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> How about merely building a business? More people need to be told this. The combination of work ethic, of risk tolerance, and of perseverance against ridicu
by cbozeman 6y ago
> How about merely building a business?
More people need to be told this.
The combination of work ethic, of risk tolerance, and of perseverance against ridiculous odds that is required to build a Tesla, or an Apple, or a Whatever, is extraordinarily rare
- coliveira 6y agoTesla was built by a billionaire. There was little to no risk involved.
- cbozeman 6y agoMusk had about $140 million when he ~started~ bought (sorry) Tesla. That's a pretty far cry from a billion. On top of that, there was no guarantee that electric cars would ever be embraced, especially by Americans, who traditionally, love ICE muscle cars.
- coldtea 6y ago>On top of that, there was no guarantee that electric cars would ever be embraced, especially by Americans, who traditionally, love ICE muscle cars. Generous subsidies for electrics in the US and other countries helped with that. Like generous government money funnelled through NASA contracts helped Space X repeat what NASA did in the late 60s/early 70s, slightly improved, 40 years later...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- coryrc 6y agoYes, I remember when NASA was launching reusable rockets as regular supply missions and weren't using 5% GDP, and did such a great job they didn't end up giving $400MM/year to Russia to hitch rides on the Soyuz for the last decade.
- coldtea 6y agoThat would be the "slightly improved" part, "50 years later". And NASA hasn't used "5% GDP" for 40 years. It has been less than 1% since 1973. Actually scratch that, it has been less than 1% the federal budget, which is much much less than the GDP. Of course all that 50-years of IP got handed to the "private visionaries" of SpaceX for free, or rather, along with money paid to them...
- CraigJPerry 6y agoIf it was that low risk and easy for Musk, why didn't NASA just do it themselves? Or why not some other person? There seems to be quite a lot of space x competitors not doing as well as space x.
- blaser-waffle 6y agoWhere is the will in the federal government? If we handed 20% of the War On Terror budget to NASA would it make Americans more safe? Or feel more safe? (an important distinction since the TSA is mostly dog and pony shows). Standard Fed'Gov contract hustle -- provide a service for less than what they're currently playing and leach off that gob'mnt teat.
- samatman 6y agoYeah, just look at all the other profitable companies in the space which did it too! Can't turn around without bumping into an electric car / reusable rocket company these days.
- bigbubba 6y ago140 million is a lot closer to a billion (7x) than most people are to 140 million (>140x.)
- symlinkk 6y agoOnce you get past a few million dollars, the extra money is just bargaining power and losing it doesn’t affect your day to day quality of life
- sergefaguet 6y agoLol you clearly are mistaken about how human emotions and happiness works
- coldtea 6y agoHowever it works, it's still true to "losing it doesn’t affect your day to day quality of life". Butthurt emotions is not the same as lower quality of life (e.g. less access to food, entertainment, travel, housing, health, studies, taking care of kids/relatives, etc).
- brighterthanyou 6y agoSo, I take it you actually 'have' a few million dollars (like me) and are speaking from experience? There's a saying - the bigger you are the harder you fall. Multi millionaires can easily leverage themselves into massive failures. It's the norm, not the outlier. But, of course, you people who talk out your ass would know all about it. What a joke.
- wincy 6y agoAdditionally, during the 2008 financial collapse Elon Musk took the last of his personal fortune and put it back into Tesla. The company very likely would have folded if he hadn’t put up his own money, and Elon Musk would have no longer been worth very much at all.
- just-juan-post 6y agoTesla was built by someone else and was purchased by a young man who grew up rich and insisted that as part of the transaction that his title be founder.
- seibelj 6y agoThis whole comment thread is hilarious. “Oh tesla, no big deal, anyone could have made it including me if I just had the same capital.” You guys are living in outer space!
- YZF 6y agoWell, it's an intersection of having the right venture, the right person, with the right leverage, at the right time. Elon Musk is perhaps close to unique in that intersection. Are there other people who could do it but were not in the right place in the right time or didn't have the right leverage (money, connections, etc.)? Lots. If you took away those parameters, if Elon was just an engineer working for Boeing with just enough money to go on vacation every year, then he probably wouldn't have founded Tesla. He'd be some middle manager somewhere like lots of other smart/capable people.
- throwawaysea 6y agoGrew up rich? I don't think that's accurate. I know a lot of Musk-hating articles have been played up, particularly on socialist Twitter circles, alleging that Musk inherited family wealth from an emerald mine. But this is simply not true. The emerald mine story is dubious and vague, and it's only real mention is from Ashlee Vance's book on Musk, and her source is Elon's father. Elon and his mother fled an allegedly abusive relationship with the father, and had nothing in terms of wealth. It's why Elon had to work odd jobs after moving (https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/03/odd-jobs-elon-musk-had-when-he-was-younger.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/03/odd-jobs-elon-musk-had-when-...).
- icapulet2 6y agoElon later got thousands of dollars from his dad to start Zip2 so it's not like he ran away without a safety net. He did what so many other trust fund babies have done: He slummed. Stop contributing to the Horatio Algers narrative that Musk spins, among hundreds of other yarns,
- brighterthanyou 6y agoIf you'd actually read, perhaps his biography, rather than just blowing smoke out your ass, you might know that he actually almost went bankrupt numerous times getting Tesla up and running. He wasn't a billionaire at the time. 'No risk involved' - wtf? Have you ever actually started a business? What a moron.
- coldtea 6y agoI'd say the combo of "work ethic, risk tolerance, and perseverance against ridiculous odds" involved in Tesla/Apple/etc, is orders of magnitude more commonly found than actual Tesla/Apple/etc level success...
- goatinaboat 6y agoI'd say the combo of "work ethic, risk tolerance, and perseverance against ridiculous odds" involved in Tesla/Apple/etc, is orders of magnitude more commonly found than actual Tesla/Apple/etc level success... Agreed. For every tech millionaire there are a thousand guys who are just as smart and worked just as hard and it didn’t work out for whatever reason. Maybe their timing was off by a mere 6 months for example. There’s a lot of survivorship bias in what is in large part a lottery.
- zimpenfish 6y ago> Maybe their timing was off by a mere 6 months for example. First job I had (1995) was "Classified Ads on the Internet" - back then it was expensive to host a website and hugely expensive to add CGI (I think Demon wanted maybe £300 a month for that?) and the money ran out after a year. If they'd been able to keep it funded for, say, another 2-3 years, until home internet was more accessible, I think they'd have been in a pretty good position to own UK classifieds on the web (at least for a while.)
- rjyoungling 6y agoWebvan vs. Instacart. So many dead startups that are brought back because they were just too soon.
- alasdair_ 6y ago> So many dead startups that are brought back because they were just too soon. I recently had a recruiter from color.com reach out to me...
- andrepd 6y agoYou forgot two factors: capital (which excludes the vast majority of people om earth), and an enormous amount of luck.
- closeparen 6y agoIt's pretty easy for a technology business to get capital these days.
- wwweston 6y agoI'm all ears.
- closeparen 6y agoCheck the footer of the website you’re on right now? The whole thing is content marketing for an offering of capital.
- coldtea 6y agoAh, the "pretty easy" part is "convince some VCs"?
- pjc50 6y agoBut how much capital do you need to get in front of YC in the first place? It's a genuine question. Who's the poorest YC founder? Least family wealth, least angel/seed investment. Who genuinely managed to get YC funding without putting in any money of their own?