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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 bor

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
  > Remember NeXT? Remember he got kicked out of Apple? Remember the G4 Cube? Remember MobileMe? Remember Ping? Your rebuttal doesn't really make sense. Only NeXT and getting ousted from Apple were personal events for Steve Jobs. MobileMe (now iCloud), the G4 Cube, and Ping were all initiatives of Apple as a company which was far more people than just Steve Jobs.
  - city41 3y ago
    He was well known for disliking fans in computers, a factor in the G4 Cube. Also a big reason why the Apple 3 was such a failure. Just saying. Overall I certainly think Steve Jobs was anything but a failure.
- mcphage 3y ago
  > Remember NeXT? Wasn't that the computer that the first web browser and web server were developed for and on? And a bunch of famous video games were developed on it? It was never a consumer computer company, but for its niche it was pretty successful.
  - coldtea 3y ago
    We're speaking about success as a business, on its business goals, not what was developed on it. If somebody wrote the "first web browser" on BeOS it make it any less of a failure as a business venture.
    - mcphage 3y ago
      > If somebody wrote the "first web browser" on BeOS it make it any less of a failure as a business venture. Maybe if Tim Berners-Lee had, BeOS wouldn't have been a business failure. Or at least successful enough to be purchased for $400 million?
  - knome 3y ago
    >Wasn't that the computer that the first web browser and web server were developed for and on Tim Berners-Lee invented the WWW, and wrote the first server and browser while working for CERN.
    - mstade 3y ago
      Yes, using NeXT workstations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_server#/media/File:First_Web_Server.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_server#/media/File:First_W...
  - rvz 3y ago
    This is about the business itself and NeXT Inc. was a commercial failure for workstation class personal computers in the market.
- zoky 3y ago
  > Remember NeXT? You mean the basis for Mac OS X? > Remember he got kicked out of Apple? You mean by John Sculley, who basically nobody remembers as having been associated with Apple? And then how Steve Jobs came back to Apple and led it through most of its golden years? > Remember the G4 Cube? You mean the spiritual predecessor to not only the Mac Mini, but the Intel NUC and other small form factor computing platforms? A platform that only suffered from the failing of being before its time, rather than a fundamental design flaw? > Remember MobileMe? The service that eventually transmogrified into iCloud, which, if not a driving force, can hardly be considered a minor player on the Internet today, if for no other reason than the number of @icloud.com email addresses? > Remember Ping? No, I honestly don't, but hey, not every idea can be a winner. At least Steve Jobs' bad ideas failed quietly. Compare and contrast to some of Elongated Muskrat's more… questionable business decisions, like buying Twitter for $420.69 per share just for the lulz.
  - coldtea 3y ago
    >You mean the basis for Mac OS X? I mean the company and OS that failed to leave to Jobs expectations, company pivoted to sell the OS on PCs, failed on that too, and was only spared bunkruptcy because Apple was desperate for an OS and Jobs. The rest is meaningless retorts in the same vain, when all of the above are failed projects associated with Jobs, just like Musk has his own, which was the point.
    - zoky 3y ago
      You’re kind of undercutting your point by saying “Apple was desperate for an OS and Jobs.” In other words, firing Jobs was Apple’s fault, not Jobs’. Steve Jobs was exactly what Apple needed and would go on to provide exactly what they needed, only Apple under Sculley was too short-sighted to see that. If anything, getting fired from Apple was ultimately a triumph for Steve Jobs, given the benefit of hindsight. My point is that when you put Musk among the pantheon of Silicon Valley CEOs, he doesn’t especially stand out for anything except being lucky. Compare him to Bill Gates, who, for better or for worse, revolutionized computing? Or Larry Ellison, who has somehow despite the odds miraculously managed to keep Oracle afloat and somewhat relevant for decades—no mean feat indeed? Elon seems to be little more than a charming, lucky idiot. Make no mistake, charm and luck will take you far, but only so far. Sooner or later, one or the other will run out, and for Elon, it seems like he has depleted both resources at this point.
- mitchitized 3y ago
  I was there when Scully "took over", and can tell you from firsthand experience that Steve Jobs was the young, rebellious entrepreneur whose startup had grown far beyond his experience (or interest at the time). Scully may have been the only man in Silicon Valley with the guts to push Steve out, and Steve knew that it needed to happen. He couldn't, because Apple was his baby - he needed someone to give him that last shove. You mean NeXT, the company he sold back to Apple for $400 million dollars? I would argue that the majority of design flops from Apple in the past twenty years were more Jony Ive than Steve Jobs, based on history and design style. That said yeah not every idea the man had was rock solid, but comparing Steve Jobs to Elon Musk is laughable. Elon was wealthier than 95% of the people in the United States, the second he was born. He's been playing with a stacked deck this whole time. Whenever someone says "oh so-and-so is so successful" only two questions enter my mind: 1. where did they start? 2. how much help did they get along the way? I would argue that in Elon's case he's been successful despite himself.
  - coldtea 3y ago
