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I'm always surprised when we get insight into Musk's plan, not because they're complicated but because they always come across as "no duh, why aren't we already
by bane 10y ago
I'm always surprised when we get insight into Musk's plan, not because they're complicated but because they always come across as "no duh, why aren't we already doing these things? weren't we already on track to do these things decades ago?"
As much as the Internet transformed society, I also can't help but feel like we were on the track to have achieved these things and got distracted by our global communications and selfie-cat picture delivery network and are only now starting to come to our senses as the ubiquity has occurred and the ecosystem of necessary applications has become fleshed out, matured and developed a commercial angle.
If you look at his pre-hardware days, he built basically a e-phonebook when paper phonebooks were still all the rage and a couple payment companies. Both no-duh companies in hindsight.
Musk's plans feel like he's taking a derailed train, applying some common sense grease (solar panels on electric cars? MADNESS! Reusable rocket stages instead of throwing away the entire ship? ~~CRAZY!~~) and getting our civilization going again.
He's also really really public about his plans and telegraphs his moves years in advance...and yet very few seem able to execute anywhere near his league.
I sometimes feel if things had shaken out differently and Steve Jobs was younger than Musk and was running a successful Apple, Musk might try to recruit him with a "do you want to sell cat picture delivery boxes for the rest of your life, or do you want to come with me and change the world?"
I don't know if Musk is going to succeed in the long run, and I hope serious competition finally shows up (because that makes each of his industries healthier), but seriously,
it's about fucking time.
- clintonb 10y agoTesla and SpaceX required a lot of startup capital (relative to most other technology startups). Yes, their ideas are simple, but few people have the capital to implement those ideas. Additionally, the existing players in the rocket market didn't have much incentive to innovate given how few players there were. Your guess is as good as mine on why the automobile industry didn't continue much EV research after the 90s.
- pm90 10y agoIts the same reason why Kodak invented the first digital camera and didn't put it in the market. We see the same pattern over and over again and if you work at any of these huge corporations, you understand that the main duty of the executives is to protect their profit centers at all costs. Any product that is capable of cannibalizing on the profit centers will face a tough road to success and at the worst, get culled early. Then a startup comes along, reinvents or polishes that product and is very successful. Eventually it turns into a BigCo. And the cycle repeats.
- qaq 10y agoThe main duty of executives is to increase shareholder value, but their personal incentives are generally misaligned so they abuse profit centers and undermine company future to hit short term numbers and get the bonuses.
- pfranz 10y agoI think it's similar to companies needing a different kind of CEO to bootstrap a company than is needed to scale up and streamline one. It's also very difficult to know which area and how much to risk on something new when you already have a successful product.
- tdy721 10y agoTesla and SpaceX are specifically "Hard" technology... Most tech startups are Soft(ware). See: Uber SpaceX market share (Tesla too for that matter) will NEVER have a "hockey stick" growth chart... The tech is too hard
- arscan 10y agoIs he putting (or planning on putting) solar panels on cars as you mentioned? I think the "solar-roof-with-battery product" he was referring to was solar city + powerwall on a house.