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I don't think he had any talent, he just got lucky and companies insulated themselves from him. With Twitter we're seeing what happens when companies don't insu

by xena 3y ago

I don't think he had any talent, he just got lucky and companies insulated themselves from him. With Twitter we're seeing what happens when companies don't insulate themselves from him.

coldtea 3y ago
>he just got lucky Several times? Oscar Wilde wrote: “To lose one parent, Mr Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.” Something of the kind, with an opposite sign, could be said for repeated business success. And in this case it's more than 2 times, and not just some small successess either. Isn't it more like "He's idiosyncratic and often erratic and/or has political views I don't like" that people translate to an absurd "he has no business talent"?
- presbyterian 3y ago
  It’s easy to get lucky several times when you have a rich family that keeps you from truly failing
  - lordnacho 3y ago
    Basically the "no-life-risk" thesis. I don't think it's entirely crazy either, Elon was going to be comfortable whatever he did, and some people in that position will roll the dice several times, and some of those guys will win several times. Still takes some skill, I don't doubt that. But the main ingredient is risk.
  - coldtea 3y ago
    And yet I don't any great percentage of people from a "rich family" making multi-billion dollar companies. I'm also pretty sure with his first company sale he made much more money than his family ever had to begin with.
    - SketchySeaBeast 3y ago
      > And yet I don't any great percentage of people from a "rich family" making multi-billion dollar companies. Because of the rarity of multi-billion dollar companies it makes more sense to flip the question - what are the demographics of those who found those companies? If the odds of doing something are 1:100 who is going to have better odds at succeeding - the person who gets 1 throw or 10 throws? Neither are guaranteed to succeed, but they both have a chance and one is much more likely than the other. That's what's at play here.
      - zeroonetwothree 3y ago
        There’s a lot more non-rich people though. So even at 1 throw each you’d expect them to be most of the successes under this theory. Of course there’s also hereditary factors at play that people like to ignore.
        SketchySeaBeast 3y ago
        > There’s a lot more non-rich people though. So even at 1 throw each you’d expect them to be most of the successes under this theory. Well, this is why we have to look at the numbers. And it depends on the odds. If it's one in a billion and the rich get ten million throws and the poor get 1 each then the fact there are a lot of non-rich people isn't as impactful. > Of course there’s also hereditary factors at play that people like to ignore. Yes, like having cash to throw around and a safety net to rely on so that those shots can be taken as well as easier access to potentially important connections and resources.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
    - kergonath 3y ago
      He is an outlier, nobody is disputing that. Regardless of the odds to end up a multi-billionaire from a wealthy background, the odds of doing that from the working class are much lower. It does not mean that it never happens, I am sure there are examples. > I'm also pretty sure with his first company sale he made much more money than his family ever had to begin with. Well yeah. But he got there partly because he had some money to invest in the first place, and partly because he had useful connexions.
  - inglor_cz 3y ago
    "It’s easy to get lucky several times when you have a rich family that keeps you from truly failing" This hypothesis is somewhat testable statistically. There are approximately 25 thousand people worth 100 million dollars+ in the world, with more than a third of that number residing in the US. [0] I think we can safely say that people worth 100 million and more are rich. If it is easy to get lucky several times with a rich family, you would expect some nontrivial share of Musk equivalents among them or their kids. Say, two hundred? Not observed. Either the willingness to risk own money in engineering startups is < 1 per cent among those, or it is not that easy. [0] https://www.thenationalnews.com/business/money/2022/10/18/us-has-highest-number-of-super-wealthy-worth-100m-or-more/ https://www.thenationalnews.com/business/money/2022/10/18/us...
    - ethbr0 3y ago
      > Either the willingness to risk own money in engineering startups is < 1 per cent among those Maybe? The thing about having a rich family is... you're already rich. That removes one of the prime motivations to take serious risks, of the sort that paid off for Musk; namely, to become rich. I'm sure you get a lot of people who invest, or toss some money into this or that. But I'd be surprised if a significant number invested their entire net worth and time into a single endeavor.
      - inglor_cz 3y ago
        "But I'd be surprised if a significant number invested their entire net worth and time into a single endeavor." AFAIK Musk was a relative nobody in the millionaire world when he poured a majority of his wealth into SpaceX (2002). They were very close to bankruptcy during the Falcon 1 experiments and if the fourth launch failed, they would have joined a fairly extensive graveyard of defunct space startups, together with Carmack's Armadillo Aerospace and a few hundred others.
        ethbr0 3y ago
        By that point, he'd already been CEO of PayPal for a bit (after co-founding X.com that merged into the company that became PayPal) and made $175M for his stake when eBay bought it. Then $100M went to found SpaceX. But that does seem like a very large bet that millionaires don't often make.
- 3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
  If we can refine the "he got lucky" statement I'd say it's this: He's a talented motivational speaker, he can inspire as a leader, he can paint a vivid future of great accomplishments , not in the least bolstered by his extreme confidence of expertise and knowledge (often not actualized). Everything he talks about is at least about the entire planet, sometimes multiple planets, and with xAI even for understanding the entire Universe, and this helps him attract two key resources: - Capital. - Talent. And then when he puts talent and capital together... yes he got lucky couple of times. But he's always been a terrible manager and this is visible not just with Twitter.
  - oneeyedpigeon 3y ago
    > He's a talented motivational speaker He IS? In what contexts? Because every time I see him speak, it's painful. His delivery is so stilted/awkward, that I think he's one of the worst speakers I've ever seen.
    - 3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