    >Elon was wealthier than 95% of the people in the United States, the second he was born. He's been playing with a stacked deck this whole time. So like 16,595,000 other US citizens?
    - shagmin 3y ago
      Just guessing here, but I'd guess out of that ~16m US citizens, you're more likely to find people that have started a multi-billion dollar business than compared to the general population. And the other demographic that tends to be big on starting businesses are immigrants. And Elon Musk just happens to fall into both groups really.
  - throwaway2990 3y ago
    Ives fading into non existence was the best thing that happened to modern apple. He was slowly killing everything.
- tolmasky 3y ago
  > Remember the G4 Cube? Remember MobileMe? Remember Ping? I think it's weird to compare failed products within a company (and minor products at that) to failed companies. I think you may have not even listed some of the more notable ones (The Apple LISA, the iPod HiFi). But he wasn't betting the company on the Cube, or MobileMe, or even Ping. These were low-stakes (and arguably low effort) bets taken within a company that was simultaneously having insane success in other departments. The G4 Cube came out between the iMac and the iPod (2 years after the iMac, 1 year before the iPod). That seems like a damn good product-line, and if you could choose any one to miss on, it'd be the niche prosumer device, not the two consumer devices. > Remember NeXT? > Remember he got kicked out of Apple? These could be interpreted either way. It seems all part of the larger "Apple story arc", and more comparable to Tesla's shaky middle period, than as binary successes and failures void of any surrounding context. However, I do mean that it could go either way. I wouldn't fault someone as judging them as true failures separate from the later Apple success.
Veedrac 3y ago
Most startups would consider a continually expanding Vegas Loop project, $5.7B valuation, and competitive throughput to non-express, bulk transport to be marks of success at this age.
MetaWhirledPeas 3y ago
> Remember hyperloop? An idea, not a company > Remember boring company? Still a company. > Remember solar city? Acquired by Tesla, who remains a major supplier of residential solar panels.
- haspok 3y ago
  Solar city was saved with Tesla money in a situation it would have gone bankrupt had Musk not lied about the product (and that it was "ready"), without telling Tesla shareholders about what's going on. Which is typical Musk conduct: he lies a lot, people believe him, and he somehow makes it through until the lies do not matter any more. See robotaxis, self driving, etc.
- one_level_deep 3y ago
  I find it odd how people refuse to admit that Musk has made some errors. He is a human who takes big swings, and has his share of failures to prove it. It's ok to admit that. I'll note, there is no mention of "Thud" [0], another failure of his. ==Acquired by Tesla, who remains a major supplier of residential solar panels.== Tesla bought Solar City for $2.6 billion in 2016. In 2019, they targeted 1,000 installations a week. In 7 years, Tesla has installed a total of 3,000 solar systems, getting to about 20 installations a week. Add in the fact that he purchased the company from his own cousins and the story looks worse. [1] ==Still a company.== It is still an existing company, but that doesn't make it a success. Founded 7 years ago, has built one actively used tunnel. They also had to change the entire idea (it's actually just Teslas driving underground). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thud_(media_company) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thud_(media_company) [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/30/tesla-has-installed-3000-solar-roof-systems-in-the-us-study-finds.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/30/tesla-has-installed-3000-sol...
  - MetaWhirledPeas 3y ago
    > I find it odd how people refuse to admit that Musk has made some errors. GP was merely trying to dunk on Musk and didn't have a real argument. I'm very aware of Musk's failures. Heck, they are the very things that define his companies and enable their successes. Every rocket explosion was a failure on the road to success. Every over-promise drives his people to work that much harder. But you want to dunk on Musk a little more, fine, let's get this out of the way. (Not a comprehensive list.) Bad: - Twitter looks like a bad deal (so far), and is a public opinion disaster - FSD did not deliver the promised value to its original customers (future remains to be seen) - Boring has under-delivered and is not growing explosively (but they are still in business) - His general skepticism of any COVID precautions (I think his entrepreneurial bias is behind this) Worse: - The handling of the cave rescue aftermath Arguable: - His political statements - Twitter layoffs - Personal life stuff (not really our business) - Work-at-home policies (his track record says he knows what he is doing here) There. Can we pin these somewhere so we don't have to keep hijacking every Elon post with these "revelations"?
danw1979 3y ago
He’s had his wrists firmly slapped by the SEC, but I’m not convinced he’s perpetrated fraud at the scale of Theranos. If he’s lost his own money on stupid projects, that’s fine ? Hitting it for six once an over is still a good innings…
Kye 3y ago
Relevant post right here on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15659076 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15659076 He can keep throwing darts at the board as long as he maintains his ability to rope other rich people into his delusional self-confidence. Twitter might just be what breaks the spell.
andsoitis 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? Failure is precisely how we learn. To be afraid to fail does not lead to success.

