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I’ve said this before. The reasons SpaceX and to a lesser extent Tesla are the successes they are, is because of the “true believer” leadership it draws. Those

I’ve said this before. The reasons SpaceX and to a lesser extent Tesla are the successes they are, is because of the “true believer” leadership it draws. Those endeavours have a clear social-good aspect to them at the “good for humanity” scale. Those endeavours have continue to succeed because Musk’s genius was in hiring them, and in focusing on the regulatory context that allows them to be even more successful. His personal engineering acumen is largely overstated compared to his actual skill set. It also helps that those industries are heavily regulated and those constraints temper his ability to fuck things up. Social media on the other hand doesn’t attract the same kind of believers at that level and there’s no one who cares enough to make it work in spite of him. Being a far less (or barely at all) regulated industry means he’s free to intervene and meddle in the most egregious ways, and the results are obvious for all to see. As a result of Twitter he’ll likely be in lawsuits (from investors, banks etc) for decades. Meantime SpaceX and Tesla will continue to do well. Not because of Musk but in spite of him.

vGPU 3y ago
So why hasn’t bezos’s phallically reminiscent space endeavor been able to draw similar talent? Why is every other EV startup essentially DOA? Rivian’s current sales numbers rival Ferrari. Fisker is dead. Faraday is dead. Nikola just had a truck catch fire twice. Lordstown is dead. And if any of what you claim is true, then explain the success of: Zip2 PayPal Starlink (we can count this as separate from spaceX) And he was a co-founder of openAI. Though whether he actually did anything useful there is debatable.
- phs318u 3y ago
  SpaceX's mission is to spread humanity to the planets. Bezo's mission is to offer orbital fun rides to cashed up tourists. Fisker failed due to its major investor (DOE) halting future financing, and then being hit with the loss of a large number of vehicles in Hurrican Katrina. Up until then they were following a similar startup arc (with the same sorts of problems) as Tesla had in their first few years. [0] With PayPal, Musk was insistent that the venture proceed as X.com (despite brand testing showing that people were likely to associate it with porn), but was overruled. He was also opposed to the sale to eBay, which actually catapulted PayPal in terms of growth, and embedded it as a "must have" for e-commerce. [1] [2] [0] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/04/fisker-automotive-failure/315946/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/04/fisker-... [1] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/was-elon-musk-fired-from-paypal/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/was-elon-musk-fired-from-p... [2] https://nypost.com/2018/07/24/elon-musk-made-his-first-millions-in-the-paypal-mafia/ https://nypost.com/2018/07/24/elon-musk-made-his-first-milli...

vGPU 3y ago

So why hasn’t bezos’s phallically reminiscent space endeavor been able to draw similar talent? Why is every other EV startup essentially DOA? Rivian’s current sales numbers rival Ferrari. Fisker is dead. Faraday is dead. Nikola just had a truck catch fire twice. Lordstown is dead. And if any of what you claim is true, then explain the success of: Zip2 PayPal Starlink (we can count this as separate from spaceX) And he was a co-founder of openAI. Though whether he actually did anything useful there is debatable.

phs318u 3y ago
SpaceX's mission is to spread humanity to the planets. Bezo's mission is to offer orbital fun rides to cashed up tourists. Fisker failed due to its major investor (DOE) halting future financing, and then being hit with the loss of a large number of vehicles in Hurrican Katrina. Up until then they were following a similar startup arc (with the same sorts of problems) as Tesla had in their first few years. [0] With PayPal, Musk was insistent that the venture proceed as X.com (despite brand testing showing that people were likely to associate it with porn), but was overruled. He was also opposed to the sale to eBay, which actually catapulted PayPal in terms of growth, and embedded it as a "must have" for e-commerce. [1] [2] [0] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/04/fisker-automotive-failure/315946/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/04/fisker-... [1] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/was-elon-musk-fired-from-paypal/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/was-elon-musk-fired-from-p... [2] https://nypost.com/2018/07/24/elon-musk-made-his-first-millions-in-the-paypal-mafia/ https://nypost.com/2018/07/24/elon-musk-made-his-first-milli...