      He's no Steve Jobs, but sometimes when you don't say something people fill-in context themselves. For example when he makes a long dramatic pause, so he seems deeply contemplative. Or when he stops himself midway through a sentence and corrects himself, he seems earnest. We're ready to forgive a lot if we suspect behind the awkwardness hides a genius. The trope of the distracted professor, the autistic savant is at least centuries old. He leans into every such trope, and he's very careful in cultivating an image of a "founder", of an "inventor" of an "engineer". Most people by now know he hasn't founded Tesla, or PayPal (was fired from it in fact), he hasn't engineered the SpaceX rockets (although he had a hand in those that blew up), and he in fact has no engineering degree despite claiming otherwise. So I'd say all this means he's building this image very intentionally, and he's trying to turn his weaknesses into strengths. The more he stutters and repeats, the less we notice how much of what he says is kinda... vapid. Trump has some similar patterns by the way, you can ask him a specific question and he'll say he has great ways of answering that, some of the best people told him he has the best answers, his history of a businessman speaks about long experience providing great answers to all kinds of questions... and he won't answer your question in the end. Trump and Musk are very different in some ways, but very similar in others.
- SamoyedFurFluff 3y ago
  Yes I think he got lucky multiple times, because his failures are also quite significant. Remember hyperloop? Remember he got kicked out of PayPal? Remember boring company? Remember solar city? If anything it just shows he has enough money that it’s okay when some of his extremely ambitious projects fail. A less wealthy person couldn’t even attempt any of what he does much less fail as often and as publicly as he has. Elizabeth Holmes went to prison, for example.
  - coldtea 3y ago
    >Remember hyperloop? Remember he got kicked out of PayPal? Remember boring company? Remember solar city? One could say similar things for other well succesful businessmen: Remember NeXT? Remember he got kicked out of Apple? Remember the G4 Cube? Remember MobileMe? Remember Ping?
    - alexb_ 3y ago
      Hey, you're finally understanding that Steve Jobs was a hack!
      - marcosdumay 3y ago
        Not quite. He was very good on gathering a specific kind of people and organizing them to an specific kind of work. He got that very reliably. When that kind of work aligned with success, he was successful.
      - CamperBob2 3y ago
        Just like that Alexander the Great guy. Way overrated. He didn't kill that many Persians at all, it turns out. Just sat there on a horse barking orders.
    - NicuCalcea 3y ago
      You're right, other businesspeople get lucky too.
    - giantrobot 3y ago
- esotericimpl 3y ago
  [dead]
- BobbyJo 3y ago
  One would expect the richest Man in the world to also be the luckiest. The latter is simply not possible without the former. I do think he's also pretty smart, and very hardworking, but let's not pretend that lucky isn't 99.9% what it takes to be the richest man in the world. There is a ton of people out there that are just as smart, and just as hardworking, and none of them have 1/1000th Musk's wealth.
- maxbond 3y ago
  There are 8 billion people in the world. With such a large population, we expect some people to just be stupidly lucky many times in a row, right? Especially since they aren't really independent events - if you get a lucky break, it keeps you in the game longer, making your second break more likely. And it would make sense that the lucky outliers would be some of the wealthiest, right?
  - coldtea 3y ago
    >With such a large population, we expect some people to just be stupidly lucky many times in a row, right? No, that's not how business work. This is not coin-tossing, the "being lucky" includes attracting VCs and investments, building a good image, picking a good niche, delivering, getting buyers, and several other things besides. You can get lucky with one of those, but not all of those, and several independent times. Else skill doesn't mean anything, and you could make the same argument for any human venture.
    - maxbond 3y ago
      Try thinking about it like a scientist or a statistician rather than a business person. Which is to say, don't think in terms of inviolable rules - that's useful for engineering the system, but can sabotage your ability to understand the system - and think instead in terms of what is possible and at what rate you expect it to happen. Then try multiplying that by 8 billion. > Else skill doesn't mean anything Skill matters, it just isn't the only factor. > You could make the same argument for any human venture. Luck profoundly effects every aspect of our lives, yeah. Think about, say, professional gamers. Are they skilled? Doubtless. May the winner of a match be decided by the RNG? Definitely. If we're talking about a tournament of the best players, they're going to be pretty evenly matched, and it becomes pretty likely that luck will determine the winner.
      - coldtea 3y ago
        >Which is to say, don't think in terms of inviolable rules - that's useful for engineering the system, but can sabotage your ability to understand the system - and think instead in terms of what is possible and at what rate you expect it to happen. Then try multiplying that by 8 billion Notice that the above have nothing to with statistics. It's just handwaving based on the "with 8 billion people trying, anything is possible". >Think about, say, professional gamers. Are they skilled? Doubtless. May the winner of a match be decided by the RNG? Definitely. If we're talking about a tournament of the best players, they're going to be pretty evenly matched, and it becomes pretty likely that luck will determine the winner. That has already shifted the goalposts, to "luck among the best players" as opposed to "he just got lucky".
- pavlov 3y ago
  > "Several times?" With enough people in the world, someone will eventually get lucky in several improbable ways and may look like a genius thanks to survivorship bias. I'm not saying Musk is that, but maybe his primary talent is risk-taking and fundraising rather than product innovation.
- kaba0 3y ago
  He is a talented.. scammer, who is good at hyping up shit on which his people may or may not be able to deliver. It’s not exactly rocket science to employ smart people.
  - A4ET8a8uTh0 3y ago
    << It’s not exactly rocket science to employ smart people. Oh, but it is based on how hard it is for corporate America to even accept such a notion without going for 'egghead' in their internal vocabulary. I think I disagree.
  - inglor_cz 3y ago
