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It doesn't matter if it's a trademark nightmare... it's a branding nightmare. Musk is showing the world that he got lucky with his previous ventures. His mana
by xutopia 3y ago
It doesn't matter if it's a trademark nightmare... it's a branding nightmare.
Musk is showing the world that he got lucky with his previous ventures. His management of Twitter has been a display of poor management at every level.
If you were less than a year into your position as CEO of a company with revenue divided by half, ex-employees suing you, banned journalists from your platform in the middle of some half-thought-out free speech debate... would you not be fired?
Everything about this makes me think he's just too rich to be fired... anyone else would have been. He just owns too much to not be given any more chances.
- chaosbolt 3y ago[flagged]
- delfinom 3y ago>but for a reusable rocket company and an electric car company? The word lucky is wrong here. He does seem to be a decent investor at finding underserved market niches which can grow. However, a lot of this is before he let social media rot his brain and let his ego run rampant.
- Tostino 3y agoEspecially market niches where there is a lot of government money be spent. A bit ironic considering his more recent rhetoric.
- NickM 3y agoI understand you guys hate him because the media basically tells you to and because he doesn't behave like your average tech founder I was with you until this part. I used to be a Musk fan but he's done a lot of things to make people legitimately dislike him over the last few years. I agree it doesn't make his past accomplishments less impressive, but people don't just hate him "because the media basically tells you to".
- chaosbolt 3y agoYes he did but it's mostly annoying things he said or did, he's at best an as*hole, meanwhile lots of other billionaires have done evil shit and theydon't even receive 20% of the hate he gets. And it wasn't always the case, before he started insulting the media on twitter he was hailed as a god everywhere (which is also stupid). I can pinpoint the exact tweet they turned on him and it's not difficult to find.
- rideontime 3y ago> I understand you guys hate him because the media basically tells you to We're perfectly capable of forming our own opinions based on personal observations.
- brookst 3y agoIt’s always projection with that sort. They assume that, if their opinions are formed based on their preferred media lionizing Musk, anyone who dislikes him must be brainwashed by the “wrong” media.
- CrackerNews 3y agoHe is successful but there has been questionable decisions made at both SpaceX and Tesla, such as the recent launchpad destruction or the issues with self driving. In both of these examples, Musk has decided to move fast and break things despite objections. The media started exposing these issues when their feud with Musk started, IMO.
- jklinger410 3y ago> but to not see how biased and crazy what you're saying is because of it is simply mind boggling. To continue to tout his genius in the face of all of the evidence to the opposite is mind boggling
- themitigating 3y agoIs your last paragraph nessacary? Could you not just argue your point without claiming that those who disagree are both bias and crazy.
- Jedd 3y ago> an electric car company Are you referring to the Tesla company created by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning in 2001, and then bought by Musk 3 years later?
- somsak2 3y agowho was familiar with it before Musk took charge?
- PM_me_your_math 3y agoHow many electric cars did Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning sell in 2001?
- azraeldv 3y agoah yes, i still remember that in 2001, what a golden year for Tesla company, silly little musk was only leeching off the success of our beloved pre-owned tesla company in 2001.
- notaustinpowers 3y agoSorry, Musk is a CEO. He's not building the cars. He's not planning the orbital trajectories of SpaceX rockets. He's hired competent people to do that for him. And those competent people have even said that Musk basically needs a full-time babysitter at SpaceX so he doesn't mess up anything. He got lucky in the 90s and has been riding that high ever since, buying Founder titles, and paying people to do the hard work for him. Outside of that, I personally cannot support someone who named their children like Xbox usernames.
- georgeg23 3y agoElon makes a bit more sense when you see he has deep connections with the CIA. https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin#Career https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin#Career
- notaustinpowers 3y agoExactly. SpaceX is just a public defense contractor a la Lockheed Martin and Northrup Grumman. Yeah, SpaceX may one day send you to Mars or fly you across the world in 30 minutes. But it's main revenue generator will always be the US government, whether that's sending astronauts to space stations or launching military satellites. Elon is not here to save humanity or whatever BS he's trying to peddle to the world this time around. He's here to make enough money to become the 21st century equivalent of a god.
