What are the key takeaways from this Equity episode?

Key insights include: **Physical World Opportunity Scale:** 80% of global GDP exists in the physical world, yet venture capital has concentrated on a small software subset. Physical world companies can generate larger economic impact and returns, as demonstrated by generational companies built around tangible products versus purely digital services.; **Founder Profile Requirements:** Building physical world companies requires founders who balance hyper-optimism with realism about capital needs and timelines. Unlike software where recent graduates can build unicorns, hardware founders need experience navigating multiple product cycles to understand supply chain, manufacturing, regulatory, and logistics challenges that create valleys of death.; **Vertical Integration Strategy:** Modern hardware startups should selectively vertically integrate only where differentiation exists. With mature EV supply chains now available, companies can avoid the capital-intensive full vertical integration that Tesla and Rivian required. Building every component at subscale makes products economically unviable and extends timelines unnecessarily.

What did Jiten Behl discuss on Equity?

Jiten Behl, Eclipse Ventures partner and former Rivian Chief Growth Officer, explains why the next generation of unicorns will emerge from physical world companies rather than software. He covers how shortened product cycles, AI-enabled automation, and deglobalization are creating venture-scale opportunities in manufacturing, mobility, and industrial sectors. Key topics include: **Physical World Opportunity Scale:** 80% of global GDP exists in the physical world, yet venture capital has concentrated on a small software subset. Physical world companies can generate larger economic impact and returns, as demonstrated by generational companies built around tangible products versus purely digital services.; **Founder Profile Requirements:** Building physical world companies requires founders who balance hyper-optimism with realism about capital needs and timelines. Unlike software where recent graduates can build unicorns, hardware founders need experience navigating multiple product cycles to understand supply chain, manufacturing, regulatory, and logistics challenges that create valleys of death..

How long is this episode of Equity?

This episode is 30 minutes long. SignalCast provides an AI-generated summary so you can get the key insights in about 3 minutes.

Equity

Eclipse's Jiten Behl thinks the next unicorns won't be built in software

December 17, 2025

30 min episode · 2 min read

Jiten Behl

Episode

30 min

Read time

2 min

Topics

Relationships, Investing, Startups

AI-Generated Summary

Published Feb 4, 2026

Key Takeaways

✓Physical World Opportunity Scale: 80% of global GDP exists in the physical world, yet venture capital has concentrated on a small software subset. Physical world companies can generate larger economic impact and returns, as demonstrated by generational companies built around tangible products versus purely digital services.
✓Founder Profile Requirements: Building physical world companies requires founders who balance hyper-optimism with realism about capital needs and timelines. Unlike software where recent graduates can build unicorns, hardware founders need experience navigating multiple product cycles to understand supply chain, manufacturing, regulatory, and logistics challenges that create valleys of death.
✓Vertical Integration Strategy: Modern hardware startups should selectively vertically integrate only where differentiation exists. With mature EV supply chains now available, companies can avoid the capital-intensive full vertical integration that Tesla and Rivian required. Building every component at subscale makes products economically unviable and extends timelines unnecessarily.
✓Automation Economics Thesis: US reindustrialization over the next 15-20 years requires replacing human labor with AI-powered automation to compete without Chinese labor costs and subsidies. Companies must aggressively deploy intelligent machines with human-level dexterity at fractional cost. This requires massive investments in compute infrastructure and energy transformation to enable scaled automation.
✓Product Development Acceleration: Technology tools and simulation capabilities now shorten hardware development cycles significantly. Tesla took nine to ten years to launch three vehicle platforms. Rivian launched truck, SUV, and van in six years. Current startups can move faster with better simulation, testing, and quality control tools, reducing capital requirements and risk profiles.

What It Covers

Jiten Behl, Eclipse Ventures partner and former Rivian Chief Growth Officer, explains why the next generation of unicorns will emerge from physical world companies rather than software. He covers how shortened product cycles, AI-enabled automation, and deglobalization are creating venture-scale opportunities in manufacturing, mobility, and industrial sectors.

