Last week, I spent time with a group of founders and executives leading automotive technology startups. We covered the topics you would expect in a room like that: fundraising, hiring, positioning, go-to-market strategy, customer acquisition, and how to compete against companies with significantly more capital and resources.
The most interesting part, however, was not any single answer. It was how often the tactical questions led us back to leadership.
We talked about stalled growth, when to stay the course, and how to recognize whether a company needs to evolve or make a true pivot. Several conversations also centered on the founder’s role, including how leaders identify their own blind spots and whether the strengths that helped build the company are still the strengths it needs most.
By the end of the discussion, a common thread had emerged:
How do you recognize when the problem you have spent years solving is no longer the problem most likely to determine what happens next?
It’s a difficult problem for any leadership team. The company may still believe deeply in its vision, the product may continue improving, and the team may be working harder than ever. Yet the thing that determines the next stage of growth may have already shifted somewhere else.
It’s one reason I’ve been paying close attention to Slate Auto.
Slate has already gained conviction
Slate is attempting something consumers have been asking for but the industry has struggled to deliver: a simple, affordable electric truck that lets buyers add only the features they want.
Before delivering its first vehicle, Slate attracted more than 180,000 refundable reservations. The word “refundable” matters because reservations are not completed sales, but it does not erase what the company has accomplished. Hundreds of thousands of people believed in the idea strongly enough to reserve a vehicle before the first truck ever reached the road.
Within my GROW framework, Slate has already gained conviction. It has articulated a clear point of view, attracted meaningful attention, and created belief among potential customers, employees, investors, and partners.
The next test is whether that conviction survives contact with reality.
Slate must convert low-risk reservations into actual orders, manufacture vehicles reliably, deliver them on schedule, and establish trust in a completely new automotive brand. It also has to prove that customers will feel adequately supported after the sale through its planned network of independent service providers.
Tesla has already shown that people will buy vehicles without relying on a traditional franchise dealership. Slate’s challenge is more specific. It must convince customers to place that trust in an unproven company offering a radically simplified product and a different ownership experience.
Those are not simply larger versions of the problem Slate has already solved. They are different problems that require a broader mix of leadership strengths.
Leadership superpowers do not change, but the company does
One of the central ideas in GrowUp is that leaders already possess dominant superpowers. Those strengths shape how they see opportunities, solve problems, build teams, create belief, and respond when the path forward is uncertain.
An Innovator can imagine a product and a future others do not yet see. A Builder can translate that vision into something real and create the structure required to execute. A Connector can bring the right people together, develop trusted relationships, and create alignment around a shared goal. A Persuader can generate the belief and momentum that attract employees, customers, partners, and investors.
Every growing company needs all four of those strengths, but no single leader possesses them in equal measure. Scientific Reports has found that certain combinations of complementary founder personality types can make startups more than twice as likely to succeed. The academic profiles in that research do not map directly to my concept of superpowers, but the underlying finding reinforces something I have seen throughout my career: companies become stronger when leaders bring different perspectives and capabilities to the table.
The challenge is not that a founder’s superpower eventually stops being valuable. The challenge is that the company’s most important need may move somewhere else.
An Innovator who helped create a differentiated product may continue adding ideas when the company now needs focus. A Builder may keep solving product and process problems when the market needs a clearer story. A Connector may prioritize alignment and relationships when the business needs faster decisions or stronger accountability. A Persuader may continue creating excitement without putting enough consistency behind the promise.
These are not failures of talent. They are examples of strengths becoming overrepresented while another need goes unmet.
That is why I encourage founders and leadership teams to ask one question on repeat, especially after major milestones or meaningful changes in the market:
What does my company need now?
The answer will not remain static. Continued growth almost guarantees that it will change.
Slate appears to be evolving before launch
In March, TechCrunch reported that former Amazon Marketplace executive Peter Faricy had become Slate’s CEO, while Christine Barman, the company’s original CEO and first employee, moved into the role of President of Vehicles.
Barman would remain focused on delivering the truck on time and on budget, while Faricy stepped in as Slate prepared to convert its reservation list into actual customers. Slate also pointed directly to Faricy’s experience building Amazon Marketplace as an important reason for the appointment.
It would be easy to frame the move as a founder replacement story, but that interpretation misses what makes the decision interesting.
Slate retained the Innovator with deep automotive, product, and manufacturing expertise close to the work of building the vehicle. At the same time, it added a Builder whose background centers on e-commerce, marketplaces, and creating enough trust that millions of people will complete transactions without relying on a traditional in-person relationship.
