Meet Jimmy Douglas | Founder and CEO

We had the good fortune of connecting with Jimmy Douglas and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Jimmy, we’d love to hear about how you approach risk and risk-taking.
I’ve had two significant “level-ups” in my career, and I am hopefully now on my third. In both of those past situations, I had to take a risk i hopes of raising my own ceiling. That meant scaling back my income and lifestyle, pushing through the discomfort of surrendering my stature as a subject matter expert in my field, and having a vision of what success looks like if I make it to the other side. While it’s risky to exit a high-point of a linear path to start over on a new one, now I think the real risk is maintaining course (and comfort) when I know I’m capable of more in a new environment.

What should our readers know about your business?
We make used EVs profitable for any used car dealer, which will increase wholesale competition and normalize the market. I have great conviction that our work will benefit the automotive industry overall as we collectively navigate the transition to zero emission vehicles. But starting a two-sided marketplace from zero is gruesomely difficult. To make matters more interesting, when building venture capital money, it’s not enough to go from zero-to-one with a viable business, you need exponential growth in a short period of time. So for us, the name of the game is continued experimentation, compounded learning, and focusing exclusively on exponential opportunities that align with our purpose.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
We live and die by the West side kid-free spots, given our son is two years old. Every Saturday morning you’ll find us at the Venice skatepark for his lesson, usually followed by brunch at Blueys in Mar Vista or Flake on Rose (which my wife would tell you has LA’s best breakfast burrito). For dinner, our new favorite is Companion on Lincoln, but we swear by Dudley Market and will traverse the freeways for Saffy’s. When entertaining guests from out of town, we lean Italian, usually at one of Evan Funke’s spots.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I’ve wanted to be an entrepreneur my whole life, and no group of people gave me confidence that I could do it like the team I worked with at Tesla. I joined in the middle of Model 3 Production Hell and we were the most shorted company on the stock market – victory seemed nearly impossible and so did our targets every quarter after we proved our ability to survive. After you accomplish the seemingly-impossible alongside a team that activates your best work, you start to realize what you’re truly capable of and how many constraints we work within are really self-manufactured.

Website: https://plug.vin

Instagram: @jimmydouglas

Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/in/jimmydou

Twitter: @jimmydouglas