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Still can't be compared to Bezos, Gates, Brin&Page, Benioff, Ellison etc. They are done. They founded the thing, grew it, nurtured it and now they left and the
by GDC7 5y ago
Still can't be compared to Bezos, Gates, Brin&Page, Benioff, Ellison etc.
They are done. They founded the thing, grew it, nurtured it and now they left and the respective companies are still dominating.
Musk can't leave because his companies depend on him being there and pulling this sort of things.
People call him a con-man because he never really delivered anything financially sustainable before moving onto the next shiny thing.
It's not like he's media shy and needs to operate under the Tesla umbrella , like Page&Brin or Buffett need the Google/Berkshire umbrella respectively.
If you go by the fundamentals of the automotive market Tesla should be the American answer to Porsche or Ferrari, only totally electric. An honest 50B dollar car company.
All the extra is speculation (both technical and financial/marketcap-wise) and although speculating is fair game, it's not intellectually fair to list those things under Musk accomplishments , that is because they just aren't accomplished yet, they are POC at best and the judge is still out on whether they are even valid POC.
The paper wealth and the market cap can go as fast as it came for Tesla and Musk, and then all the people who are adoring him will start doubting and second guessing his decisons.
Nobody is second guessing Bill Gates deciding to go fully GUI with Windows 95, or Bezos opting to invest heavily in the cloud anymore. It's now clear as the sky that those were brilliant decisions.
- elurg 5y agoMajor chunks of Tesla and SpaceX are already profitable businesses selling competitive products. They don't need hype to be profitable. The fact that they're still investing in future products doesn't seem like much of a criticism.
- fsloth 5y agoWe weren't discussing who is the greatest industrialist of all time, just establishing Mr. Musk is not a con-man. Quite different topics I think...
- GDC7 5y ago> Mr. Musk is not a con-man True. But we also need to come up with a term to describe somebody who seeks personal monetary reward and social relevance before delivering actual and established corporate financial results. Musk has been able to negotiate his hefty paycheck because investors are blinded by the huge increase in market cap and they see themselves getting richer by the day , which they are (on paper) but Musk takes home cold hard cash via salary. All that before said increase in market cap is definitive and crystalised. Such term doesn't exist, hence people adopt "con-man". Can't blame them as it's the closest word to describe such behavior...an other term would be "one-man-show" What you said : "unreliable predictor of future outcomes" is very apt to describe Ray Kurzwell, but fails to include how Musk seeks monetary and social rewards which he pockets even if he gets it wrong. Ray never tried that.