    "It’s not exactly rocket science to employ smart people." To employ, no, but to get a stream of important innovations out of them, that might actually be harder than rocket science. The vast majority of smart people around the world are stuck in mediocre jobs. Hotspots of technical productivity like Bell Labs or SpaceX or NASA of the 1960s are pretty rare and rarely last for more than approximately a generation. How to get smart people to be actually scientifically productive is a major question of history. An example: 100 years ago, several very important innovators like von Neumann were Hungarians; nowadays, Hungary is a scientific backwater. (With the exception of Katalin Karikó, the mRNA lady.)
  - ameister14 3y ago
    >It’s not exactly rocket science to employ smart people. This is a ridiculous statement if you've ever run a company. "Just hire smart people and your company will be successful!" Great, glad you cracked the code.
    - kaba0 3y ago
      You can also employ a hiring manager who will hire smart people for you? He is definitely not operating on startup money, he can do that as well.
      - coldtea 3y ago
        If only all those companies who got bankrupt knew this wise advice! HN is trully a trove of business wisdom!
- onion2k 3y ago
  Several times? I don't know if Musk's success is down to luck or not, but to answer your implied question of "Do you really think it could be luck to succeed on several different occasions?" the answer is yes. To suggest otherwise would be falling for the old "it's been heads 9 times in a row, it must be tails next" gambler's fallacy. Someone could succeed in building billion dollar companies largely on luck many of times in a row. It's very unlikely, but it's not impossible, at least as far as any company's success is down to the luck of the founders.
  - coldtea 3y ago
    >To suggest otherwise would be falling for the old "it's been heads 9 times in a row, it must be tails next" gambler's fallacy I don't think you understand how this fallacy (and logic ) works. This is only a fallacy because the coin toss events are trivially expected (and assumed) to be independent chance events in the first place. Business success are not supposed to be independent like that, unless you take for granted what you're supposed to prove. And to do that, you'd have to ignore some pretty big factors different to coin tosses, like the continuity of an agent making business decisions, their promotional and organizational skills, their connections, their reputation with VCs and the press, past performance as part of their image, their experience, and several other factors besides, which makes repeated business successes nothing like independent coin tosses.
    - onion2k 3y ago
      I don't think you understand how this fallacy (and logic ) works. I don't think you understand how similes work. There's no way to really know what extent luck is involved when a business succeeds, but it's probably not zero. It's entirely reasonable to suggest Musk has been lucky many times over. That doesn't mean he'll be lucky again, nor does it mean the lucky events he's had so far have been trivial. Believing that Musk will (or won't if you're not a fan) be lucky again in his next business because things will fall in Musk's favor again is the gambler's fallacy - the belief that past events influence future events. No doubt the things Musk can influence will go his way, but there will be things outside of his control that he might not be so lucky with. Even big, important things. Nothing about the gambler's fallacy says anything about how trivial or otherwise the lucky events are.
- troupo 3y ago
  > he just got lucky > > Several times? Yes. @notacoward had a perfect comment about this a few years back: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15659076 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15659076
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    That really is a perfect comment.
  - coldtea 3y ago
    There were tons of 100x richer kids who didn't manage to throw succesfully any such darts, much less do so on highly competitive, highly unrelated domains...
    - kergonath 3y ago
      That is not how statistics work. We are talking about odds, not certainties. If people from the working class are 10 times less likely to end up CEOs of multi-billion corporations (which does sound very generous), you’d still expect to see one every so often.
      - coldtea 3y ago
        Which is neither here, nor there. The argument was that Musk was just a lucky incompetent person, not that he was skilled but "only" among a "limited" ten million plus people in the US alone starting at the same wealth levels... Or you still mean the first, that those say, 10 million Americans at similar wealth starting points had the chance to throw their darts, and Musk just happened by chance to hit bullseye on a major company sale/exit/buildup 4 or more times in a row, including turning out the richest man in the world by mere lucky darting?
        troupo 3y ago
        > The argument was that Musk was just a lucky incompetent person That wasn't the argument. The argument was about luck, not competence > Or you still mean the first, that those say, 10 million Americans at similar wealth You're assuming all those wealthy Americans decided to throw darts, or threw the same amount of darts. They did not. If you follow his successes, you can see a repeated cycle: "invested millions or billions of his own money, kept the company afloat for years". You don't get to do that on competence alone. All of his companies were on the verge of bankrupcy at one point. And lookey lookey, on "competence alone" NASA awards SpaceX a 1.6 billion dollar contract after a single successful launch (after three failed attempts). As an aside, "Griffin later estimated that SpaceX was around 85% funded by the federal government, mostly through his NASA awards, with the remaining 15% funding split between Elon Musk and other private investors". Same for Tesla. It existed for 7 years before it delivered its first car. And even by then it was at least 70 million of Musk's own money. And then a huge infusion of government money. SolarCity. Failed, and bought with Tesla's money. Neuralink. No idea if it's a failure yet, exists due to Musk's money. BoringCompany. A non-entity that existed only because of Musk's money, and then due to unlimited investor money (what the US mistakes for "innovation"). It really exists only due to anti-public-transportation lobbying. And so on. He exemplifies the quote I posted.
- shreyshnaccount 3y ago
  (Read: investors chasing the next big thing (after seeing the tech boom) give money to a person smart enough to know that to get the money all he has to do is promise the next big thing from the next tech boom) (and later use the money to hire smart people who sometimes actually do build a big thing)
- JustFinishedBSG 3y ago
  > Several times? Yes ? Not only there is no reason for it not to be the case ( it's not like rolling 6 two times in a row is impossible... ) but anyway once you've achieved your first success it's easier to buy the next ones.