Key Questions Answered

•Physical World Opportunity Scale: 80% of global GDP exists in the physical world, yet venture capital has concentrated on a small software subset. Physical world companies can generate larger economic impact and returns, as demonstrated by generational companies built around tangible products versus purely digital services.
•Founder Profile Requirements: Building physical world companies requires founders who balance hyper-optimism with realism about capital needs and timelines. Unlike software where recent graduates can build unicorns, hardware founders need experience navigating multiple product cycles to understand supply chain, manufacturing, regulatory, and logistics challenges that create valleys of death.
•Vertical Integration Strategy: Modern hardware startups should selectively vertically integrate only where differentiation exists. With mature EV supply chains now available, companies can avoid the capital-intensive full vertical integration that Tesla and Rivian required. Building every component at subscale makes products economically unviable and extends timelines unnecessarily.
•Automation Economics Thesis: US reindustrialization over the next 15-20 years requires replacing human labor with AI-powered automation to compete without Chinese labor costs and subsidies. Companies must aggressively deploy intelligent machines with human-level dexterity at fractional cost. This requires massive investments in compute infrastructure and energy transformation to enable scaled automation.
•Product Development Acceleration: Technology tools and simulation capabilities now shorten hardware development cycles significantly. Tesla took nine to ten years to launch three vehicle platforms. Rivian launched truck, SUV, and van in six years. Current startups can move faster with better simulation, testing, and quality control tools, reducing capital requirements and risk profiles.

Notable Moment

Behl predicts that looking back 200-300 years from now, historians will view current industrialization as a brief blip where humans manufactured goods before machines took over completely. He suggests the next generations will pursue passions rather than necessary work, as automation solves basic needs like food, water, and clean air scarcity.

Know someone who'd find this useful?

Episode Transcript

Hello, and welcome back to equity, TechCrunch's podcast about the business of startups. I'm Kirsten Korosak, transportation editor here at TechCrunch. And this is the episode where we bring on industry experts to help us explore a trend in the tech world and dive deep. Today, we are joined by Jatin Beal, partner at Eclipse Ventures. Jatin's been on both sides of the table. First, scaling a hard tech unicorn from the inside as an early employee and the chief growth officer at Rivian, and now deploying capital into the next generation of industrial and mobility startups over at Eclipse. So he has views on where the opportunities are in this interesting moment for EVs, manufacturing, automation, dare I say, even AI. Jatin, welcome to the show. Thank you, Kirsten. It's nice to be here. So I saw you. What was it? It feels like forever ago, but it was, I think, only about six weeks ago at the also event, which is one of the companies that Eclipse has recently backed. Also, for those who don't know, is the micro mobility startup and spin out from Rivian. And I would love for you to give us a little bit of insight into how that whole deal came together, because obviously, you have a connection to Rivian. But I'm assuming that that doesn't necessarily mean you're gonna invest in everything that Rivian does. So how did that deal come together? That's a great question. I was at Rivian from the very early days, joined the company in 2015 when a few of us could fit in a conference room. We had, no technology, no product, no suppliers, no manufacturing facility, and also no team. So it was really a clean sheet back in 2015, but we were very convicted that there is this massive wave of electrification that was ahead of us, and the consumers will need a lot more choices for that wave of, I would say, innovation to take over. At that point, Tesla was just starting out, but it was clear that the consumers were responding positively to the design, to the technology, to just the innovation in the product that hadn't seen innovation for decades. Fast forward to, you know, 2021 when we launched our first set of products, the truck, the SUV, and the van. One of the realizations that we had in the management team was that when you're trying to build a car company, there are so many variables that you have to balance. There are some variables that are, I would say, more deterministic. Hey. How do you design the product, the technology? How do you build a plant? How do you onboard suppliers? But then there are also a lot of, I would say, more obscure things. Like, how do you develop a brand? How do you make sure that this brand resonates with the end consumer? Why would they choose Vivian? Like, what about Vivian needs to speak to them? …

Get the full transcript (4,960 words) + summary by email — free

One-time email with the complete transcript and AI summary of this episode. No account needed.

One email, no spam. We’ll also show you what SignalCast does.

Browse all Equity transcripts →