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I highly recommend reading "The Paypal Wars" - I think Musk learned a lot from his mistakes at Paypal, but I also think there are elements of his personality th

I highly recommend reading "The Paypal Wars" - I think Musk learned a lot from his mistakes at Paypal, but I also think there are elements of his personality that are still problematic for managing a going concern. Nonetheless, I personally like the guy and wish him the best, we need more like him.

dagoat 8y ago
> we need more like him. Not Musk bashing, I am genuinely curious as to why you think that?
- mgiannopoulos 8y ago
  Not many billionaires putting their money on space exploration and renewable energy? Sounds like a good reason.
  - sdinsn 8y ago
    Lots of billionaires are. They just tend to keep to themselves. Also, Bezos has Blue Origin.
    - eduah 8y ago
      Which one are landing orbital class rockets again? FYI, Blue Origin has been at it longer that spaceX has existed. But SpaceX, spending at least 5X less money is landing orbital class rockets and whilst Blue Origin is doing suborbital flights.
      - nopriorarrests 8y ago
        >SpaceX, spending at least 5X less money not to argue, but both Blue Origin and SpaceX are private and don't disclose ther financial information, to my best knowledge. So where is this number coming from?
        greglindahl 8y ago
        There was a study comparing NASA's development costs to SpaceX's, which SpaceX has commented on. BO has never reached orbit, and doesn't say much about how much they've spent, so no one knows what their costs will be.
        derekp7 8y ago
        For Blue Origin, they don't have any customers yet, so no income there. And it is public that Bezos just sold what, about a gigadollars worth of Amazon stock, presumably to dump into Blue Origin (which I think he's done about once a year?).
        sdinsn 8y ago
        > For Blue Origin, they don't have any customers yet, so no income there. You couldn't be more wrong. They've had payload customers for their test flights. They also have 4 large customers signed up for their New Glenn rocket (in development).
      - sdinsn 8y ago
        > Which one are landing orbital class rockets again? Blue Origin is also developing VTVL rockets. BO is expecting to have passenger flights by the end of 2018.
  - kitsunesoba 8y ago
    I think more precisely, plenty of billionaires put money into these things, but it’s too often to little effect due to lack of direction/clarity in the organizations the money is being poured into, too little money being put in, or both. What makes Musk (and Bezos) different is the laser focus and zero hesitation to commit huge amounts of cash to said goal. Where others would be happy to say, “oh well, maybe tomorrow” Musk is always asking, “why didn’t this happen today?” and acting on the answer for better outcomes in the future.
- nickik 8y ago
  He started 3 billion $ companies and was involved in basically creating another one. All of these companies are doing pretty good things at least compared to the alternatives. The space industry was terrible state and he disrupted it in many ways and is leading the charge on a new space industry totally chaining not just industry, but basically forcing change down governments throats including DoD, NASA and others. Much the same could be argued about the car industry. He simply thinks about problems differently. Listen to the interviews with the people that work with him, specially engineers.
  - masterjack 8y ago
    Which 3? He didn’t start PayPal and didn’t start Tesla.
Agustus 8y ago
Could you talk more about what makes him an appealing "guy?" His use of twitter would be a flag for most boards, so trying to see if there is some sort of Brittney Spears allure.
- 3pt14159 8y ago
  Because he thinks in first principles out loud and he has balls. The number of engineers that do the math on how something is possible but never do anything about it because they can't find the funding or risk their own is too damn high. Musk risks it all to achieve something great. I've my own reservations about him, but at the end of the day he's still trying to make a difference and he isn't letting stuffiness suck all the fun out of it. Look at everyone else that is rich. At best, they donate their money helping poor people around the world. At worst, they use their wealth to buy lobbyists and lawyers to minimize their taxes. Musk is doing something different. He's funding low-orbit satellites, rockets, electric cars, self-driving tech (and open sourcing the security side and patents to boot!), hyperloops, tunnels, solar panels, battery packs. I'm worried about some of it[1] but at least he's trying. It feels like everyone else in the world has this slow-moving kludge about them. [1] I think autonomous devices should be highly regulated due to the risks of mass weaponization via cyber attack, for example.
  - gamblor956 8y ago
    Musk has been risking other people's money for all of his endeavors...public investors for Tesla (and banks), and government money for SpaceX and SolarCity. Other billionaires are trying to make a difference in things that actually matter, like curing diseases or eliminating pollution. Hell, some of them are doing the same things that Elon is, but aren't so self-aggrandizing about it. And their are others that recognize that hyperloops are a solution in search of a problem, that the hard part of tunneling isn't the boring but the post-boring activities (i.e., tube construction), and that self-driving isn't something you can solve in 6 months.
    - nickik 8y ago
      > Musk has been risking other people's money for all of his endeavors...public investors for Tesla (and banks), and government money for SpaceX and SolarCity. Yes and all his companies are growing and have a good return on investment. The public loans have been payed back. There are so many companies who live of the government tit and rarely get called out because of it. > Other billionaires are trying to make a difference in things that actually matter, like curing diseases or eliminating pollution. Hell, some of them are doing the same things that Elon is, but aren't so self-aggrandizing about it. I agree that other people are doing good things also (the minority) but Elon is not really doing that. The reality is that society has aggrandized him. Every tweet of his causes a massive storm of tech blog entries, news articles, stock analysts and so on. Elon for the most part like to make stupid insider jokes do stuff without technology. Everything else seems to be a sort of secondary less interesting things.
iamcreasy 8y ago
I'll read "The Paypal Wars". But what do you think Musk learned from his mistakes at Paypal?