- delfinom 3y ago
  >Several times? People that are wealthy very very very very often, fail upwards.
- rvba 3y ago
  Statistically shouldnt someone get lucky 2 or 3 times? Say there are million people with 1 million to invest. Then 1/100 chance to get lucky. Do it 3 times (1/100)^3? Maybe the general idea was nor bad and he got lucky in recruitment? Recruiting young people believing in his idea and getting overworked to reach them?
  - kergonath 3y ago
    > Then 1/100 chance to get lucky. Do it 3 times (1/100)^3? It’s easier to do when you can be bailed out by friends and family after the first failure, compared to people who end up sleeping on the street. Considering that even succeeding once is a rare event, it is not that surprising that the final population is heavily skewed. > Maybe the general idea was nor bad and he got lucky in recruitment? Recruiting young people believing in his idea and getting overworked to reach them? There is certainly a bit of that. And to be fair, it is the best strategy: a single human has only so much bandwidth them handling all the aspects of a large-ish company is a recipe for disaster. Not to mention, a single point of failure, so the company’s dead the moment anything happens to them. It’s been the same with Jobs, one of his talents was to hire the right people.
- lucideer 3y ago
  > Several times? Yes. Capital tends to make it easier on each iteration.
ly3xqhl8g9 3y ago
Not lucky, subsidized [1]. [1] Company with $15 million revenue in 2008 gets $465 million "loan" in 2009, https://techcrunch.com/2009/06/23/the-government-comes-through-for-tesla-with-a-465-million-loan-for-its-electric-sedan https://techcrunch.com/2009/06/23/the-government-comes-throu... https://www.statista.com/statistics/272120/revenue-of-tesla https://www.statista.com/statistics/272120/revenue-of-tesla Of course, Ford got $5.9 billion bailout, because capitalism is the lie profiteers tell to the wage slaves as they privatize profits while socializing losses.
- ianai 3y ago
  I’m not seeing reputable sources reporting ford got bailouts. Nor do I see ford on this list. https://projects.propublica.org/bailout/list https://projects.propublica.org/bailout/list
  - ly3xqhl8g9 3y ago
    It's in the first paragraph of the linked article [1]. They were called "loans" in the government-speak of the post-2008 crash, but if you look at the semantics, they were just risk-free bailouts. [1] "the U.S. Secretary of Energy will be giving details about the first loans to come out of the government’s $25 billion program to help auto manufacturers. Ford got a $5.9 billion loan, but Tesla Motors, Silicon Valley’s electric car manufacturer, is receiving $465 million from the program"
    - dahdum 3y ago
      How is not a loan if they’ve been repaying it?
      - ly3xqhl8g9 3y ago
        Can I, just a random citizen, get a loan from the government for not even billions or hundreds of millions but let's say $100,000? I will of course repay "in due course, at the appropriate juncture, in the fullness of time" [1], at 0% interest. There is nothing loan-like in government "loans" (of 2008, or of 2021, see the PPP heist [2]) almost by definition: no interest, no shares changing hands, not even a share buyback restriction (how most of the government loans are spent anyway). [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKYEUXlYcSI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKYEUXlYcSI [2] "How Did PPP Scammers Steal $100+ Billion", https://www.aura.com/learn/ppp-loan-fraud https://www.aura.com/learn/ppp-loan-fraud
valval 3y ago
Nice hypothesis. I’ll remember you when I need to sell my Oceanside property in Arizona.
treeman79 3y ago
[flagged]
- kaba0 3y ago
  It’s no free speech, it’s just elon-style censorship. Somehow calling out his private jet trips is no longer free speech, right?
  - A4ET8a8uTh0 3y ago
    Sadly, yes. I am pretty out there on free speech and Elon is not messiah in this space. If anything, he may be one of those false prophets.
- mcphage 3y ago
  > when he allowed free speech Well, the fact that he said a whole bunch of things about free speech, and proceeded to walk all of them back in short order—while still claiming to be a staunch supporter of free speech—probably pissed off a lot of people.
- ethanbond 3y ago
  Wasn’t one of the first things he did to let Kanye back on the platform “for free speech” then immediately ban him again for posting a Swastika (which is clearly protected by free speech?) Seems to me like you’re just taking a known liar’s words at face value.
- oneeyedpigeon 3y ago
  He hasn't "allowed free speech", he's just been more forgiving of some free speech and less forgiving of others, for political reasons. Actually, very free people want absolute free speech on a social media platform because we don't want 4chan, we want a place we can talk to friends and family.
- aCoreyJ 3y ago
  Did he allow free speech or did he make different, and more opaque, decisions about who to ban while laying off anyone who handles appeals. Also being able to pay to make your speech more visible isn't what most people have in mind when they think of "free speech absolutism"
YetAnotherNick 3y ago
How can you be so sure that it was just luck? Why should anyone trust you above Carmack and Karpathy who are talented without any doubt and who have worked closely with him, who has nothing but high praise for him.
amelius 3y ago
> I don't think he had any talent He has a talent: self-promotion.
api 3y ago
Once can be luck. Succeeding multiple times at very hard things is not luck. People can't wrap their heads around the idea that someone can be simultaneously a genius and an idiot. In the real world this is very common. I like to put it this way: how many musicians do you like who are geniuses at composition, drums, guitar, vocals, or some other musical skill but are absolutely intolerable assholes and/or complete lunatics in the rest of their lives? Can you still enjoy their music? Does their music cease to be good when you learn about their personality flaws? IMHO much of Elon's success can be attributed to two things: (1) He is at least a good enough engineer or has good enough "engineers' intuition" to hire people who know what they are talking about and get them working on the right things. He seems much stronger in physical areas like rockets can cars though, not software. (2) He doesn't listen to pessimists and nihilists who say things are impossible if, when reasoning from first principles, they can be shown to be quite possible. Example: ignoring people who said you can't land a rocket or that an EV could never do well in the market. Ignoring pessimism can be a superpower. I do think Elon shows signs of chronic burnout at this point. The far-right / conspiranoid brain worm infection he's developed is IMHO a symptom. Opportunistic infections take hold when the immune system is weak.

