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For sure. Given that Musk was fired from [deleted, see note 1] and PayPal, you'd think they might have had more questions. But people look at failure much more

For sure. Given that Musk was fired from [deleted, see note 1] and PayPal, you'd think they might have had more questions. But people look at failure much more carefully than they look at success. I think the next wave of interesting questions is around the extent to which Musk contributed the apparent successes, SpaceX and Tesla. We won't know for a long time, as a lot of the people in the know have a strong incentive to keep quiet. But one possible explanation is that he is good at PR and using hype to raise money, but is not a competent manager without help. Consider, for example, this bit from someone who says they were a SpaceX intern: https://www.tumblr.com/numberonecatwinner/701567544684855296/elon-wyd https://www.tumblr.com/numberonecatwinner/701567544684855296... I asked a former SpaceX person about that and was told it seemed right, that SpaceX worked because everybody believed in the mission and worked hard at managing Elon so that they could get the actual work done. [1] I incorrectly thought he was fired by the board from Zip2, but they just refused to make him CEO. Thanks to dontknowwhyihn for the correction: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34042958 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34042958

kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
SpaceX worked because they hired experienced people from ULA and other launch services companies who weren't held back by the fear of risk taking that is endemic in the MIC. They wouldn't have succeed if they just tried to play rocket engineer like Carmack did.
insanitybit 4y ago
Musk is a celebrity. Celebrities start successful companies all the time. Is Rihanna a brilliant business woman for starting a successful beauty line? Is she a business genius, which is what Musk gets labeled so often? Maybe she really is, but I don't see her get that label, I think her value add is very clearly "she is famous, people will buy shit that she puts her name on". What they have in common is that they have fame and money, and it turns out you can do a lot with that.
- bluedino 4y ago
  Is her beauty line worth more than (top three classic beauty supply companies)?
  - insanitybit 4y ago
    Can you just make your point?
  - pavlov 4y ago
    Rihanna’s underwear company Savage X Fenty was estimated to be worth $3 billion earlier this year, which is roughly the same as the market cap of Victoria’s Secret. Probably that estimate would be lower now, given the market downturn. But clearly she’s well on her way to building up a competitor to the established brands.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - Kranar 4y ago
      Don't see any evidence that it's worth 3 billion dollars. All I see is a quote from Rihanna herself saying she thinks her company can raise that much by the time they IPO. Forbes estimates the value of her company at 1 billion on the high end. And while it's true that VSCO's current market cap is 3 billion, at the time that Rihanna made her comment VSCO's market cap was 5-6 billion. It has dropped significantly in recent months.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - labster 4y ago
    Does her beauty line rival that of the gods? Because I don’t want another Trojan War starting.
  - onion2k 4y ago
    Yes. That's what market cap means. I can understand you might disagree with the valuation, but that doesn't change it. Also, don't forget that Rihanna has something the top three beauty supply companies don't have - a growing brand. That has a massive impact on market cap.
littlestymaar 4y ago
No later than Friday, I was discussing with an acquaintance working for Tesla who compared Musk's leadership here to Trump at the white house: there is an entire team responsible for doing internal damage control after Musk announcements on Twitter. It's a lot of work, and sometimes the entire company just need to cope with the boss's whims (“ok next year there's going to be the Cybertruck thing [which he basically compared to the “not a flamethrower”] but fortunately for 2024 we're working on real cars”).
adolph 4y ago
In the bigger picture, Elon in SF twittering around while Gwynne runs Boca Chica may be a good thing.
BryantD 4y ago
To be absolutely fair… do you have a reference for Zip2? I was at AltaVista for the acquisition and while I wasn’t close enough to it to be sure, I know he walked away with a bunch of money.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
dontknowwhyihn 4y ago
I worked at Zip2, and am pretty sure Elon was not fired.
- wpietri 4y ago
  Thanks for the correction! That's my mistake. I remembered it as the board firing him from CEO, as happened at PayPal, but according to Wikipedia, at Zip2 the board only refused to make him CEO.
  - richbell 4y ago
