Cars was my favorite movie growing up. You can ask anyone in my life or my Lightning McQueen lunchbox or my Lightning McQueen Halloween costume or my binder, the list goes on. In the 200+ times I watched the movie as a kid, Lightning McQueen was, without competition, My Guy.
He was the definition of cool. He was fast, confident, flashy, destined for greatness.
I just rewatched the movie for the 20th anniversary and ended up spending the whole time realizing that my childhood hero…is kind of an asshole.
He spent the first two-thirds of the movie being completely unlikable and hard to root for or work with. It did make me think about a specific phase of building a company though, so this week’s letter is on the lessons we can all learn from Lightning McQueen.
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My favorite finds of the week
The Guy I Thought I Was Rooting For
Go back and actually watch the first 45 minutes as an “adult.” McQueen fires his own crew chief days before the biggest race of his life because the guy's nervous energy annoys him? He refuses to work with a team, insisting he's a one-man show, right up until his tires blow out on the final lap because nobody was there to tell him to pit.
He treats every mechanic, fan, and local who tries to help him as an obstacle between him and the next photo op. The whole thing is a lesson in hubris on par with most Greek mythology (next letter: What Percy Jackson Taught Me About Cold Outbound?).
He only starts behaving like a decent teammate once the plot physically traps him somewhere he can't win alone.
As a kid I watched all of that and saw a winner having a rough week. A lot of bad happened to him. Now, I just watched my animated childhood hero be rude to everyone he encountered for no reason, make it clear that he thought his talent made him better than everyone and exempt from needing help, and get lucky enough to pit stop in a town caring enough to fix him before it cost him everything.
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Why It’s All Coming Together Now
I’ll stop before I fully compare myself to an animated car, but the lesson is there. Like a lot of young founders who are told to be brave and bullish, confident and relentless, I spent Valley's first year in Lightning McQueen Mode. Speed felt like the only metric worth optimizing, and every hour spent bringing someone else up to speed on a problem felt like an hour where I wasn't moving fast enough.
Half the time I skipped the bringing-people-up-to-speed part and just fixed whatever needed fixing myself. I convinced myself that that’s what commitment, work ethic, ownership, [insert every other buzzword here] looked like. None of it feels like stubbornness or arrogance in the moment.
What really got me during the rewatch was the scene that actually turns McQueen around. Doc shows him his own racing history, footage of the crash, the moment his career ended, and the years afterward where he couldn’t do, so he taught. That was the moment when he finally got it. He was confronted with the uncomfortable reality of what happens to talent that never learns to lean on anyone.
It’s the same with most major reality checks. People can tell you to slow down a million times, but you nod along and keep going just as fast…until you meet the person who crashed doing it your way. That’s the looking in a mirror moment that makes the warning finally feel real.
Personally, I never had a dramatic Doc Hudson moment, but I got to know enough other founders who were chapters ahead of where I was who hit a wall built entirely out of their own refusal to hand anything off. Hearing their stories and struggles and things they wished they had done differently finally made me confront the fact that I was barreling towards that same wall.
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Lessons From The Lightning McQueen-Era
Fire nobody in the week before your biggest race, professionally or otherwise, just because their energy annoys you. The person who annoys you while trying to keep you from blowing a tire is usually the same person keeping you from blowing a tire.
Winning one race alone is a lucky outcome, not a strategy, and you'll spend the next several races trying and failing to repeat it. The founders I've watched actually build something durable got good at building a team around the thing early, rather than after the crash forced them into it.
The people who seem like friction in year one (the ops person asking annoying questions, the early employee who keeps flagging the thing you don't want to hear, etc.) are usually your Radiator Springs. That’s the part of the story where you actually learn to drive.
Every McQueen Needs a Pit Crew
Stop running outbound as a one-man show, let Valley handle the LinkedIn research, messaging, and sending, so you can focus on the calls it books.
How can we work together 🏔️
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