Ernest Garcia
Co-Founder & CEO, Carvana. On 1 show, 1 appearance. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutiveWikipedia ↗
Ernie Garcia III co-founded Carvana in 2012 and took it public in 2017, pioneering direct-to-consumer e-commerce for used vehicles. He steered the company through market volatility, including an approximate 99% stock drop in 2022 followed by an operational and financial recovery.
1shows
1appearances
44statements
4resolved
3supported
0contradicted
75%fully supported
Everything Ernest Garcia said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Garcia: Companies should price their IPOs as high as possible
“I don't buy into that. I think price it as high as you can price it.”
Garcia: Peer respect matters more in hiring than prior experience
“I would way rather take a person in any role that is respected by someone that I respect than someone who's done it before. Like, I don't, my personal view is like, I don't care that much if you've done it before. I really don't, and I don't care that much if …”
Garcia: Underpricing Carvana's IPO for a pop would have risked failure
“If we would have, you know, priced it at 10 or eight or whatever to try to get some magical bump, we would have gotten a lot less money and would have been more likely to not make it across the line. And we would have, you know, taken more dilution for all of …”
Garcia: Taking on massive debt saved Carvana from catastrophic equity dilution
“Had we raised equity in the same dollars at the same time that we took out debt we would have taken a lot more dilution than let's say that we just like raised equity today and paid it off just to like, you know, allow you to do that math. We would have taken …”
Garcia: Mandatory debt service and market skepticism create invaluable operational pressure
“There's no substitute for like huge cash flows that have to be covered and a market that's telling you you're stupid every day that generates a type of pressure that is extremely valuable.”
Garcia: Entrepreneurship requires stubbornness and egomaniacal self-belief
“And so I think that there's a lot of good that comes out of being stubborn. I think there's a lot of good that comes out of self belief which could also be, you know, restated as being an egomaniac. But I do think that's what entrepreneurs are. I think it's re…”
Garcia: Delivering great customer experience requires complete vertical integration
“We don't believe you can give customers the experience that we want to give them unless you do it all.”
Garcia: Carvana is currently weakest in AI integration
“Relatively speaking, I think we're weakest there, but because it's just a new set of capabilities that we have not invested in for a long period of time.”
Garcia: Operators get you to one, conceptual thinkers set the ceiling
“The more important of the two for any success, like getting from zero to one is the operator. But then I think the ceiling of your possible success is a function of the conceptual thinker.”
Garcia: Leaders Listen Too Much to Outside Critics Distant From Problems
“My personal view is, is. People listen too much to the world around them. Who's further away from the problem. And they should listen less. They should build what they believe in and they feel like they deeply know and not worry about it.”
Garcia: He wouldn't build Carvana again in a thousand lifetimes without luck
“If I got to live a thousand lifetimes, I don't think that I would be likely to be part of something as big as Carvana in very many of those lifetimes. Because I think that there is luck in the world.”
Garcia: Childhood financial instability harms happiness but drives ambition
“My guess, without confidence, would be Knowing that you could lose it all every night is not good for your happiness and for your, you know, like mental daily wellbeing. It's probably very good for your ambition. It probably hardens you and creates character t…”
Garcia: Public market pressure is essential for driving maximum company success
“If success is the, is more important to you? I think you want to be public. I think that the things that people say about being Public are true. Like there are bad things, right? People are short-sighted and they focus on things that don't matter that much. Bu…”
Garcia: Public markets constantly panic and over-evaluate micro data
“And I think the market in my opinion is constantly kind of panicking about everything. It's constantly like over-evaluating all these kinds of micro data points.”
Garcia: Use repetitive analyst questions to spot real internal operational issues
“You need to have your convictions and beliefs, but it is useful to sit there and be like, okay, but what is the one thing we're going to get 15 questions about? And then is that something where the market is just wrong and we don't care, which many times that …”
Garcia: Private companies avoid building resilience by hiding from tough times
“As a private company, what do you do when you go through a tough time? Like for the most part, what do you do? You don't talk about it because there's no forcing mechanism to make you talk about it. You just keep going. It's like, and so I think that you get t…”
Garcia: Carvana is shifting focus to growth after two years on profitability
“We as a company, not to like dive too deeply into the specifics of us, but I think we faced a two year period where we focused on nothing but profitability. And I think that we've, you know, more recently been trying to find the right balance between profitabi…”
Garcia: Carvana's current physical infrastructure can support three million cars
“I think that we are built today. We have infrastructure in like, you know, without diving too much into like the details of what this means, we have infrastructure that I think clearly supports three million.”
Garcia: Public markets are cold, ruthless, and no one claps for you
“You don't want to be a reaction to other people's reduced view of what you are when you're public. It's just cold. It's ruthless. It's a, it's just results. No, one's ever going to clap for you.”
Garcia: Carvana would have raised VC easily as a software layer
“And I do think that there's a very good chance we actually would have been successful raising money had we made that that choice.”
Garcia: Ambitious companies usually face multiple near-death experiences
“But the truth is, I think most companies That take a big swing generally have multiple near-death experiences.”
Garcia: Carvana's stock dropped 99% and bonds traded at 40 cents
“In, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, our stock went down nine to nine percent. Our bonds were trading at like 40 cents on the dollar.”
Garcia: VCs rejected Carvana over capital intensity and being in Phoenix
“And I think at the time that we were trying to do our early fundraisers, I think, you know, capital intensity, operational intensity were not popular. Marketplaces were very popular. That was kind of like the pattern people saw. Phoenix was not viewed as a mar…”
Garcia: Very few investors will back businesses requiring ten sequential risks
“When you have to solve 10 problems in a row, there's just not that many people that want to take that risk. I think there's people that'll take You know, two or three risks in a row, but when you've got like 10 in a row, it's just, it's very hard to find that …”
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Ernest's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 20VCLEDGER | Co-Founder & CEO, Carvana | 1 | 44 | 75% 3/4 | full record on 20VC → |