by xena 3y ago

I don't think he had any talent, he just got lucky and companies insulated themselves from him. With Twitter we're seeing what happens when companies don't insulate themselves from him.

coldtea 3y ago

>he just got lucky Several times? Oscar Wilde wrote: “To lose one parent, Mr Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.” Something of the kind, with an opposite sign, could be said for repeated business success. And in this case it's more than 2 times, and not just some small successess either. Isn't it more like "He's idiosyncratic and often erratic and/or has political views I don't like" that people translate to an absurd "he has no business talent"?

presbyterian 3y ago
It’s easy to get lucky several times when you have a rich family that keeps you from truly failing
- lordnacho 3y ago
  Basically the "no-life-risk" thesis. I don't think it's entirely crazy either, Elon was going to be comfortable whatever he did, and some people in that position will roll the dice several times, and some of those guys will win several times. Still takes some skill, I don't doubt that. But the main ingredient is risk.
- coldtea 3y ago
  And yet I don't any great percentage of people from a "rich family" making multi-billion dollar companies. I'm also pretty sure with his first company sale he made much more money than his family ever had to begin with.
  - SketchySeaBeast 3y ago
    > And yet I don't any great percentage of people from a "rich family" making multi-billion dollar companies. Because of the rarity of multi-billion dollar companies it makes more sense to flip the question - what are the demographics of those who found those companies? If the odds of doing something are 1:100 who is going to have better odds at succeeding - the person who gets 1 throw or 10 throws? Neither are guaranteed to succeed, but they both have a chance and one is much more likely than the other. That's what's at play here.
    - zeroonetwothree 3y ago
      There’s a lot more non-rich people though. So even at 1 throw each you’d expect them to be most of the successes under this theory. Of course there’s also hereditary factors at play that people like to ignore.
      - SketchySeaBeast 3y ago
        > There’s a lot more non-rich people though. So even at 1 throw each you’d expect them to be most of the successes under this theory. Well, this is why we have to look at the numbers. And it depends on the odds. If it's one in a billion and the rich get ten million throws and the poor get 1 each then the fact there are a lot of non-rich people isn't as impactful. > Of course there’s also hereditary factors at play that people like to ignore. Yes, like having cash to throw around and a safety net to rely on so that those shots can be taken as well as easier access to potentially important connections and resources.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - kergonath 3y ago
    He is an outlier, nobody is disputing that. Regardless of the odds to end up a multi-billionaire from a wealthy background, the odds of doing that from the working class are much lower. It does not mean that it never happens, I am sure there are examples. > I'm also pretty sure with his first company sale he made much more money than his family ever had to begin with. Well yeah. But he got there partly because he had some money to invest in the first place, and partly because he had useful connexions.
- inglor_cz 3y ago
  "It’s easy to get lucky several times when you have a rich family that keeps you from truly failing" This hypothesis is somewhat testable statistically. There are approximately 25 thousand people worth 100 million dollars+ in the world, with more than a third of that number residing in the US. [0] I think we can safely say that people worth 100 million and more are rich. If it is easy to get lucky several times with a rich family, you would expect some nontrivial share of Musk equivalents among them or their kids. Say, two hundred? Not observed. Either the willingness to risk own money in engineering startups is < 1 per cent among those, or it is not that easy. [0] https://www.thenationalnews.com/business/money/2022/10/18/us-has-highest-number-of-super-wealthy-worth-100m-or-more/ https://www.thenationalnews.com/business/money/2022/10/18/us...
  - ethbr0 3y ago
    > Either the willingness to risk own money in engineering startups is < 1 per cent among those Maybe? The thing about having a rich family is... you're already rich. That removes one of the prime motivations to take serious risks, of the sort that paid off for Musk; namely, to become rich. I'm sure you get a lot of people who invest, or toss some money into this or that. But I'd be surprised if a significant number invested their entire net worth and time into a single endeavor.
    - inglor_cz 3y ago
      "But I'd be surprised if a significant number invested their entire net worth and time into a single endeavor." AFAIK Musk was a relative nobody in the millionaire world when he poured a majority of his wealth into SpaceX (2002). They were very close to bankruptcy during the Falcon 1 experiments and if the fourth launch failed, they would have joined a fairly extensive graveyard of defunct space startups, together with Carmack's Armadillo Aerospace and a few hundred others.
      - ethbr0 3y ago
        By that point, he'd already been CEO of PayPal for a bit (after co-founding X.com that merged into the company that became PayPal) and made $175M for his stake when eBay bought it. Then $100M went to found SpaceX. But that does seem like a very large bet that millionaires don't often make.
3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
If we can refine the "he got lucky" statement I'd say it's this: He's a talented motivational speaker, he can inspire as a leader, he can paint a vivid future of great accomplishments , not in the least bolstered by his extreme confidence of expertise and knowledge (often not actualized). Everything he talks about is at least about the entire planet, sometimes multiple planets, and with xAI even for understanding the entire Universe, and this helps him attract two key resources: - Capital. - Talent. And then when he puts talent and capital together... yes he got lucky couple of times. But he's always been a terrible manager and this is visible not just with Twitter.
- oneeyedpigeon 3y ago
  > He's a talented motivational speaker He IS? In what contexts? Because every time I see him speak, it's painful. His delivery is so stilted/awkward, that I think he's one of the worst speakers I've ever seen.
  - 3cats-in-a-coat 3y ago
