Genesis wants to move like a startup. Hyundai gives it the muscle to scale like an auto giant.

Ted Mengiste, chief operating officer of Genesis Motor North America, said the luxury brand operates like a startup within Hyundai, a nearly 80-year-old company. David Dee Delgado/Reuters Genesis began as a Hyundai luxury model before becoming a stand-alone brand in 2015. It now sells sedans, SUVs, and EVs, and notched 5 straight years of record global sales. Genesis North America's COO said the brand has a "startup mindset" that helps it pivot quickly. Genesis is, by now, a nearly 20-year-old name. When Ted Mengiste joined the Hyundai brand five years ago as an executive director of sales operations, he described the internal workings of Genesis as "ground floor." His team was about 37 people, Mengiste told Business Insider, and along the way, he had to build the processes, go-to-market strategies, and the reports they'd use to measure how the business was doing.