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How is Tesla still considered a startup? It’s a 20 years old company with a 80billion valuation and more than 100k employees Edit: I even missed a zero, it has

How is Tesla still considered a startup? It’s a 20 years old company with a 80billion valuation and more than 100k employees Edit: I even missed a zero, it has a 800billion valuation

bufferoverflow 3y ago
> 80billion valuation You mean 800 billion valuation?
- dgellow 3y ago
  Yes, that’s stated explicitly at the end of my comment
exitb 3y ago
Their valuation is three times larger than Toyota, yet they manufacture only 10% as much cars a year. It’s still deeply rooted in hopes of future expansion and innovations, lack of which they might not survive.
- FredPret 3y ago
  You’re right that they have a juicy valuation. But it’s about number of dollars made, not cars. And on that metric Tesla is on par with GM and ahead of Ford. I don’t know about Toyota. https://valustox.com/F https://valustox.com/F https://valustox.com/GM https://valustox.com/GM https://valustox.com/TSLA https://valustox.com/TSLA
  - peterfirefly 3y ago
    They sold about 1/8 the cars Toyota did in 2022 but they also made about 8x the profit per car. And Toyota has a huge debt load whereas Tesla had money in the bank + was growing + FSD will Soon™ be here (and if/when it does, Tesla's profits will explode) + there's the energy business + there will probably be something like AWS for AI in a year or three.
    - brtkdotse 3y ago
      You forgot the dancing robot.
      - peterfirefly 3y ago
        It's gonna take a while before the robot does something useful. It's technically very impressive already but... not very useful. (Did you see the latest video? It's crazy how well the hands and fingers work -- and how plodding its walk still is. Even Joe Biden walks faster!)
avs733 3y ago
Funny enough I can comment on this with some data… I was involved in a study a few years back that looked (in part) at how engineering undergraduates defined entrepreneurship and startup. It fortunately the results from that part ended up on the cutting room floor to focus out main paper on something else… Generally, to undergraduate engineers, entrepreneurship and startups are defined by the following things: Being in Silicon Valley/San Francisco Doing something related to technology Being financially successful (yes…noting another finding was that they often subconsciously conflated revenue and profit, but only when told the financial data was from a “startup”) Being controlled by their founder
mattmaroon 3y ago
I guess because most of their competitors are 100 yrs old? Making cars is really, really hard. Tesla’s first mass produced car was only ten years ago, and their top two models 6 and 3 years ago. The average age of their entire fleet is in the low single digits. In the car world that’s just getting started.
- cde-v 3y ago
  By that logic every prostitute runs a startup. edit: (not really a great example, just wanted to play off of 'the world's oldest profession') Better example would be calling Macy's a startup because Hudson's Bay Company was founded in the 1600s.
- gonzo41 3y ago
  Honestly, That's not good enough. In the car world you can recruit car engineers to fix simple car production problems. Objectively most of Tesla's issues are due to the poor fit and finish of the cabin and general fitment of things together. IF you ignore the whole electric engine and just treat it like and ice vehicle, Telsa should just be building on the knowledge of others and hiring Toyota engineers to help the nail things like delivery a simple service schedule. Making sure that cars roll of the line with everything tight and having spares ready for consumable parts. It's not an acceptable excuse to shrug your shoulders and say that they're new at this. The concept of delivering a vehicle isn't new and Telsa has a TON of money. Change the genre of product to Tech / software engineering. If Telsa was a software company shipping a crap product that broke all the time and then suddenly you found out that they didn't do XYZ of industry standard you'd hold them to account for not taking standard approaches to standard problems.
  - Closi 3y ago
    Tesla produced the same number of cars in 2022 as they did in all years combined from 2012-2020. If you think it's easy to just stand up that level of production capacity, and that they are actually they are just ignoring simple production problems, then you are underestimating the challenge. Things like panel gaps are not necessarily easy fixes - i.e. what if you know the solution to a 1mm improvement, but can't easily fix it without taking the production line down for x weeks because you need to change the robot arm and conveyor system?
idontknowifican 3y ago
tesla is a startup because it allows less strict oversight from the public. “startup” seems to now simply mean “burn cash until market dominance” or “regulations have mot caught up to our industry”. it is not an actual startup, just a court of public opinion one, allowing it to do shady shit under the guise of progress at any cost
- andsoitis 3y ago
  > tesla is a startup because it allows less strict oversight from the public. Tesla is a publicly traded company, subject to all the rules and regulations of the territories it operates in.
  - Nextgrid 3y ago
    Rules are only as good as their enforcement and it turns out said enforcement is lacking in a lot of areas.
bmitc 3y ago
In mentality, I guess. If I was pressed to give a definition right now, I'd say a company stops being a startup when they have self-sustaining revenue without continual outside investments and subsidies propping them up. That hasn't been the case for Tesla the entire 20 years of the company's existence. Also, valuation is effectively meaningless. That valuation has nearly zero correlation to Tesla's actual value.
jjav 3y ago
> How is Tesla still considered a startup? It is a public company, so by definition it is not a startup.