    IIRC some pieces frame Sorkin joining as Elon being "demoted" to CTO; after ousting Sorkin, he tried to become CEO but, as you said, the board shot him down.
abdabab 4y ago
Where did you find that Elon was fired from Zip2 and PayPal?
- wpietri 4y ago
  As I mentioned elsewhere, I was wrong about Zip2; the board just refused to let him become CEO. But at PayPal, the board fired him after 6 months as CEO. That's documented in many places, including here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk#X.com_and_PayPal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk#X.com_and_PayPal
chiefalchemist 4y ago
Musk is a victim of his own success. Even if he isn't solely responsible for the success of Tesla and Space X in his mind enough of it is him. The problem here is overconfidence / blind spots. Twitter is a different type of business. Musk looks to be doing a Mike Jordan or a Shaq. Basketball isn't baseball, nor is it rapping. Both of them recovered from those bad decisions. Will Musk? Time will tell.
- wpietri 4y ago
  Yeah, there's a phenomenon called "Acquired Situational Narcissism", where if somebody spends enough time in an environment that's all about them, they start thinking it's all about them. There's some evidence Musk was like this all along, but it is a lot harder to learn humility when you're doing well.
bryanlarsen 4y ago
All we can really compare Musk to is to Bezos. Bezos basically destroyed Blue Origin in 2017 after they blew up a test stand. This is the sort of thing that happens when you're developing rockets. You just have to accept it and move on. It'll cost you millions and many months, but if you want to develop rockets... After the test stand incident Bezos fired the CEO, brought in an incompetent one and brought in a "no mistakes" type of culture that doesn't get anything done. In contrast, check out the Tom Mueller interview about Elon Musk and "face shut off". This feature is one of the top reasons why the SpaceX Merlin rocket engine is such a great engine. Mueller thought it would be very hard to get it to work in a large engine and he was right. They blew up hundreds of engines and a bunch of test stands. But Musk was supportive the whole time. That's a big deal, and what you want from a CEO during development. But "better than Bezos running a rocket company" is a pretty low bar to hurdle. Tory Bruno at ULA and Peter Beck at Rocket Lab from the outside appear to be outstanding CEO's. But they've been starved for resources for different reasons. What could they have done with the resources that Musk & Bezos brought to their companies? Rocket Lab in particular is one of the companies that could challenge SpaceX's dominance.
- inglor_cz 4y ago
  "Bezos basically destroyed Blue Origin in 2017" This sort-of implies that BO was functional prior to that incident. BO was founded in 2000. By 2017, they had existed for 17 years without reaching the orbit. (Which SpaceX managed in 6 years, Astra managed in 17 years, RocketLab in 12 years). It seems to me that BO is just continuing to be an expensive failure, which, unlike all the other failed space startups, keeps dragging itself on, because it can rely on basically unlimited funding.
  - bryanlarsen 4y ago
    For the first part of its existence Blue Origin was basically a think tank. For a while its only employee was a science fiction author. Neal Stephenson is great, but he's not a rocket designer. As a think tank it was highly successful -- they successfully identified VTVL reusability as the future of space independently from SpaceX and similarly chose methalox. By 2017 Blue Origin was basically about a decade old as a "real" company. And progress was reasonable. New Shepherd was real and successful and looked like it could launch humans at any time. New Glenn was ambitious and BE-4 looked close. Expecting them to reach orbit as quickly as SpaceX or Rocket Lab is unfair since SpaceX & Rocket Lab had an orbital rocket as their first product, and Blue Origin didn't. It's unfair to compare everybody to SpaceX -- their success is exceptional. Pre-2017 Blue Origin wasn't as functional as SpaceX but I wouldn't call them dysfunctional. Post-2017 Blue Origin is dysfunctional. This is all based on heresay, so take from it what you will.
pardon_me 4y ago
Musk is a fraudster. Someone must compile a timeline of his claims. Just the content that pops up from Thunderf00t on Youtube calling it out is enough for investigations. The only way I see investors going along with it is embarassment, riding the tide and not knowing when it will change. SoftBank style. It's changing now, economic corrections, just a time he's leveraged more than a sane person would value his companies at. lol Then there's China. Tesla's 25% yearly revenue after being the first US company to launch without being 50% hand-in-hand with a local business. He agreed to teach the locals his methods, and they now sell straight-up copies at half the price. lol I'm sorry but this whole thing is one big joke.