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
> Remember NeXT? Remember he got kicked out of Apple? Remember the G4 Cube? Remember MobileMe? Remember Ping? Your rebuttal doesn't really make sense. Only NeXT and getting ousted from Apple were personal events for Steve Jobs. MobileMe (now iCloud), the G4 Cube, and Ping were all initiatives of Apple as a company which was far more people than just Steve Jobs.
- city41 3y ago
  He was well known for disliking fans in computers, a factor in the G4 Cube. Also a big reason why the Apple 3 was such a failure. Just saying. Overall I certainly think Steve Jobs was anything but a failure.
mcphage 3y ago
> Remember NeXT? Wasn't that the computer that the first web browser and web server were developed for and on? And a bunch of famous video games were developed on it? It was never a consumer computer company, but for its niche it was pretty successful.
- coldtea 3y ago
  We're speaking about success as a business, on its business goals, not what was developed on it. If somebody wrote the "first web browser" on BeOS it make it any less of a failure as a business venture.
  - mcphage 3y ago
    > If somebody wrote the "first web browser" on BeOS it make it any less of a failure as a business venture. Maybe if Tim Berners-Lee had, BeOS wouldn't have been a business failure. Or at least successful enough to be purchased for $400 million?
- knome 3y ago
  >Wasn't that the computer that the first web browser and web server were developed for and on Tim Berners-Lee invented the WWW, and wrote the first server and browser while working for CERN.
  - mstade 3y ago
    Yes, using NeXT workstations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_server#/media/File:First_Web_Server.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_server#/media/File:First_W...
- rvz 3y ago
  This is about the business itself and NeXT Inc. was a commercial failure for workstation class personal computers in the market.
zoky 3y ago
> Remember NeXT? You mean the basis for Mac OS X? > Remember he got kicked out of Apple? You mean by John Sculley, who basically nobody remembers as having been associated with Apple? And then how Steve Jobs came back to Apple and led it through most of its golden years? > Remember the G4 Cube? You mean the spiritual predecessor to not only the Mac Mini, but the Intel NUC and other small form factor computing platforms? A platform that only suffered from the failing of being before its time, rather than a fundamental design flaw? > Remember MobileMe? The service that eventually transmogrified into iCloud, which, if not a driving force, can hardly be considered a minor player on the Internet today, if for no other reason than the number of @icloud.com email addresses? > Remember Ping? No, I honestly don't, but hey, not every idea can be a winner. At least Steve Jobs' bad ideas failed quietly. Compare and contrast to some of Elongated Muskrat's more… questionable business decisions, like buying Twitter for $420.69 per share just for the lulz.
- coldtea 3y ago
  >You mean the basis for Mac OS X? I mean the company and OS that failed to leave to Jobs expectations, company pivoted to sell the OS on PCs, failed on that too, and was only spared bunkruptcy because Apple was desperate for an OS and Jobs. The rest is meaningless retorts in the same vain, when all of the above are failed projects associated with Jobs, just like Musk has his own, which was the point.
  - zoky 3y ago