The company is not abandoning the original vision, changing the customer it intends to serve, or moving away from the truck that attracted 180,000 reservations. Slate appears to be reorganizing around the next set of problems it expects to face.
That is evolution, not a pivot.
A pivot changes something fundamental about the company, such as the audience, business model, or core problem it exists to solve. Evolution changes how the company leads and executes against an opportunity it still believes in.
Success changes the leadership equation
Noam Wasserman’s research found that achieving critical milestones can dramatically increase the likelihood of a change in the founder-CEO role, a dynamic he described as the paradox of entrepreneurial success.
That finding can sound like a warning to founders, but I believe the more useful interpretation is that success changes the company.
Completing the product, raising capital, attracting customers, and expanding the team introduce new expectations and risks. The company becomes more complex, and the decisions required to move it forward become increasingly specialized.
Evolution does not automatically mean the founder should leave or become less important. It may mean changing responsibilities, adding complementary leadership, building a different organizational structure, or allowing someone else to own work that has become central to the company’s next stage.
The strongest founders I have worked with do not see that evolution as an admission that they failed. They understand that their value cannot depend on continuing to perform every job they held when the company was smaller.
They stay deeply committed to the vision while remaining curious about what the business now requires.
The market is part of the leadership team
This became one of the most important themes in my conversation with the automotive leaders last week.
Too many companies operate almost entirely through an internal lens. Leadership teams review what the product team shipped, whether sales followed the process, how efficiently marketing performed, and which organizational changes might improve execution. Those conversations matter, but they can create the illusion that every answer exists somewhere inside the company.
The market is part of the leadership team, whether leaders acknowledge it or not.
Customers vote through what they buy, what they ignore, and where they hesitate. Competitors expose gaps. New technologies reset expectations. Investors and partners signal where they see long-term value.
Leadership's job isn't to react to every signal. It's to recognize the patterns that matter.
That distinction is especially important in automotive, where short-term pressures can easily be mistaken for structural change. A slow sales period may reflect economic uncertainty, not a broken strategy. In those moments, patience and consistent execution matter more than reinvention.
Other signals are more fundamental. A competitor closes a meaningful product gap. New technology reshapes customer expectations. Capital becomes harder to access. The market begins rewarding a different business model.
Strong leaders know the difference. They recognize when the market is asking the company to execute better and when it’s asking the company to evolve.
The market often speaks through resistance
I saw this firsthand at Roadster, where resistance to our original model ultimately revealed the stronger business hidden inside it.
We originally built the business around a direct-to-consumer car-buying model. Dealers pushed back because they did not want us coming between them and their customers.
At the same time, another message was becoming impossible to ignore. Dealers did not like what we were trying to do, but they loved the technology.
That distinction led us to change both our audience and business model. Rather than competing with dealers, we began selling digital retail technology directly to them. It was a true pivot that ultimately helped position Roadster for its $360 million acquisition by CDK Global.
The lasting lesson wasn't that we found a better business model. It was that the market told us what it valued before we fully understood the opportunity. Markets often whisper before they shout. The signal may arrive as an objection, an unexpected use case, or a feature customers value far more than the one the company believed mattered most.
Leaders who only look inward often miss those signals because they're still evaluating the business through yesterday's assumptions.
Shared strengths create shared blind spots
Listening becomes even more difficult when everyone around the leadership table sees the company through a similar lens.
The greater the overlap in leadership strengths, the more likely the team is to reinforce its own assumptions and miss the signals pointing in a different direction.
That is why outside advisors, coaches, board members, customers, and trusted industry peers can help leadership recognize blind spots an internal team may no longer see. Their role is not to make the decisions. It is to surface the questions that insiders may no longer be able to see.
The goal is not to eliminate or suppress the founder’s superpower. It is to complement that strength with the perspectives and capabilities the company now needs.
Slate’s next act begins…
Slate has already passed a test that stops many startups. It has created meaningful conviction around a differentiated product in a capital-intensive industry where established manufacturers hold enormous advantages.
Now the challenge changes.
The company must convert reservations into customers, manufacture vehicles reliably, deliver on its promises, and prove that a radically different ownership model can earn long-term trust.
Slate isn’t a completed case study. It’s a leadership decision unfolding in real time.
Whether Slate made the right leadership bet remains to be seen. That’s what makes the company worth watching.
Every growing company eventually reaches its own version of that moment. The challenge is recognizing when the problem that built the business is no longer the problem that will determine its future.
The market is constantly talking, but it rarely repeats itself forever. The companies that continue to grow are the ones willing to listen while there is still time to evolve.
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To learn more about my GrowUp framework and how it can help grow your leadership style visit: Michelledenogean.com
