The Idea: In 2007, Mate Rimac was a 19-year-old Croatian student who had just blown up the engine of his beat-up 1984 BMW E30 during an amateur drift race. With no money to replace it, he made a decision that would seem absurd at the time: instead of fixing the combustion engine, he'd rip it out entirely and build his own electric powertrain from scratch. People called it "a washing machine on a racetrack." He spent the next year tinkering in his parents' garage in Samobor, Croatia - a country with no automotive industry, no startup ecosystem, and a GDP roughly a quarter the size of Volkswagen's annual revenue. By 2011, the converted BMW (nicknamed the "Green Monster") was beating combustion engines on the track and breaking five Guinness World Records for the fastest electric vehicle. This was the beginning of Rimac Automobili.
The Execution:
- 2009: Mate officially founded Rimac Automobili in Sveta Nedelja, Croatia, after a member of the Abu Dhabi royal family saw his racing BMW, asked to buy two cars, and ended up offering to invest in his fledgling company instead.
- 2011: With a 6-person team, Rimac unveiled the Concept_One at the Frankfurt Motor Show - 1,224 hp, 0-60 in 2.5 seconds, the world's first electric supercar. Only 8 were ever built.
- 2018: The company unveiled the Nevera at Geneva with 1,914 hp and a 0-60 of 1.85 seconds, making it the fastest accelerating production car ever built - electric or otherwise.
- 2019: Hyundai and Kia jointly invested €80M, validating Rimac's tech as a supplier to the broader auto industry. Porsche, who had taken a stake in 2018, increased its position to 24%.
- 2021: At 33, Mate was named CEO of Bugatti Rimac, a joint venture with VW Group's Porsche. The garage tinkerer had just been handed the keys to a 110-year-old hypercar legacy.
- 2022: Rimac Group closed a €500M Series D led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2 and Goldman Sachs.
- 2025: Mate's net worth crossed €1.74 billion, making him the second-richest person in Croatia. The company now employs 2,000+ people across three businesses (Bugatti Rimac, Rimac Technology, and P3Mobility, an autonomous robotaxi venture).
The lesson? You don't need Silicon Valley. You don't need a Stanford CS degree. You don't need rich parents or a Y Combinator network. Mate Rimac built one of the most valuable EV companies in the world from a country with no auto industry, starting with a teenager's hobby project and a refusal to accept that things had to be done a certain way. The garage is still where the best companies start.