    You’re kind of undercutting your point by saying “Apple was desperate for an OS and Jobs.” In other words, firing Jobs was Apple’s fault, not Jobs’. Steve Jobs was exactly what Apple needed and would go on to provide exactly what they needed, only Apple under Sculley was too short-sighted to see that. If anything, getting fired from Apple was ultimately a triumph for Steve Jobs, given the benefit of hindsight. My point is that when you put Musk among the pantheon of Silicon Valley CEOs, he doesn’t especially stand out for anything except being lucky. Compare him to Bill Gates, who, for better or for worse, revolutionized computing? Or Larry Ellison, who has somehow despite the odds miraculously managed to keep Oracle afloat and somewhat relevant for decades—no mean feat indeed? Elon seems to be little more than a charming, lucky idiot. Make no mistake, charm and luck will take you far, but only so far. Sooner or later, one or the other will run out, and for Elon, it seems like he has depleted both resources at this point.
mitchitized 3y ago
I was there when Scully "took over", and can tell you from firsthand experience that Steve Jobs was the young, rebellious entrepreneur whose startup had grown far beyond his experience (or interest at the time). Scully may have been the only man in Silicon Valley with the guts to push Steve out, and Steve knew that it needed to happen. He couldn't, because Apple was his baby - he needed someone to give him that last shove. You mean NeXT, the company he sold back to Apple for $400 million dollars? I would argue that the majority of design flops from Apple in the past twenty years were more Jony Ive than Steve Jobs, based on history and design style. That said yeah not every idea the man had was rock solid, but comparing Steve Jobs to Elon Musk is laughable. Elon was wealthier than 95% of the people in the United States, the second he was born. He's been playing with a stacked deck this whole time. Whenever someone says "oh so-and-so is so successful" only two questions enter my mind: 1. where did they start? 2. how much help did they get along the way? I would argue that in Elon's case he's been successful despite himself.
- coldtea 3y ago
  >Elon was wealthier than 95% of the people in the United States, the second he was born. He's been playing with a stacked deck this whole time. So like 16,595,000 other US citizens?
  - shagmin 3y ago
    Just guessing here, but I'd guess out of that ~16m US citizens, you're more likely to find people that have started a multi-billion dollar business than compared to the general population. And the other demographic that tends to be big on starting businesses are immigrants. And Elon Musk just happens to fall into both groups really.
- throwaway2990 3y ago
  Ives fading into non existence was the best thing that happened to modern apple. He was slowly killing everything.
tolmasky 3y ago
> Remember the G4 Cube? Remember MobileMe? Remember Ping? I think it's weird to compare failed products within a company (and minor products at that) to failed companies. I think you may have not even listed some of the more notable ones (The Apple LISA, the iPod HiFi). But he wasn't betting the company on the Cube, or MobileMe, or even Ping. These were low-stakes (and arguably low effort) bets taken within a company that was simultaneously having insane success in other departments. The G4 Cube came out between the iMac and the iPod (2 years after the iMac, 1 year before the iPod). That seems like a damn good product-line, and if you could choose any one to miss on, it'd be the niche prosumer device, not the two consumer devices. > Remember NeXT? > Remember he got kicked out of Apple? These could be interpreted either way. It seems all part of the larger "Apple story arc", and more comparable to Tesla's shaky middle period, than as binary successes and failures void of any surrounding context. However, I do mean that it could go either way. I wouldn't fault someone as judging them as true failures separate from the later Apple success.