kevin_thibedeau 4y ago

SpaceX worked because they hired experienced people from ULA and other launch services companies who weren't held back by the fear of risk taking that is endemic in the MIC. They wouldn't have succeed if they just tried to play rocket engineer like Carmack did.

insanitybit 4y ago

Musk is a celebrity. Celebrities start successful companies all the time. Is Rihanna a brilliant business woman for starting a successful beauty line? Is she a business genius, which is what Musk gets labeled so often? Maybe she really is, but I don't see her get that label, I think her value add is very clearly "she is famous, people will buy shit that she puts her name on". What they have in common is that they have fame and money, and it turns out you can do a lot with that.

bluedino 4y ago
Is her beauty line worth more than (top three classic beauty supply companies)?
- insanitybit 4y ago
  Can you just make your point?
- pavlov 4y ago
  Rihanna’s underwear company Savage X Fenty was estimated to be worth $3 billion earlier this year, which is roughly the same as the market cap of Victoria’s Secret. Probably that estimate would be lower now, given the market downturn. But clearly she’s well on her way to building up a competitor to the established brands.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - Kranar 4y ago
    Don't see any evidence that it's worth 3 billion dollars. All I see is a quote from Rihanna herself saying she thinks her company can raise that much by the time they IPO. Forbes estimates the value of her company at 1 billion on the high end. And while it's true that VSCO's current market cap is 3 billion, at the time that Rihanna made her comment VSCO's market cap was 5-6 billion. It has dropped significantly in recent months.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- labster 4y ago
  Does her beauty line rival that of the gods? Because I don’t want another Trojan War starting.
- onion2k 4y ago
  Yes. That's what market cap means. I can understand you might disagree with the valuation, but that doesn't change it. Also, don't forget that Rihanna has something the top three beauty supply companies don't have - a growing brand. That has a massive impact on market cap.

littlestymaar 4y ago

No later than Friday, I was discussing with an acquaintance working for Tesla who compared Musk's leadership here to Trump at the white house: there is an entire team responsible for doing internal damage control after Musk announcements on Twitter. It's a lot of work, and sometimes the entire company just need to cope with the boss's whims (“ok next year there's going to be the Cybertruck thing [which he basically compared to the “not a flamethrower”] but fortunately for 2024 we're working on real cars”).

adolph 4y ago

In the bigger picture, Elon in SF twittering around while Gwynne runs Boca Chica may be a good thing.

BryantD 4y ago

To be absolutely fair… do you have a reference for Zip2? I was at AltaVista for the acquisition and while I wasn’t close enough to it to be sure, I know he walked away with a bunch of money.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

dontknowwhyihn 4y ago

I worked at Zip2, and am pretty sure Elon was not fired.

wpietri 4y ago
Thanks for the correction! That's my mistake. I remembered it as the board firing him from CEO, as happened at PayPal, but according to Wikipedia, at Zip2 the board only refused to make him CEO.
- richbell 4y ago
  IIRC some pieces frame Sorkin joining as Elon being "demoted" to CTO; after ousting Sorkin, he tried to become CEO but, as you said, the board shot him down.

abdabab 4y ago

Where did you find that Elon was fired from Zip2 and PayPal?