- PM_me_your_math 3y agoLuck is a term used by incompetent people to explain things that they don't understand.
- beeftime 3y agocorrect, the term he should have used is "con man"
- PM_me_your_math 3y ago[flagged]
- xlix 3y agoWhat term do competent people use to explain things they don't understand?
- the_optimist 3y ago“I don’t understand.”
- layer8 3y agoThey simply refrain from explaining things they don't understand.
- jmull 3y agoDoesn't it seem obviously wrong to suggest that things beyond an individual's control cannot have a significant impact on them?
- hn_throwaway_99 3y ago> Everything about this makes me think he's just too rich to be fired... anyone else would have been. Don't really like this framing of the problem - he owns a majority of voting shares, and he paid (or, rather, overpaid) mightily for that right. You can't really be "fired" from being an owner, and I'll note Musk is no longer CEO (and, sure, you can argue the new CEO was hired to be the fall girl/glass cliff example, but that was still her eyes-wide-open choice). People wrung their hands about Zuckerberg as well (he also has a majority of voting shares of Facebook), but in retrospect that hand-wringing looked premature, at least from a shareholder perspective - Meta is nearly back at its peak and has tripled its stock price from late 2022.
- shuckles 3y agoI wonder if the lenders can push him out if/when Twitter stops making debt payments.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y agoYes, if you file for bankruptcy, debt creditors have rights senior to equity holders.
- shuckles 3y agoIn that case, seems like there's a way to get back our lovably dysfunctional social network. Just gotta outlast their cash on hand. Edit: Pre-acquisition Twitter bonds are trading at ~70 cents on the dollar. Seems like the acquisition financing isn't being traded yet -- banks trying to avoid facing write downs?
- hn_throwaway_99 3y agoAccording to Musk, Twitter is now at least break even. Who knows if that's true or not.
- 3y ago
- amarant 3y agoIs it possible he did a good job with his successful ventures, and a bad job with the unsuccessful ones? I find it difficult to believe both SpaceX and Tesla was 100% pure luck and chance. Not even the devil is that lucky.
- georgeg23 3y agoSpaceX (at least) was a government venture, funded by DARPA and the CIA to enable a program that isn't too hard to figure out when you look at the people involved. It's rather political, and debated within the clearance community. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin#Career https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin#Career
- red-iron-pine 3y ago> In 2002, Griffin was president and COO of In-Q-Tel, a private enterprise funded by the CIA to identify and invest in companies developing cutting-edge technologies that serve national security interests. During this time, he met entrepreneur Elon Musk and accompanied him on a trip to Russia where they attempted to purchase ICBMs. The unsuccessful trip is credited as directly leading to the formation of SpaceX.[8] Griffin was an early advocate for Musk calling him a potential “Henry Ford for the rocket industry". In-Q-Tel is basically DARPA but for the CIA, btw. It's private mostly to help obfuscate initiatives and cashflows, as that's been the SOP for a lot of US black ops kinda stuff for a while; see also: Blackwater aka Academi aka whatever-they're-called-now, plus other chunks of the contractor sphere. Wagner, the Russian mercs, were an attempt to duplicate that effort.
- raphaelj 3y agoMusk took over Tesla a few months after the Model S got announced. By that time, one could expect that most of the development teams and roadmaps were well in place.
- adventured 3y agoEvery single thread where he's the topic, without exception, focuses at least in part on attempting to strip Musk of any accomplishment. He is allowed to have accomplished absolutely nothing. There must be zero redeeming value to his existence. The extreme nature of the focused attacks on him today are fascinating to watch in terms of how angry, irrational mobs form on targets and attack until there's nothing left (and then they keep attacking, because some people are late to the party). They attack his parenting. They attack his business successes. They attack his mental capabilities and rationality. They attack his character. They attack his family and background. They lie about all of the above to whatever extent is necessary. This goes on here, on Reddit, Twitter, wherever a discussion about Musk arises. The only difference between HN and Reddit on this topic is that HN is slightly more highbrow, although the same general attacks get repeated here as they do on Reddit. Someone on Reddit yesterday was proclaiming that he "attached" himself to the SpaceX success and deserved zero credit for it. That rather nicely encompasses what's going on. It's one of the biggest shit shows in the history of the Internet. It's embarrassing - as a human - to watch so many people desperately rolling around in the muck to participate.