Veedrac 3y ago

Most startups would consider a continually expanding Vegas Loop project, $5.7B valuation, and competitive throughput to non-express, bulk transport to be marks of success at this age.

MetaWhirledPeas 3y ago

> Remember hyperloop? An idea, not a company > Remember boring company? Still a company. > Remember solar city? Acquired by Tesla, who remains a major supplier of residential solar panels.

haspok 3y ago
Solar city was saved with Tesla money in a situation it would have gone bankrupt had Musk not lied about the product (and that it was "ready"), without telling Tesla shareholders about what's going on. Which is typical Musk conduct: he lies a lot, people believe him, and he somehow makes it through until the lies do not matter any more. See robotaxis, self driving, etc.
one_level_deep 3y ago
I find it odd how people refuse to admit that Musk has made some errors. He is a human who takes big swings, and has his share of failures to prove it. It's ok to admit that. I'll note, there is no mention of "Thud" [0], another failure of his. ==Acquired by Tesla, who remains a major supplier of residential solar panels.== Tesla bought Solar City for $2.6 billion in 2016. In 2019, they targeted 1,000 installations a week. In 7 years, Tesla has installed a total of 3,000 solar systems, getting to about 20 installations a week. Add in the fact that he purchased the company from his own cousins and the story looks worse. [1] ==Still a company.== It is still an existing company, but that doesn't make it a success. Founded 7 years ago, has built one actively used tunnel. They also had to change the entire idea (it's actually just Teslas driving underground). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thud_(media_company) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thud_(media_company) [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/30/tesla-has-installed-3000-solar-roof-systems-in-the-us-study-finds.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/30/tesla-has-installed-3000-sol...
- MetaWhirledPeas 3y ago
  > I find it odd how people refuse to admit that Musk has made some errors. GP was merely trying to dunk on Musk and didn't have a real argument. I'm very aware of Musk's failures. Heck, they are the very things that define his companies and enable their successes. Every rocket explosion was a failure on the road to success. Every over-promise drives his people to work that much harder. But you want to dunk on Musk a little more, fine, let's get this out of the way. (Not a comprehensive list.) Bad: - Twitter looks like a bad deal (so far), and is a public opinion disaster - FSD did not deliver the promised value to its original customers (future remains to be seen) - Boring has under-delivered and is not growing explosively (but they are still in business) - His general skepticism of any COVID precautions (I think his entrepreneurial bias is behind this) Worse: - The handling of the cave rescue aftermath Arguable: - His political statements - Twitter layoffs - Personal life stuff (not really our business) - Work-at-home policies (his track record says he knows what he is doing here) There. Can we pin these somewhere so we don't have to keep hijacking every Elon post with these "revelations"?

danw1979 3y ago

He’s had his wrists firmly slapped by the SEC, but I’m not convinced he’s perpetrated fraud at the scale of Theranos. If he’s lost his own money on stupid projects, that’s fine ? Hitting it for six once an over is still a good innings…

Kye 3y ago

Relevant post right here on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15659076 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15659076 He can keep throwing darts at the board as long as he maintains his ability to rope other rich people into his delusional self-confidence. Twitter might just be what breaks the spell.

andsoitis 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? Failure is precisely how we learn. To be afraid to fail does not lead to success.