    He's no Steve Jobs, but sometimes when you don't say something people fill-in context themselves. For example when he makes a long dramatic pause, so he seems deeply contemplative. Or when he stops himself midway through a sentence and corrects himself, he seems earnest. We're ready to forgive a lot if we suspect behind the awkwardness hides a genius. The trope of the distracted professor, the autistic savant is at least centuries old. He leans into every such trope, and he's very careful in cultivating an image of a "founder", of an "inventor" of an "engineer". Most people by now know he hasn't founded Tesla, or PayPal (was fired from it in fact), he hasn't engineered the SpaceX rockets (although he had a hand in those that blew up), and he in fact has no engineering degree despite claiming otherwise. So I'd say all this means he's building this image very intentionally, and he's trying to turn his weaknesses into strengths. The more he stutters and repeats, the less we notice how much of what he says is kinda... vapid. Trump has some similar patterns by the way, you can ask him a specific question and he'll say he has great ways of answering that, some of the best people told him he has the best answers, his history of a businessman speaks about long experience providing great answers to all kinds of questions... and he won't answer your question in the end. Trump and Musk are very different in some ways, but very similar in others.
SamoyedFurFluff 3y ago
Yes I think he got lucky multiple times, because his failures are also quite significant. Remember hyperloop? Remember he got kicked out of PayPal? Remember boring company? Remember solar city? If anything it just shows he has enough money that it’s okay when some of his extremely ambitious projects fail. A less wealthy person couldn’t even attempt any of what he does much less fail as often and as publicly as he has. Elizabeth Holmes went to prison, for example.
- coldtea 3y ago
  >Remember hyperloop? Remember he got kicked out of PayPal? Remember boring company? Remember solar city? One could say similar things for other well succesful businessmen: Remember NeXT? Remember he got kicked out of Apple? Remember the G4 Cube? Remember MobileMe? Remember Ping?
  - alexb_ 3y ago
    Hey, you're finally understanding that Steve Jobs was a hack!
    - marcosdumay 3y ago
      Not quite. He was very good on gathering a specific kind of people and organizing them to an specific kind of work. He got that very reliably. When that kind of work aligned with success, he was successful.
    - CamperBob2 3y ago
      Just like that Alexander the Great guy. Way overrated. He didn't kill that many Persians at all, it turns out. Just sat there on a horse barking orders.
  - NicuCalcea 3y ago
    You're right, other businesspeople get lucky too.
  - giantrobot 3y ago
esotericimpl 3y ago
[dead]
BobbyJo 3y ago
One would expect the richest Man in the world to also be the luckiest. The latter is simply not possible without the former. I do think he's also pretty smart, and very hardworking, but let's not pretend that lucky isn't 99.9% what it takes to be the richest man in the world. There is a ton of people out there that are just as smart, and just as hardworking, and none of them have 1/1000th Musk's wealth.
maxbond 3y ago
There are 8 billion people in the world. With such a large population, we expect some people to just be stupidly lucky many times in a row, right? Especially since they aren't really independent events - if you get a lucky break, it keeps you in the game longer, making your second break more likely. And it would make sense that the lucky outliers would be some of the wealthiest, right?
- coldtea 3y ago
  >With such a large population, we expect some people to just be stupidly lucky many times in a row, right? No, that's not how business work. This is not coin-tossing, the "being lucky" includes attracting VCs and investments, building a good image, picking a good niche, delivering, getting buyers, and several other things besides. You can get lucky with one of those, but not all of those, and several independent times. Else skill doesn't mean anything, and you could make the same argument for any human venture.
  - maxbond 3y ago
    Try thinking about it like a scientist or a statistician rather than a business person. Which is to say, don't think in terms of inviolable rules - that's useful for engineering the system, but can sabotage your ability to understand the system - and think instead in terms of what is possible and at what rate you expect it to happen. Then try multiplying that by 8 billion. > Else skill doesn't mean anything Skill matters, it just isn't the only factor. > You could make the same argument for any human venture. Luck profoundly effects every aspect of our lives, yeah. Think about, say, professional gamers. Are they skilled? Doubtless. May the winner of a match be decided by the RNG? Definitely. If we're talking about a tournament of the best players, they're going to be pretty evenly matched, and it becomes pretty likely that luck will determine the winner.
    - coldtea 3y ago
      >Which is to say, don't think in terms of inviolable rules - that's useful for engineering the system, but can sabotage your ability to understand the system - and think instead in terms of what is possible and at what rate you expect it to happen. Then try multiplying that by 8 billion Notice that the above have nothing to with statistics. It's just handwaving based on the "with 8 billion people trying, anything is possible". >Think about, say, professional gamers. Are they skilled? Doubtless. May the winner of a match be decided by the RNG? Definitely. If we're talking about a tournament of the best players, they're going to be pretty evenly matched, and it becomes pretty likely that luck will determine the winner. That has already shifted the goalposts, to "luck among the best players" as opposed to "he just got lucky".
pavlov 3y ago
> "Several times?" With enough people in the world, someone will eventually get lucky in several improbable ways and may look like a genius thanks to survivorship bias. I'm not saying Musk is that, but maybe his primary talent is risk-taking and fundraising rather than product innovation.
kaba0 3y ago
He is a talented.. scammer, who is good at hyping up shit on which his people may or may not be able to deliver. It’s not exactly rocket science to employ smart people.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 3y ago
  << It’s not exactly rocket science to employ smart people. Oh, but it is based on how hard it is for corporate America to even accept such a notion without going for 'egghead' in their internal vocabulary. I think I disagree.
- inglor_cz 3y ago
  "It’s not exactly rocket science to employ smart people." To employ, no, but to get a stream of important innovations out of them, that might actually be harder than rocket science. The vast majority of smart people around the world are stuck in mediocre jobs. Hotspots of technical productivity like Bell Labs or SpaceX or NASA of the 1960s are pretty rare and rarely last for more than approximately a generation. How to get smart people to be actually scientifically productive is a major question of history. An example: 100 years ago, several very important innovators like von Neumann were Hungarians; nowadays, Hungary is a scientific backwater. (With the exception of Katalin Karikó, the mRNA lady.)
- ameister14 3y ago
  >It’s not exactly rocket science to employ smart people. This is a ridiculous statement if you've ever run a company. "Just hire smart people and your company will be successful!" Great, glad you cracked the code.
  - kaba0 3y ago
    You can also employ a hiring manager who will hire smart people for you? He is definitely not operating on startup money, he can do that as well.
    - coldtea 3y ago
      If only all those companies who got bankrupt knew this wise advice! HN is trully a trove of business wisdom!
