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There's no way Elon will take it public unless he absolutely has to. He said this about Tesla earlier this year: "I wish we could be private with Tesla. It act

There's no way Elon will take it public unless he absolutely has to. He said this about Tesla earlier this year: "I wish we could be private with Tesla. It actually makes us less efficient to be a public company." - https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/elon-musk-inventors-plans-for-outer-space-cars-finding-love-w511747 https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/elon-musk-inve... The stock market news cycle is a constant barrage of criticism every quarter: commentary on whether they made some random analyst's projections, investors asking the same inane questions over and over... How many times has he given the "there's no point in giving you delivery estimates for specific months because the ramp will be exponential and small factors can change individual months by an order of magnitude" speech? I've heard him say that at least 10 times, and yet investors keep asking the same dumb questions every earnings call. Which isn't really that huge of a time sink, but then people go and make a big deal out of that stuff in the press, "Model 3 production was supposed to be 5,000 by year end, and it's looking more like 500... Tesla suffers 90% crash in production rate! It's all over folks!" Even though Musk described this scenario two years ago, and said it was accounted for in their planning. Now imagine he's trying to get to Mars and every 3 months he has to go in front of investors who are asking, "So, your orbital launch rate for this quarter seems to be 50% lower than projections, would you say that's more due to your incompetence or is it more that your business model is fundamentally flawed?" He's not optimizing for quarterly revenue. He's not optimizing for revenue at all, he's optimizing to make something fundamentally new and valuable happen, and he's calculating that the value will come, although it's never clear what year. But a segment of public investors seem unable to accept that story.

deepGem 9y ago
Unlike Tesla, Spacex is not a threat to any other publicly traded company AFAIK. So the barrage of negativity will be minimal. For every incompetent investor who comes on board, you'll have a great investor who'll trust you. This is the case in Tesla too. I mean, the odds that most of your investors will be incompetent is fairly low. It's not that much of a time sink, if you are running just one public company. Running two is a miracle. Jack Dorsey is doing it, so I wouldn't put it past Elon. All said and done, given a choice, Musk will keep Spacex private forever.
- Ntrails 9y ago
  > For every incompetent investor who comes on board, you'll have a great investor who'll trust you. Incompetence is blind trust. A good investor actually cares about the performance of the companies in which they invest - and that includes its ability to realistically project and meet those projections. A CEO who promises the moon on a stick and delivers little is not doing his job well. I am a fan of Elon, but you can't take a whole heap of money and then complain that people are interested. As people have said, you can avoid this obligation to your shareholders by not having any.
  - deepGem 9y ago
    A CEO who promises the moon on a stick and delivers little is not doing his job well But Elon is not promising the moon. He is very clear when he states his goals, that these goals are very ambitious goals and that the probability of meeting them is fairly low.
Shivetya 9y ago
well that and they don't have to have a 10 K report which can reveal more about the true state of a company that they wish to be public. in other words, you can go and stand before crowds all day and make glowing promises and reports but up against the SEC and investors you best damn have your ducks in a row. there is a lot of additional reporting for publicly traded companies and that is a good thing.
Cthulhu_ 9y ago
It must really sting; a company emits stocks back in the day for idk, $10 apiece and run with that, then for the rest of the company's existence they look at those same stocks and see them become worth $100, $1000, etc - the main people making money off of stocks are stock traders, not the company it was intended to fund.

deepGem 9y ago

Unlike Tesla, Spacex is not a threat to any other publicly traded company AFAIK. So the barrage of negativity will be minimal. For every incompetent investor who comes on board, you'll have a great investor who'll trust you. This is the case in Tesla too. I mean, the odds that most of your investors will be incompetent is fairly low. It's not that much of a time sink, if you are running just one public company. Running two is a miracle. Jack Dorsey is doing it, so I wouldn't put it past Elon. All said and done, given a choice, Musk will keep Spacex private forever.

Ntrails 9y ago
> For every incompetent investor who comes on board, you'll have a great investor who'll trust you. Incompetence is blind trust. A good investor actually cares about the performance of the companies in which they invest - and that includes its ability to realistically project and meet those projections. A CEO who promises the moon on a stick and delivers little is not doing his job well. I am a fan of Elon, but you can't take a whole heap of money and then complain that people are interested. As people have said, you can avoid this obligation to your shareholders by not having any.
- deepGem 9y ago
  A CEO who promises the moon on a stick and delivers little is not doing his job well But Elon is not promising the moon. He is very clear when he states his goals, that these goals are very ambitious goals and that the probability of meeting them is fairly low.

Shivetya 9y ago

well that and they don't have to have a 10 K report which can reveal more about the true state of a company that they wish to be public. in other words, you can go and stand before crowds all day and make glowing promises and reports but up against the SEC and investors you best damn have your ducks in a row. there is a lot of additional reporting for publicly traded companies and that is a good thing.

Cthulhu_ 9y ago

It must really sting; a company emits stocks back in the day for idk, $10 apiece and run with that, then for the rest of the company's existence they look at those same stocks and see them become worth $100, $1000, etc - the main people making money off of stocks are stock traders, not the company it was intended to fund.