How is Tesla still considered a startup? It’s a 20 years old company with a 80billion valuation and more than 100k employees Edit: I even missed a zero, it has a 800billion valuation

bufferoverflow 3y ago

> 80billion valuation You mean 800 billion valuation?

dgellow 3y ago
Yes, that’s stated explicitly at the end of my comment

exitb 3y ago

Their valuation is three times larger than Toyota, yet they manufacture only 10% as much cars a year. It’s still deeply rooted in hopes of future expansion and innovations, lack of which they might not survive.

FredPret 3y ago
You’re right that they have a juicy valuation. But it’s about number of dollars made, not cars. And on that metric Tesla is on par with GM and ahead of Ford. I don’t know about Toyota. https://valustox.com/F https://valustox.com/F https://valustox.com/GM https://valustox.com/GM https://valustox.com/TSLA https://valustox.com/TSLA
- peterfirefly 3y ago
  They sold about 1/8 the cars Toyota did in 2022 but they also made about 8x the profit per car. And Toyota has a huge debt load whereas Tesla had money in the bank + was growing + FSD will Soon™ be here (and if/when it does, Tesla's profits will explode) + there's the energy business + there will probably be something like AWS for AI in a year or three.
  - brtkdotse 3y ago
    You forgot the dancing robot.
    - peterfirefly 3y ago
      It's gonna take a while before the robot does something useful. It's technically very impressive already but... not very useful. (Did you see the latest video? It's crazy how well the hands and fingers work -- and how plodding its walk still is. Even Joe Biden walks faster!)

avs733 3y ago

Funny enough I can comment on this with some data… I was involved in a study a few years back that looked (in part) at how engineering undergraduates defined entrepreneurship and startup. It fortunately the results from that part ended up on the cutting room floor to focus out main paper on something else… Generally, to undergraduate engineers, entrepreneurship and startups are defined by the following things: Being in Silicon Valley/San Francisco Doing something related to technology Being financially successful (yes…noting another finding was that they often subconsciously conflated revenue and profit, but only when told the financial data was from a “startup”) Being controlled by their founder

mattmaroon 3y ago

I guess because most of their competitors are 100 yrs old? Making cars is really, really hard. Tesla’s first mass produced car was only ten years ago, and their top two models 6 and 3 years ago. The average age of their entire fleet is in the low single digits. In the car world that’s just getting started.

cde-v 3y ago
By that logic every prostitute runs a startup. edit: (not really a great example, just wanted to play off of 'the world's oldest profession') Better example would be calling Macy's a startup because Hudson's Bay Company was founded in the 1600s.
gonzo41 3y ago
Honestly, That's not good enough. In the car world you can recruit car engineers to fix simple car production problems. Objectively most of Tesla's issues are due to the poor fit and finish of the cabin and general fitment of things together. IF you ignore the whole electric engine and just treat it like and ice vehicle, Telsa should just be building on the knowledge of others and hiring Toyota engineers to help the nail things like delivery a simple service schedule. Making sure that cars roll of the line with everything tight and having spares ready for consumable parts. It's not an acceptable excuse to shrug your shoulders and say that they're new at this. The concept of delivering a vehicle isn't new and Telsa has a TON of money. Change the genre of product to Tech / software engineering. If Telsa was a software company shipping a crap product that broke all the time and then suddenly you found out that they didn't do XYZ of industry standard you'd hold them to account for not taking standard approaches to standard problems.
- Closi 3y ago
  Tesla produced the same number of cars in 2022 as they did in all years combined from 2012-2020. If you think it's easy to just stand up that level of production capacity, and that they are actually they are just ignoring simple production problems, then you are underestimating the challenge. Things like panel gaps are not necessarily easy fixes - i.e. what if you know the solution to a 1mm improvement, but can't easily fix it without taking the production line down for x weeks because you need to change the robot arm and conveyor system?

idontknowifican 3y ago

tesla is a startup because it allows less strict oversight from the public. “startup” seems to now simply mean “burn cash until market dominance” or “regulations have mot caught up to our industry”. it is not an actual startup, just a court of public opinion one, allowing it to do shady shit under the guise of progress at any cost

andsoitis 3y ago
> tesla is a startup because it allows less strict oversight from the public. Tesla is a publicly traded company, subject to all the rules and regulations of the territories it operates in.
- Nextgrid 3y ago
  Rules are only as good as their enforcement and it turns out said enforcement is lacking in a lot of areas.

bmitc 3y ago

In mentality, I guess. If I was pressed to give a definition right now, I'd say a company stops being a startup when they have self-sustaining revenue without continual outside investments and subsidies propping them up. That hasn't been the case for Tesla the entire 20 years of the company's existence. Also, valuation is effectively meaningless. That valuation has nearly zero correlation to Tesla's actual value.

jjav 3y ago

> How is Tesla still considered a startup? It is a public company, so by definition it is not a startup.