onion2k 3y ago
Several times? I don't know if Musk's success is down to luck or not, but to answer your implied question of "Do you really think it could be luck to succeed on several different occasions?" the answer is yes. To suggest otherwise would be falling for the old "it's been heads 9 times in a row, it must be tails next" gambler's fallacy. Someone could succeed in building billion dollar companies largely on luck many of times in a row. It's very unlikely, but it's not impossible, at least as far as any company's success is down to the luck of the founders.
- coldtea 3y ago
  >To suggest otherwise would be falling for the old "it's been heads 9 times in a row, it must be tails next" gambler's fallacy I don't think you understand how this fallacy (and logic ) works. This is only a fallacy because the coin toss events are trivially expected (and assumed) to be independent chance events in the first place. Business success are not supposed to be independent like that, unless you take for granted what you're supposed to prove. And to do that, you'd have to ignore some pretty big factors different to coin tosses, like the continuity of an agent making business decisions, their promotional and organizational skills, their connections, their reputation with VCs and the press, past performance as part of their image, their experience, and several other factors besides, which makes repeated business successes nothing like independent coin tosses.
  - onion2k 3y ago
    I don't think you understand how this fallacy (and logic ) works. I don't think you understand how similes work. There's no way to really know what extent luck is involved when a business succeeds, but it's probably not zero. It's entirely reasonable to suggest Musk has been lucky many times over. That doesn't mean he'll be lucky again, nor does it mean the lucky events he's had so far have been trivial. Believing that Musk will (or won't if you're not a fan) be lucky again in his next business because things will fall in Musk's favor again is the gambler's fallacy - the belief that past events influence future events. No doubt the things Musk can influence will go his way, but there will be things outside of his control that he might not be so lucky with. Even big, important things. Nothing about the gambler's fallacy says anything about how trivial or otherwise the lucky events are.
troupo 3y ago
> he just got lucky > > Several times? Yes. @notacoward had a perfect comment about this a few years back: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15659076 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15659076
- jacquesm 3y ago
  That really is a perfect comment.
- coldtea 3y ago
  There were tons of 100x richer kids who didn't manage to throw succesfully any such darts, much less do so on highly competitive, highly unrelated domains...
  - kergonath 3y ago
    That is not how statistics work. We are talking about odds, not certainties. If people from the working class are 10 times less likely to end up CEOs of multi-billion corporations (which does sound very generous), you’d still expect to see one every so often.
    - coldtea 3y ago
      Which is neither here, nor there. The argument was that Musk was just a lucky incompetent person, not that he was skilled but "only" among a "limited" ten million plus people in the US alone starting at the same wealth levels... Or you still mean the first, that those say, 10 million Americans at similar wealth starting points had the chance to throw their darts, and Musk just happened by chance to hit bullseye on a major company sale/exit/buildup 4 or more times in a row, including turning out the richest man in the world by mere lucky darting?
      - troupo 3y ago
        > The argument was that Musk was just a lucky incompetent person That wasn't the argument. The argument was about luck, not competence > Or you still mean the first, that those say, 10 million Americans at similar wealth You're assuming all those wealthy Americans decided to throw darts, or threw the same amount of darts. They did not. If you follow his successes, you can see a repeated cycle: "invested millions or billions of his own money, kept the company afloat for years". You don't get to do that on competence alone. All of his companies were on the verge of bankrupcy at one point. And lookey lookey, on "competence alone" NASA awards SpaceX a 1.6 billion dollar contract after a single successful launch (after three failed attempts). As an aside, "Griffin later estimated that SpaceX was around 85% funded by the federal government, mostly through his NASA awards, with the remaining 15% funding split between Elon Musk and other private investors". Same for Tesla. It existed for 7 years before it delivered its first car. And even by then it was at least 70 million of Musk's own money. And then a huge infusion of government money. SolarCity. Failed, and bought with Tesla's money. Neuralink. No idea if it's a failure yet, exists due to Musk's money. BoringCompany. A non-entity that existed only because of Musk's money, and then due to unlimited investor money (what the US mistakes for "innovation"). It really exists only due to anti-public-transportation lobbying. And so on. He exemplifies the quote I posted.
shreyshnaccount 3y ago
(Read: investors chasing the next big thing (after seeing the tech boom) give money to a person smart enough to know that to get the money all he has to do is promise the next big thing from the next tech boom) (and later use the money to hire smart people who sometimes actually do build a big thing)
JustFinishedBSG 3y ago
> Several times? Yes ? Not only there is no reason for it not to be the case ( it's not like rolling 6 two times in a row is impossible... ) but anyway once you've achieved your first success it's easier to buy the next ones.
delfinom 3y ago
>Several times? People that are wealthy very very very very often, fail upwards.
rvba 3y ago
Statistically shouldnt someone get lucky 2 or 3 times? Say there are million people with 1 million to invest. Then 1/100 chance to get lucky. Do it 3 times (1/100)^3? Maybe the general idea was nor bad and he got lucky in recruitment? Recruiting young people believing in his idea and getting overworked to reach them?
- kergonath 3y ago
  > Then 1/100 chance to get lucky. Do it 3 times (1/100)^3? It’s easier to do when you can be bailed out by friends and family after the first failure, compared to people who end up sleeping on the street. Considering that even succeeding once is a rare event, it is not that surprising that the final population is heavily skewed. > Maybe the general idea was nor bad and he got lucky in recruitment? Recruiting young people believing in his idea and getting overworked to reach them? There is certainly a bit of that. And to be fair, it is the best strategy: a single human has only so much bandwidth them handling all the aspects of a large-ish company is a recipe for disaster. Not to mention, a single point of failure, so the company’s dead the moment anything happens to them. It’s been the same with Jobs, one of his talents was to hire the right people.
lucideer 3y ago
> Several times? Yes. Capital tends to make it easier on each iteration.

