But on a chance visit that year to meet with RJ Scaringe and the team, something clicked. What I saw wasn’t just ambition. It was a unique blend of dedication, ingenuity, and a relentless drive to solve hard problems in new ways. It spoke directly to what moves me most as a designer: the pursuit of insight, research, and the dedication to look beyond what’s been done before.
That process, that constant push to challenge assumptions and chart new paths, is what allowed me to grow with Rivian over the years. What I didn’t know back then was how that legacy would set the stage for the next chapter.
In the summer of 2024, I was asked to come back to Rivian as they looked to launch a new company. A few of you may have heard by now that Rivian recently spun out a micro mobility company called Also. But what most people don’t know is where that name came from.
When I rejoined in the fall of 2024, one of the first problems we needed to solve was how to tell this new company’s story and give it a name. And if you’ve ever named anything, a child, a startup, a service, you know how daunting that can be. There’s no shortage of possibilities, but copyright, trademark, and the desire for meaning make it a heavy lift. That’s why the tech world is full of invented, often nonsensical names.
We went through thousands of options. Most of them were bad. A few were decent. But for me, the real challenge wasn’t just finding a name that sounded good. It was finding one that had weight, that stood for something real. Not a random word pulled from a hat.
So I started digging through old photos, half-forgotten conversations, scribbled notes, memories from my earliest days at Rivian. What kept rising to the top wasn’t some clever detail. It was a mindset. A way of working. A culture.
What drew me in a decade ago wasn’t just a product or a pitch. It was the shared instinct to challenge the status quo, to go left when everyone else was going right. That spirit, that drive to solve the unsolved, that’s what stood out then and still does now.
That spirit is Also.
- Larry Parker - Executive Creative Director, Design and Innovation leadership. Employee #15 @Rivian
Source: Also. LinkedIn