"Know and respect your limits, while also trying to expand them."
Tom Gurski Tweet
A rigorous innovator and challenger of global issues affecting people, life, and the planet, Tom Gurski has made impacts across a variety of sectors. He has supported innovation with rigorous engineering in the fields of alternative energy, medical devices, global sanitation, and e-mobility. He has honed technical skills in systems engineering, machine design, mechatronics, thermal and fluid dynamics, and structural engineering, and thrives as a system thinker and integrator. He is the CEO and Founder of Carbyne Enterprises, a product development consultancy, and Co-CEO and Founder of Blue Dot Motorworks, a startup developing systems to convert existing vehicles into plug-in hybrids. He brings a value-driven and people-centric approach to management and company-building.
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Table of Contents
Tell us a little bit about your current projects. What exciting milestone would you like to share with our readers? (Don’t hesitate to delve into your achievements, they will inspire the audience)
Tom Gurski: I am neck-deep in commercialization efforts at Blue Dot Motorworks! I’ve been working on this technology for six years, all of which have been self-funded. I started down the path based on a gut feeling that as we roll out more and more EVs, there has to be a solution that can take advantage of the billion+ vehicles already on the road. Over the years, I’ve retroactively justified that gut feeling by analyzing different electrification strategies. The latest effort has been using data from the Energy Information Administration on the size and growth of the global vehicle fleet to project the emissions implications of various strategies. The results are bleak: even if we phase out non-plug-in vehicle production by 2027, a much more aggressive strategy than anything being implemented anywhere, we’ll consume 230% of our 1.5 C budget. But in every crisis lies an opportunity, and our approach of scalable retrofitting of existing vehicles as plug-in hybrids addresses all of the roadblocks to achieving our emissions-reduction targets. Oh, and it unlocks a $6 trillion serviceable market!
Can you tell us a story about the hard times that you faced when you first started your journey? Did you ever consider giving up?
Tom Gurski: My career has become progressively more and more focused on achieving positive impacts for people, life, and the planet. A few years ago, I found that I had tied up a large portion of my self-worth in my ability to have that impact. Around that time several projects I had been involved in were hamstrung by a lack of freedom to operate in a manner necessary for them to reach their potential, and I was struggling to find teammates and funding for Blue Dot. That combination of self-worth being tied up with impactfulness and a period of perceived ineffectualness was crippling. And of course, feeling like that makes it harder to be effective, so it all snowballs.
The breakthrough I had was realizing the strength of numbers. If everyone dedicated even a modest portion of their time to address a problem they care about, the world would be transformed. This led to the realization that the important thing is to belong to that continuum of people who are trying their best to make a difference. Not all of them will, but that’s OK. Unexpectedly, I found myself with a sense of community from being a part of that continuum, even I wasn’t interacting with them. Now I try to maintain a balance between that peace and the pressure and hustle to get things done.
What are the most common mistakes you see entrepreneurs make and what would you suggest they do?
Tom Gurski: Reluctance to use outside resources. Scientists and inventors often possess a certain skill set, whereas commercializing a technology requires a different skillset, and a huge variety of skill sets to boot. All too often I’ve seen startups academics, or NGOs try to fumble their way through the process. There are almost always people and companies out there who are already really good at doing what needs to be done in early technology development for a particular sector. Unless you’re swimming in cash, it’s not possible to bring on all the skills needed on an FTE basis. So go get some consultants, hire a contractor, engage with a product development company that works in your sector. You’ll move faster and learn a ton from working with them, and that will allow you to grow your team more effectively, but when the time is right.
Resilience is critical in critical times like the ones we are going through now. How would you define resilience?
Tom Gurski: Knowing and respecting your limits, while also trying to expand them. For me, that most often manifests as a need to preserve and protect my enthusiasm and energy level. I find working alone to be exhausting, and much of the Blue Dot journey has been solo. It can be difficult to set aside the notion that I should be able to give my all 100% of the time and make space for my humanity.
What is most important to your organization—mission, vision, or values?
Tom Gurski: That’s very difficult to answer because I see them as a different aspects of the same thing. Our values are the things to which we assign intrinsic worth, and for me, and Blue Dot by extension, that is first and foremost the wellbeing of people, life, and the planet. Our mission is the thing we’re going to do to contribute to the realization of that value. In Blue Dot’s case, that means helping prevent a climate catastrophe that will impact the wellbeing of all three by taking a big bite out of vehicle emissions. Lastly, our vision represents our hope for a future state in which we are fulfilling our mission. For example, a world where you can look around and see lots of cars with our Narwhal or Humpback systems on them, zipping around under electric power. But if you make me pick one, I’d have to say values, because if you get that wrong, nothing else is going to work out right. And if you get it right, it will permeate everything you do.
What do you consider are your strengths when dealing with staff workers, colleagues, senior management, and customers?
Tom Gurski: Honesty, and valuing them as people. Aside from being a core value, honesty empowers people to make the best decisions because they know where you are coming from and don’t have to consider ulterior motives. And if we don’t truly want the best outcomes for the people we work with, what hope do we have as a society?
Being a CEO of the company, do you think that your brand reflects your company’s values?
Tom Gurski: I sure hope so! Early on, we have the luxury of aligning our company’s values with our own. But as ownership gets diluted and distributed, the values engendered by our economic system and society at large will start seeping in. That’s terrifying, but the hope is that if you bake your values deep enough and prominently enough into the foundation of the company, and play as active a role as possible in sustaining them through actively cultivating the company culture, then enough of them will survive that it can remain a source of pride.
What’s your favorite leadership style and why?
Tom Gurski: I embrace a leadership style that eschews subordination to the greatest extent possible, and that plays a supportive role in value-generating activities and people. Just because you may be responsible for another employee’s performance, doesn’t mean you’re “above” them. That’s just one role that needs to be filled, one activity that has to be executed, for the company to perform at its best. And management is overhead, it doesn’t generate value. In a technology company, the designers, engineers, product planners, and assembly line workers generate the value. The corporate leadership structure should reflect and, dare I say, celebrate that.
What advice would you give to our younger readers that want to become entrepreneurs?
Tom Gurski: Don’t start alone! It almost doesn’t matter what you accomplish, you won’t be taken seriously by the “ecosystem.” And no matter how flawed it may be, you’ll need that ecosystem. Plus, it gets more and more complicated to bring on high-level people the more asymmetrical the situation becomes.
Jed Morley, VIP Contributor to ValiantCEO and the host of this interview would like to thank Tom Gurski for taking the time to do this interview and share his knowledge and experience with our readers.
If you would like to get in touch with Tom Gurski or his company, you can do it through his – Linkedin Page
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