wpietri 4y ago
As I mentioned elsewhere, I was wrong about Zip2; the board just refused to let him become CEO. But at PayPal, the board fired him after 6 months as CEO. That's documented in many places, including here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk#X.com_and_PayPal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk#X.com_and_PayPal

chiefalchemist 4y ago

Musk is a victim of his own success. Even if he isn't solely responsible for the success of Tesla and Space X in his mind enough of it is him. The problem here is overconfidence / blind spots. Twitter is a different type of business. Musk looks to be doing a Mike Jordan or a Shaq. Basketball isn't baseball, nor is it rapping. Both of them recovered from those bad decisions. Will Musk? Time will tell.

wpietri 4y ago
Yeah, there's a phenomenon called "Acquired Situational Narcissism", where if somebody spends enough time in an environment that's all about them, they start thinking it's all about them. There's some evidence Musk was like this all along, but it is a lot harder to learn humility when you're doing well.

bryanlarsen 4y ago

All we can really compare Musk to is to Bezos. Bezos basically destroyed Blue Origin in 2017 after they blew up a test stand. This is the sort of thing that happens when you're developing rockets. You just have to accept it and move on. It'll cost you millions and many months, but if you want to develop rockets... After the test stand incident Bezos fired the CEO, brought in an incompetent one and brought in a "no mistakes" type of culture that doesn't get anything done. In contrast, check out the Tom Mueller interview about Elon Musk and "face shut off". This feature is one of the top reasons why the SpaceX Merlin rocket engine is such a great engine. Mueller thought it would be very hard to get it to work in a large engine and he was right. They blew up hundreds of engines and a bunch of test stands. But Musk was supportive the whole time. That's a big deal, and what you want from a CEO during development. But "better than Bezos running a rocket company" is a pretty low bar to hurdle. Tory Bruno at ULA and Peter Beck at Rocket Lab from the outside appear to be outstanding CEO's. But they've been starved for resources for different reasons. What could they have done with the resources that Musk & Bezos brought to their companies? Rocket Lab in particular is one of the companies that could challenge SpaceX's dominance.

inglor_cz 4y ago
"Bezos basically destroyed Blue Origin in 2017" This sort-of implies that BO was functional prior to that incident. BO was founded in 2000. By 2017, they had existed for 17 years without reaching the orbit. (Which SpaceX managed in 6 years, Astra managed in 17 years, RocketLab in 12 years). It seems to me that BO is just continuing to be an expensive failure, which, unlike all the other failed space startups, keeps dragging itself on, because it can rely on basically unlimited funding.
- bryanlarsen 4y ago
  For the first part of its existence Blue Origin was basically a think tank. For a while its only employee was a science fiction author. Neal Stephenson is great, but he's not a rocket designer. As a think tank it was highly successful -- they successfully identified VTVL reusability as the future of space independently from SpaceX and similarly chose methalox. By 2017 Blue Origin was basically about a decade old as a "real" company. And progress was reasonable. New Shepherd was real and successful and looked like it could launch humans at any time. New Glenn was ambitious and BE-4 looked close. Expecting them to reach orbit as quickly as SpaceX or Rocket Lab is unfair since SpaceX & Rocket Lab had an orbital rocket as their first product, and Blue Origin didn't. It's unfair to compare everybody to SpaceX -- their success is exceptional. Pre-2017 Blue Origin wasn't as functional as SpaceX but I wouldn't call them dysfunctional. Post-2017 Blue Origin is dysfunctional. This is all based on heresay, so take from it what you will.

pardon_me 4y ago

Musk is a fraudster. Someone must compile a timeline of his claims. Just the content that pops up from Thunderf00t on Youtube calling it out is enough for investigations. The only way I see investors going along with it is embarassment, riding the tide and not knowing when it will change. SoftBank style. It's changing now, economic corrections, just a time he's leveraged more than a sane person would value his companies at. lol Then there's China. Tesla's 25% yearly revenue after being the first US company to launch without being 50% hand-in-hand with a local business. He agreed to teach the locals his methods, and they now sell straight-up copies at half the price. lol I'm sorry but this whole thing is one big joke.