with another interested investor. Before Smith ‘s investment, this investor had proposed to take upwards of 60 % of LM for a $1 million infusion. When Rogers turned down that offer , the investor agreed to contribute later at a higher valuation if Rogers could obtain a “better deal” for a similarly sized tranche. Given Factory five’s participation and the early performance of LM, the New York investor led a Series A round of investment, which valued the company at almost $9 million.