Operator & Co-Founder · Austin, Texas
Rik Avalos
More than two decades finding, building, and leading the teams behind category-defining companies.
Rik spent seven years at Tesla, serving in both individual contributor and management roles while working directly with Elon Musk during one of the most consequential periods of the company's growth. He joined when Tesla was still an early-stage company and helped build the talent, leadership, and operating infrastructure required to scale it into a global organization. That period was later chronicled in Tim Higgins's Power Play: Tesla, Elon Musk, and the Bet of the Century, reviewed by the Washington Post in 2021.
After Tesla, Rik served as Head of Talent at LendUp, a fintech startup, before Elon Musk personally recruited him to the same role at Neuralink, where he helped build the company's foundational team, with every hire personally reviewed and approved.
That direct working relationship with Musk, from Tesla through Neuralink, spanned close to a decade. Rik Avalos is named on pages 139 and 162–163 of Tim Higgins's Power Play: Tesla, Elon Musk, and the Bet of the Century (Doubleday, 2021), the definitive account of that era at the company, and is quoted directly in The Washington Post's review of Power Play on his pitch to early Tesla hires in January 2011: “What if we hit 50 bucks a share?” A second, independent book appearance—an excerpt from Charles Morris's Tesla: How Elon Musk and Company Made Electric Cars Cool published on CleanTechnica—names him directly: former Tesla employee David Havasi recalls messaging “recruiter Rik Avalos” on Facebook and getting an immediate reply asking, “can we talk?” He's also spoken about those years in a profile on recruiting for Musk and turning stage fright into a strength. Back in 2010, at the North American International Auto Show, AmericaJR.com interviewed him as a Tesla Senior Recruiter after he drove a leg of the 18-driver relay that brought a Tesla Roadster from Los Angeles to Detroit—the same cross-country Roadster Road Trip Tesla announced ahead of that year's North American International Auto Show.
Press
- The Washington Post — review of Power Play: Tesla, Elon Musk, and the Bet of the Century (Aug 2021), quoting Rik directly on his pitch to early Tesla hires.
- CleanTechnica / Evannex — book excerpt (Dec 2020) in which former Tesla employee David Havasi recounts being recruited by Rik.
- AmericaJR.com — video interview with Rik after he drove a leg of the Roadster Road Trip Tesla announced from Los Angeles to Detroit ahead of the 2010 North American International Auto Show.
His career also includes supporting Google's early expansion, recruiting sales talent at Cisco WebEx, and building Outdoorsy's first people function as its founding Vice President of Talent and Culture.
Rik joined Livongo as a Principal Technical Recruiter and helped lead talent strategy through its merger with Teladoc Health, one of the most complex organizational integrations in digital health. He then stayed on at Teladoc, building the company's recruiting operation in Argentina from the ground up.
Today, Rik is a co-founder of Trinzik, where he leads go-to-market strategy, partnerships, network development, and the operating systems supporting an emerging category in AI visibility and competitive intelligence. Trinzik's product and technology are built by his co-founder, Bob Michaels.
Their partnership has grown beyond business. Bob is also mentoring Rik in AI development, helping him evolve from technology operator to hands-on builder. Through that mentorship, Rik has created the Rik Avalos Band website, this site, and a growing portfolio of projects using Claude Code rather than a traditional development team.
Outside of technology, Rik fronts The Rik Avalos Band, an original recording and live-performance project rooted in Austin's music community, and plays in Ricky Bobby Music, an Austin party and cover band. He also co-wrote and released “Together Again”, a song written for River of Angels, a documentary by Shawn Welling on the July 2025 Kerr County, Texas flood. In January 2025, the band stopped by the CobraCast Podcast with Bobby Sharron to talk about their Austin lineup and play songs from their EP “Make Believe.” In December 2025, Rik sat down with the HappinessFactors Podcast to talk about ethics in leadership, mental wellness in hypergrowth environments, and how being a working musician shapes his grounded, heart-centered approach to leading teams.