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What you describe is more like Blue Origin, where Bezos can just comfortably pump in a billion each year to build up his rocket company. Paypal sold for 1.5B [
by the_duke 6y ago
What you describe is more like Blue Origin, where Bezos can just comfortably pump in a billion each year to build up his rocket company.
Paypal sold for 1.5B [1], and Musk just got 165 million.
That's not a lot of money for building a space company, especially while buying into and growing Tesla at the same time.
Musk risked and almost lost everything, with both SpaceX and Tesla coming close to bankruptcy at the same time.
The SpaceX approach of ignoring conventions, building components in house on the cheap, plus Musks drive/vision and capability to attract young and motivated (relatively cheap) employees probably made the difference there. As well as ultimately attracting Nasa funding to develop a commercially viable rocket.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PayPal#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PayPal#History
- alexpotato 6y agoAfter reading a biography on Musk I basically came to the conclusion that his life has been a series of 1 in 1000 bets that have paid off: - Paypal - Tesla - SpaceX etc Multiple times in the book it describes how he gambled it all on whatever project he was working on and it paid off for him. He is clearly brilliant and exceptional at hiring great people work for him. I think it's also important to realize that survivor bias is also at play here.
- stephencanon 6y ago> I think it's also important to realize that survivor bias is also at play here. Yup. The odds of winning three 1-in-1000 bets is 1:1e9, so we should expect to have a couple Elon Musks in the world out of dumb luck. =)
- liamcardenas 6y agoAssuming everyone took the bets