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I dislike what Musk has done to Twitter so far. It feels closed, greedy and messy. But in fairness, one has to say that after building a $650B company (Tesla)

by mg 3y ago

I dislike what Musk has done to Twitter so far. It feels closed, greedy and messy. But in fairness, one has to say that after building a $650B company (Tesla) and a $150B company (Space X), it is not necessarily a sign of business failure when one buys a $44B company they want to restructure and cut revenues in half in the process. Like when you have built a 65 floor skyscraper and buy a 4 floor house as the base for your next project. You wouldn't probably be that scared to take off 2 of the floors if your plan is to reshape it into the next skyscraper.

toomuchtodo 3y ago
I wouldn’t ask a world class surgeon to defend me in criminal court. Self awareness about domain expertise is crucial. Otherwise, your Dunning-Krugering your way to value destruction. “I am brilliant and will succeed at anything” runs into a wall when your acumen in a specific domain and a string of luck hits the wall. Twitter was not an engineering problem to be solved when purchased, for example. Which makes sense! It was a social network, and driven by the whims of the system of humans using it. Does Elon know people? Enough to sell Teslas, but not enough to protect or grow the value of a social network. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
- renewiltord 3y ago
  That's what everyone said about Tesla and SpaceX. Software guy trying to make hardware. The established guys were going to eat him alive.
  - vlovich123 3y ago
    How much time does Musk get with Twitter? Or as long as he owns it we keep up this line of reasoning?
    - toomuchtodo 3y ago
      Blind Elon faithers are unshakable. Figure out what it would take to boycott the last of the advertisers on Twitter still providing revenue and put it out of its misery. It will live on as a Wikipedia page as a cautionary tale around going public, lack of corporate governance, and the whims of the ultra wealthy and their outcomes on the rest of us.
    - renewiltord 3y ago
      Hey, you can judge him whenever you want. I'm just saying that this forum has no predictive power and has low quality knowledge about the world. How much time he "gets" is probably between him and his creditors. Inevitably some guy will come around organizing some Twitter boycott. Or maybe some Elon fanboy meme. I'm going to be honest with you. Normal people don't do that. Only people who post online obsessively making low quality predictions and then complaining about a loneliness epidemic and stuff like that.
      - toomuchtodo 3y ago
        Surely if you support free speech you support consumers collectively expressing to brands who they would prefer they not do business with from a marketing perspective. If not preferring the actions of wealthy, power hungry monsters is not normal, I agree to not be normal. If this forum has no predictive powers and low knowledge of the world, you need not worry about comments here, as they have no relevance towards the outcome. Right?
        renewiltord 3y ago
        No one's worried. But there's some fun to be had making fun of people who are consistently wrong and miserable.
        toomuchtodo 3y ago
        I suggest therapy if this is considered fun, regardless of individual, but that’s a topic for another thread. Good people should not be miserable, and people who take pleasure in the suffering of others need professional help. Certainly though, enjoy when your own predictions are correct.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
demondemidi 3y ago
You do know the difference between market valuation and profit and revenue, right? Because it doesn’t sound like it. Tesla is bigger than ALL of the major car manufacturers summed if you compare market cap (# shares x share price). But let's look at reality today and not hyped up 10 year numbers: Tesla's revenue and profit is a tiny fraction just Toyota alone. Toyota's revenue last year was $10 TRILLION, with a profit of $500 B and a market cap of $289 Billion. Tesla? 25B revenue, 2.7B profit, market cap? 649 Billion, twice the size of Toyota's despite 1/100th the revenue!! That's a full on LOL. And Tesla only became profitable a few years ago after 10 years without musk and 10 years with musk (roughly, and putting aside the first year's profit due to BitCoin investments). Source data: [1] https://www.google.com/finance/quote/TM:NYSE https://www.google.com/finance/quote/TM:NYSE [2] https://www.google.com/finance/quote/TSLA:NASDAQ https://www.google.com/finance/quote/TSLA:NASDAQ Now, Musk revealed in the recent earnings call that their margins are around 7%. The real numbers paint a far dimmer picture than those of Big Casino. I'm really interested to see what the second decade of Musk Tesla looks like. Will people buy used Teslas? Will batteries last 2x as expected? Will people second-life their car batteries as home backup? Will it really cost 2/3rds the price of a Tesla for new batteries? I have a feeling Tesla will remain a small niche brand (it describes itself as a carbon offset company), and instead focus on charging stations which seems far more profitable. Familiar with the old cliche about who made money during the gold rush of 1800's California? The people making pickaxes and shovels. Infrastructure with endless rental fees is the way to go IMHO. Also, I'm a terrible investor. :)
- sxp 3y ago
  > Tesla's revenue and profit is a tiny fraction just Toyota alone. Toyota's revenue last year was $10 TRILLION, with a profit of $500 B and a market cap of $289 Billion. Tesla? 25B revenue, 2.7B profit, market cap? 649 Billion, twice the size of Toyota's despite 1/100th the revenue!! You're mixing JPY and USD. The numbers you give for Toyota need to be divided by 150 JPY/USD. So $66B revenue with $3B profit.
  - demondemidi 3y ago
    I’m an idiot. I thought those numbers were huge. Thanks for correcting me. Wish I could delete my post now.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
mrweasel 3y ago
If it hadn't been Musk, it would have been someone else. Twitter was grossly over-valued, over-staffed and under-performing in a business sense. There might have been a gentler way to handle the transformation, but Musk being Musk is attempting to speed-run the transformation and pay no attention of how it hurts staff or certain parts of the user base.

