Tom vonReichbauer Joins Lightship’s Board of Directors

I love the outdoors. This seed was planted early in the woods, on beaches, and visiting national parks as a kid, and matured as an adult on road bikes, snowboards, and kayaks. The beauty and wonder of the created world provide medicine for the soul that is hard to replicate anywhere else.

I never considered marrying my professional life with the outdoors, but now those worlds collide as I join the board of directors at Lightship. I’ve spent the last 20+ years working on some of the most complex built-world businesses and iconic brands, including Tesla, Nest, Sunrun, Google, and ICON and was honored when Ben & Toby asked me to consider joining them on the next phase of the journey at Lightship.

So why did I say yes? First, it’s the people. An oft-repeated adage in tech start-up career advice is what Eric Schmidt said to Sheryl Sandberg: “If you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship, don’t ask what seat. Just get on.” While there’s wisdom in this, I think it leaves out a more important filter: you want good people on that rocket ship. Not just talented, resourceful, and motivated people (all necessary), but you want to be there with good people. Who wants to get stuck in space with grifters or people only looking out for themselves?

I’ve had the good fortune of knowing Toby for 17 years from our time at Tesla, have worked closely with Ben as an advisor to Lightship for the last 5, and have worked with many of the amazing people at Lightship - Hayley, Troy, Rob, Rory, Nick, Andrew, and more - at various points over the course of my career. These are rockstars in their respective domains AND at their core, fantastic human beings.

Second, I continue to be drawn to companies that exist at this intersection of new technology and incredible product design, taking on a legacy industry with incumbents that have been slow to adopt. The prospect of building physical goods in these markets is often too much for many to stomach, but I’ve seen firsthand the massive opportunity to be the underdog and succeed, whether that’s in transportation, energy, consumer electronics, or housing. The RV industry is a similar opportunity in my eyes, begging from someone to do the hard work of making a great product in a sea of beige boxes on wheels.

Finally, this specific phase when engineering is complete and you’re working to scale to meet the proven demand is the crucible for most hardware businesses. Whether it was taking Tesla from 22 Roadsters to $1B+ run-rate with the Model S, Nest from tens of millions to nearly $1B in revenue, or other similar experiences, I’ve lived this movie first hand multiple times. I’m hopeful that my experience in finance, operations, and go-to-market execution will help guide this amazing team to similar success stories.

With this amazing team and massive opportunity, I'm grateful to join Lightship on the open road ahead!