dagoat 8y ago

> we need more like him. Not Musk bashing, I am genuinely curious as to why you think that?

mgiannopoulos 8y ago
Not many billionaires putting their money on space exploration and renewable energy? Sounds like a good reason.
- sdinsn 8y ago
  Lots of billionaires are. They just tend to keep to themselves. Also, Bezos has Blue Origin.
  - eduah 8y ago
    Which one are landing orbital class rockets again? FYI, Blue Origin has been at it longer that spaceX has existed. But SpaceX, spending at least 5X less money is landing orbital class rockets and whilst Blue Origin is doing suborbital flights.
    - nopriorarrests 8y ago
      >SpaceX, spending at least 5X less money not to argue, but both Blue Origin and SpaceX are private and don't disclose ther financial information, to my best knowledge. So where is this number coming from?
      - greglindahl 8y ago
        There was a study comparing NASA's development costs to SpaceX's, which SpaceX has commented on. BO has never reached orbit, and doesn't say much about how much they've spent, so no one knows what their costs will be.
      - derekp7 8y ago
        For Blue Origin, they don't have any customers yet, so no income there. And it is public that Bezos just sold what, about a gigadollars worth of Amazon stock, presumably to dump into Blue Origin (which I think he's done about once a year?).
        sdinsn 8y ago
        > For Blue Origin, they don't have any customers yet, so no income there. You couldn't be more wrong. They've had payload customers for their test flights. They also have 4 large customers signed up for their New Glenn rocket (in development).
    - sdinsn 8y ago
      > Which one are landing orbital class rockets again? Blue Origin is also developing VTVL rockets. BO is expecting to have passenger flights by the end of 2018.
- kitsunesoba 8y ago
  I think more precisely, plenty of billionaires put money into these things, but it’s too often to little effect due to lack of direction/clarity in the organizations the money is being poured into, too little money being put in, or both. What makes Musk (and Bezos) different is the laser focus and zero hesitation to commit huge amounts of cash to said goal. Where others would be happy to say, “oh well, maybe tomorrow” Musk is always asking, “why didn’t this happen today?” and acting on the answer for better outcomes in the future.
nickik 8y ago
He started 3 billion $ companies and was involved in basically creating another one. All of these companies are doing pretty good things at least compared to the alternatives. The space industry was terrible state and he disrupted it in many ways and is leading the charge on a new space industry totally chaining not just industry, but basically forcing change down governments throats including DoD, NASA and others. Much the same could be argued about the car industry. He simply thinks about problems differently. Listen to the interviews with the people that work with him, specially engineers.
- masterjack 8y ago
  Which 3? He didn’t start PayPal and didn’t start Tesla.

Agustus 8y ago

Could you talk more about what makes him an appealing "guy?" His use of twitter would be a flag for most boards, so trying to see if there is some sort of Brittney Spears allure.

3pt14159 8y ago
Because he thinks in first principles out loud and he has balls. The number of engineers that do the math on how something is possible but never do anything about it because they can't find the funding or risk their own is too damn high. Musk risks it all to achieve something great. I've my own reservations about him, but at the end of the day he's still trying to make a difference and he isn't letting stuffiness suck all the fun out of it. Look at everyone else that is rich. At best, they donate their money helping poor people around the world. At worst, they use their wealth to buy lobbyists and lawyers to minimize their taxes. Musk is doing something different. He's funding low-orbit satellites, rockets, electric cars, self-driving tech (and open sourcing the security side and patents to boot!), hyperloops, tunnels, solar panels, battery packs. I'm worried about some of it[1] but at least he's trying. It feels like everyone else in the world has this slow-moving kludge about them. [1] I think autonomous devices should be highly regulated due to the risks of mass weaponization via cyber attack, for example.
- gamblor956 8y ago
  Musk has been risking other people's money for all of his endeavors...public investors for Tesla (and banks), and government money for SpaceX and SolarCity. Other billionaires are trying to make a difference in things that actually matter, like curing diseases or eliminating pollution. Hell, some of them are doing the same things that Elon is, but aren't so self-aggrandizing about it. And their are others that recognize that hyperloops are a solution in search of a problem, that the hard part of tunneling isn't the boring but the post-boring activities (i.e., tube construction), and that self-driving isn't something you can solve in 6 months.
  - nickik 8y ago
    > Musk has been risking other people's money for all of his endeavors...public investors for Tesla (and banks), and government money for SpaceX and SolarCity. Yes and all his companies are growing and have a good return on investment. The public loans have been payed back. There are so many companies who live of the government tit and rarely get called out because of it. > Other billionaires are trying to make a difference in things that actually matter, like curing diseases or eliminating pollution. Hell, some of them are doing the same things that Elon is, but aren't so self-aggrandizing about it. I agree that other people are doing good things also (the minority) but Elon is not really doing that. The reality is that society has aggrandized him. Every tweet of his causes a massive storm of tech blog entries, news articles, stock analysts and so on. Elon for the most part like to make stupid insider jokes do stuff without technology. Everything else seems to be a sort of secondary less interesting things.

iamcreasy 8y ago

I'll read "The Paypal Wars". But what do you think Musk learned from his mistakes at Paypal?