by mg 3y ago

toomuchtodo 3y ago

I wouldn’t ask a world class surgeon to defend me in criminal court. Self awareness about domain expertise is crucial. Otherwise, your Dunning-Krugering your way to value destruction. “I am brilliant and will succeed at anything” runs into a wall when your acumen in a specific domain and a string of luck hits the wall. Twitter was not an engineering problem to be solved when purchased, for example. Which makes sense! It was a social network, and driven by the whims of the system of humans using it. Does Elon know people? Enough to sell Teslas, but not enough to protect or grow the value of a social network. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

renewiltord 3y ago
That's what everyone said about Tesla and SpaceX. Software guy trying to make hardware. The established guys were going to eat him alive.
- vlovich123 3y ago
  How much time does Musk get with Twitter? Or as long as he owns it we keep up this line of reasoning?
  - toomuchtodo 3y ago
    Blind Elon faithers are unshakable. Figure out what it would take to boycott the last of the advertisers on Twitter still providing revenue and put it out of its misery. It will live on as a Wikipedia page as a cautionary tale around going public, lack of corporate governance, and the whims of the ultra wealthy and their outcomes on the rest of us.
  - renewiltord 3y ago
    Hey, you can judge him whenever you want. I'm just saying that this forum has no predictive power and has low quality knowledge about the world. How much time he "gets" is probably between him and his creditors. Inevitably some guy will come around organizing some Twitter boycott. Or maybe some Elon fanboy meme. I'm going to be honest with you. Normal people don't do that. Only people who post online obsessively making low quality predictions and then complaining about a loneliness epidemic and stuff like that.
    - toomuchtodo 3y ago
      Surely if you support free speech you support consumers collectively expressing to brands who they would prefer they not do business with from a marketing perspective. If not preferring the actions of wealthy, power hungry monsters is not normal, I agree to not be normal. If this forum has no predictive powers and low knowledge of the world, you need not worry about comments here, as they have no relevance towards the outcome. Right?
      - renewiltord 3y ago
        No one's worried. But there's some fun to be had making fun of people who are consistently wrong and miserable.
        toomuchtodo 3y ago
        I suggest therapy if this is considered fun, regardless of individual, but that’s a topic for another thread. Good people should not be miserable, and people who take pleasure in the suffering of others need professional help. Certainly though, enjoy when your own predictions are correct.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]

demondemidi 3y ago

You do know the difference between market valuation and profit and revenue, right? Because it doesn’t sound like it. Tesla is bigger than ALL of the major car manufacturers summed if you compare market cap (# shares x share price). But let's look at reality today and not hyped up 10 year numbers: Tesla's revenue and profit is a tiny fraction just Toyota alone. Toyota's revenue last year was $10 TRILLION, with a profit of $500 B and a market cap of $289 Billion. Tesla? 25B revenue, 2.7B profit, market cap? 649 Billion, twice the size of Toyota's despite 1/100th the revenue!! That's a full on LOL. And Tesla only became profitable a few years ago after 10 years without musk and 10 years with musk (roughly, and putting aside the first year's profit due to BitCoin investments). Source data: [1] https://www.google.com/finance/quote/TM:NYSE https://www.google.com/finance/quote/TM:NYSE [2] https://www.google.com/finance/quote/TSLA:NASDAQ https://www.google.com/finance/quote/TSLA:NASDAQ Now, Musk revealed in the recent earnings call that their margins are around 7%. The real numbers paint a far dimmer picture than those of Big Casino. I'm really interested to see what the second decade of Musk Tesla looks like. Will people buy used Teslas? Will batteries last 2x as expected? Will people second-life their car batteries as home backup? Will it really cost 2/3rds the price of a Tesla for new batteries? I have a feeling Tesla will remain a small niche brand (it describes itself as a carbon offset company), and instead focus on charging stations which seems far more profitable. Familiar with the old cliche about who made money during the gold rush of 1800's California? The people making pickaxes and shovels. Infrastructure with endless rental fees is the way to go IMHO. Also, I'm a terrible investor. :)

sxp 3y ago
> Tesla's revenue and profit is a tiny fraction just Toyota alone. Toyota's revenue last year was $10 TRILLION, with a profit of $500 B and a market cap of $289 Billion. Tesla? 25B revenue, 2.7B profit, market cap? 649 Billion, twice the size of Toyota's despite 1/100th the revenue!! You're mixing JPY and USD. The numbers you give for Toyota need to be divided by 150 JPY/USD. So $66B revenue with $3B profit.
- demondemidi 3y ago
  I’m an idiot. I thought those numbers were huge. Thanks for correcting me. Wish I could delete my post now.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

mrweasel 3y ago

If it hadn't been Musk, it would have been someone else. Twitter was grossly over-valued, over-staffed and under-performing in a business sense. There might have been a gentler way to handle the transformation, but Musk being Musk is attempting to speed-run the transformation and pay no attention of how it hurts staff or certain parts of the user base.