StoreDot’s Mission-Driven Culture: Building Teams for Long-Term Innovation
Not everyone can handle a decade-long journey to achieve the “impossible.” In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, StoreDot founder Doron Myersdorf shared how their mission to transform EV charging helps attract and retain exceptional talent through extended R&D cycles.
The Mission-First Approach
For StoreDot’s 130-person team spread across labs in Israel, California, China, and Sweden, the mission transcends traditional career incentives. “If you’ll go and ask one by one why they are at stored and not in some other company, is because they feel that they can make an impact on the planet, on global warming, on the environment,” Doron reveals.
This is particularly true for younger team members: “Especially the younger generation – it’s much more important for them than salary or a big vehicle or the prestige or whatever. They just want to make an impact.”
Embracing the Long Haul
Building revolutionary technology requires exceptional persistence. “It’s not for everybody,” Doron acknowledges. “Over the years, I’ve seen people come and go, even though the scientists, the key scientists are here, but people come and go because they cannot cope with this long haul of taking such a groundbreaking technology to market.”
Leading Through Skepticism
The team faces constant skepticism from industry experts. “Many, I want to say, 100 professors that came to visit us with the VCs that wanted to invest here, or university experts and so forth, that came, they all told me, ‘Duran, you’re wasting this 200 million, this can never happen,'” Doron recalls.
This external skepticism makes internal leadership crucial. “There’s one person who is the CEO that has to maintain this vision and has to believe in it and has to pull everybody to be aligned with this one goal to achieve this extreme fast charging.”
Clear Goals, Clear Progress
StoreDot maintains momentum by setting clear, measurable goals. “The product that we are shipping now, we call it 100 in five, that’s 100 miles for each five minutes of charging,” Doron explains. These concrete metrics help the team see their progress and impact.
Building Trust Through Demonstration
The team’s confidence is reinforced by demonstrable results. “For us it’s relatively easy because the proof is in the pudding and the pudding is the battery,” Doron shares. “If you can deliver a battery that has a data sheet as a specification and you can demonstrate at the customer site that everything that you said in this data sheet is actually validated on their premises, then basically this is where the trust is being built.”
Lessons for Deep Tech Leaders
StoreDot’s approach to building mission-driven teams offers valuable insights:
- Center your culture around measurable impact
- Be transparent about the long-term nature of the work
- Use clear metrics to demonstrate progress
- Build team confidence through external validation
- Maintain unwavering belief in the mission
The Future Vision
The team’s shared mission extends beyond current achievements. As Doron describes their ultimate goal: “When they go and buy the vehicle or they are interested in a new electric vehicle, being a Tesla or any of the other brands, they come and ask ‘is StoreDot inside, can I charge in minutes?’ And if people will ask that we did our job.”
For deep tech founders building teams for long-term innovation, StoreDot’s experience shows that while competitive compensation matters, a genuine opportunity to make meaningful impact can be an even more powerful motivator for attracting and retaining exceptional talent.