ly3xqhl8g9 3y ago

Not lucky, subsidized [1]. [1] Company with $15 million revenue in 2008 gets $465 million "loan" in 2009, https://techcrunch.com/2009/06/23/the-government-comes-through-for-tesla-with-a-465-million-loan-for-its-electric-sedan https://techcrunch.com/2009/06/23/the-government-comes-throu... https://www.statista.com/statistics/272120/revenue-of-tesla https://www.statista.com/statistics/272120/revenue-of-tesla Of course, Ford got $5.9 billion bailout, because capitalism is the lie profiteers tell to the wage slaves as they privatize profits while socializing losses.

ianai 3y ago
I’m not seeing reputable sources reporting ford got bailouts. Nor do I see ford on this list. https://projects.propublica.org/bailout/list https://projects.propublica.org/bailout/list
- ly3xqhl8g9 3y ago
  It's in the first paragraph of the linked article [1]. They were called "loans" in the government-speak of the post-2008 crash, but if you look at the semantics, they were just risk-free bailouts. [1] "the U.S. Secretary of Energy will be giving details about the first loans to come out of the government’s $25 billion program to help auto manufacturers. Ford got a $5.9 billion loan, but Tesla Motors, Silicon Valley’s electric car manufacturer, is receiving $465 million from the program"
  - dahdum 3y ago
    How is not a loan if they’ve been repaying it?
    - ly3xqhl8g9 3y ago
      Can I, just a random citizen, get a loan from the government for not even billions or hundreds of millions but let's say $100,000? I will of course repay "in due course, at the appropriate juncture, in the fullness of time" [1], at 0% interest. There is nothing loan-like in government "loans" (of 2008, or of 2021, see the PPP heist [2]) almost by definition: no interest, no shares changing hands, not even a share buyback restriction (how most of the government loans are spent anyway). [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKYEUXlYcSI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKYEUXlYcSI [2] "How Did PPP Scammers Steal $100+ Billion", https://www.aura.com/learn/ppp-loan-fraud https://www.aura.com/learn/ppp-loan-fraud

valval 3y ago

Nice hypothesis. I’ll remember you when I need to sell my Oceanside property in Arizona.

treeman79 3y ago

[flagged]

kaba0 3y ago
It’s no free speech, it’s just elon-style censorship. Somehow calling out his private jet trips is no longer free speech, right?
- A4ET8a8uTh0 3y ago
  Sadly, yes. I am pretty out there on free speech and Elon is not messiah in this space. If anything, he may be one of those false prophets.
mcphage 3y ago
> when he allowed free speech Well, the fact that he said a whole bunch of things about free speech, and proceeded to walk all of them back in short order—while still claiming to be a staunch supporter of free speech—probably pissed off a lot of people.
ethanbond 3y ago
Wasn’t one of the first things he did to let Kanye back on the platform “for free speech” then immediately ban him again for posting a Swastika (which is clearly protected by free speech?) Seems to me like you’re just taking a known liar’s words at face value.
oneeyedpigeon 3y ago
He hasn't "allowed free speech", he's just been more forgiving of some free speech and less forgiving of others, for political reasons. Actually, very free people want absolute free speech on a social media platform because we don't want 4chan, we want a place we can talk to friends and family.
aCoreyJ 3y ago
Did he allow free speech or did he make different, and more opaque, decisions about who to ban while laying off anyone who handles appeals. Also being able to pay to make your speech more visible isn't what most people have in mind when they think of "free speech absolutism"

YetAnotherNick 3y ago

How can you be so sure that it was just luck? Why should anyone trust you above Carmack and Karpathy who are talented without any doubt and who have worked closely with him, who has nothing but high praise for him.

amelius 3y ago

> I don't think he had any talent He has a talent: self-promotion.

api 3y ago

Once can be luck. Succeeding multiple times at very hard things is not luck. People can't wrap their heads around the idea that someone can be simultaneously a genius and an idiot. In the real world this is very common. I like to put it this way: how many musicians do you like who are geniuses at composition, drums, guitar, vocals, or some other musical skill but are absolutely intolerable assholes and/or complete lunatics in the rest of their lives? Can you still enjoy their music? Does their music cease to be good when you learn about their personality flaws? IMHO much of Elon's success can be attributed to two things: (1) He is at least a good enough engineer or has good enough "engineers' intuition" to hire people who know what they are talking about and get them working on the right things. He seems much stronger in physical areas like rockets can cars though, not software. (2) He doesn't listen to pessimists and nihilists who say things are impossible if, when reasoning from first principles, they can be shown to be quite possible. Example: ignoring people who said you can't land a rocket or that an EV could never do well in the market. Ignoring pessimism can be a superpower. I do think Elon shows signs of chronic burnout at this point. The far-right / conspiranoid brain worm infection he's developed is IMHO a symptom. Opportunistic infections take hold when the immune system is weak.