- ActionHank 3y agoMy first thought when I saw it prior to hearing about the change was that the icon failed to load for some reason. It just looks like an error or failure and completely out of place with the rest of the site.
- mettamage 3y ago> Musk is showing the world that he got lucky with his previous ventures. 1 dud A few successes It's really hard to tell to what extent it's luck versus skill. It'd be much easier to tell if we'd live for 10K years and he'd have started like 50 companies. If even 10 of those would've become wildly successful, whereas the mean baseline of other people who started 50 companies would be maybe 1 or 2 companies, then I'd argue that he didn't only get lucky. I'd argue there's also a skill component to it.
- shuckles 3y agoSolarCity, Hyperloop, and Boring Company are obvious duds as well. It's hard to say how many duds he had in the aughts, since they're probably well-buried at this point.
- azinman2 3y agoIf I managed to do one Tesla or SpaceX in my entire lifetime, even 10k, I’d be extremely happy and very different from the entire population at large. I don’t like Musk but I think the leftist vilification and dismissal bears all the sounds of people who have no idea how hard it is to build and maintain a successful company.
- shuckles 3y agoThe whole discussion is about how much of those companies' success is attributable to Musk. I have no clue where the "leftist vilification" is coming from.
- azinman2 3y agoThere has been a large cultural shift in how he is discussed in public. And the left has made him into an enemy, while the right has turned him into a hero… ish. He’s now part of the larger cultural wars, and as such it’s almost impossible not to have that creep into any discussion about him. And a big theme on the left is how he’s a fraud and only was able to achieve what he has because of his dads money. They don’t seem to realize that most startups that get lots of money still flop.
- adastra22 3y agoWho would fire him? He owns Twitter.
- renewiltord 3y agoThat's the thing with luck. It helps you when you succeed but it's your fault when you fail. Only the perfect are not lucky. Patton? Luck merchant (Task Force Baum) Eisenhower? Luck buffoon (kesserine pass) Einstein? All luck (Cosmological constant, black holes perhaps) With moronic clowns such as these it is truly a wonder that the Allies got anywhere. Also, I think we should make it so if you own a company and it stops making money, it should be taken away from you.
- digging 3y agoThis is a weird comment. Musk is showing himself to be, well, kind of stupid. We've seen him make moves that are obviously bad and didn't pay off. If you look a little bit deeper, you can see that he has a pattern of making bad decisions. He may also make some good ones, but isn't it more likely that "his" other companies (which he did not create) are succeeding despite him, not because of him? After all, many other smart and ambitious people work with him.
- cudgy 3y agoMany other smart and ambitious people work for many people. At the least, you are giving him credit for attracting very smart and ambitious people. Not very many people can do that.
- digging 3y ago> At the least, you are giving him credit for attracting very smart and ambitious people. Not very many people can do that. Er... fine. But ... much stupider people have had similar success. I don't think attracting ambition is a worthwhile trait on its own and it's not something I'm going to praise him for. Actually, if I step back, I don't even think that's true. Again, he didn't create any of these companies, nor did he run them alone when he was CEO. Many very intelligent engineers joined companies he was running because they believed in the product. They may or may not have even heard of him when they joined a given company.
- 3y ago
- wtetzner 3y ago> Musk is showing the world that he got lucky with his previous ventures. Or maybe he's finally stretched himself too thin, isn't getting enough sleep, etc.
- red-iron-pine 3y agotoo many mountains of cocaine, not enough bi-polar medication, et al "the howard hughes effect"
- cameldrv 3y agoSpaceX and Tesla certainly involve luck, but it's way more than that. A huge element of the success of both companies is Elon managing to hire extremely bright and extremely hard working people for both companies. A huge element of that was the extremely ambitious and cool nature of what they're working on.
- Generalia 3y ago[dead]
- Terretta 3y agoYou don't believe in the 𝕏 utopia?