3 ms·

"he is a shrewd businessman subject to the fallibilities of all shrewd businessmen." Rather a broad generalization, don't you think? Like most fields, busines

by pg 14y ago

"he is a shrewd businessman subject to the fallibilities of all shrewd businessmen." Rather a broad generalization, don't you think? Like most fields, business turns out to have more variation than outsiders think. "Businessmen" range from pure money grubbers who will do whatever makes the most, to people who are in business simply because the thing they want to build can only be embodied as a business. I don't know for sure, but it seems to me that Elon Musk is toward the latter end of the spectrum.

bravura 14y ago
"Rather a broad generalization, don't you think?" In fact, it was gratuitously restrictive, as you noted in the subsequent sentence.
jcr 14y ago
> "the thing they want to build can only be embodied as a business." I agree completely. It's easy to see how improving the state of electric vehicles requires significant capital, so without a business, there's no viable way to make the desired advancements. Some of the backlash against Elon Musk seems to be caused by some people having extremely high expectations for everything he does. Those expectations are occasionally unrealistic, and blaming him personally for every misgiving of the entire Tesla company is entirely unfair. Most car sales/lease terms are horribly and intentionally confusing and complicated, but someone in marketing at Tesla made a serious mistake. The mistake wasn't using industry norm of difficult to comprehend claims and terms, instead, the mistake was failing to live up to expectations of something better, namely, clear and direct terms with fair and easy comparisons. As a business, Tesla must compete with all of the entrenched businesses but by using the "best practices" of the industry in terms of marketing, they missed an opportunity and failed to meet expectations. There are few people on the planet who have set expectations so high as to get blamed personally for failing to innovate absolutely everywhere, but it seems Elon Musk is one of them. The world would be a better place if more people had his problems. ;-)
- throwaway1979 14y ago
  I'm a big Elon fan and want him to succeed. I think people like me are disappointed because we expected better from him and the companies he runs.
potatolicious 14y ago
> ""Businessmen" range from pure money grubbers who will do whatever makes the most, to people who are in business simply because the thing they want to build can only be embodied as a business." True - but I don't think it's necessarily quite so polarized in this case. When Musk went off and screamed fraud at the New York Times for their review, one can reasonably explain it away as a passionate man protecting his dream company - an example of being on the latter end of the spectrum. This is a bit different - and I think this Tesla financing brouhaha is proving that Musk has more of the former in him than we'd like to admit. I for one am a bit disillusioned. We have heard the conveniently woven story many times - passionate individual starts a company to change the world for the better - but that's always overly simplistic. While I wouldn't describe Musk as a pure money grubber, I honestly do not believe Musk is as far down that spectrum as popularly believed.
Hitchhiker 14y ago
Elon's more of the real deal than most of the ecosystem out there.. his degree of belief is evident post Paypal. Most exits of that scale spawn VCs or incubator dons.. “There’s a tremendous bias against taking risks. Everyone is trying to optimize their ass-covering.”[1] [1] - http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/10/ff-elon-musk-qa/all/ http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/10/ff-elon-musk-qa/al...

by pg 14y ago

bravura 14y ago

"Rather a broad generalization, don't you think?" In fact, it was gratuitously restrictive, as you noted in the subsequent sentence.

jcr 14y ago

> "the thing they want to build can only be embodied as a business." I agree completely. It's easy to see how improving the state of electric vehicles requires significant capital, so without a business, there's no viable way to make the desired advancements. Some of the backlash against Elon Musk seems to be caused by some people having extremely high expectations for everything he does. Those expectations are occasionally unrealistic, and blaming him personally for every misgiving of the entire Tesla company is entirely unfair. Most car sales/lease terms are horribly and intentionally confusing and complicated, but someone in marketing at Tesla made a serious mistake. The mistake wasn't using industry norm of difficult to comprehend claims and terms, instead, the mistake was failing to live up to expectations of something better, namely, clear and direct terms with fair and easy comparisons. As a business, Tesla must compete with all of the entrenched businesses but by using the "best practices" of the industry in terms of marketing, they missed an opportunity and failed to meet expectations. There are few people on the planet who have set expectations so high as to get blamed personally for failing to innovate absolutely everywhere, but it seems Elon Musk is one of them. The world would be a better place if more people had his problems. ;-)

throwaway1979 14y ago
I'm a big Elon fan and want him to succeed. I think people like me are disappointed because we expected better from him and the companies he runs.

potatolicious 14y ago

> ""Businessmen" range from pure money grubbers who will do whatever makes the most, to people who are in business simply because the thing they want to build can only be embodied as a business." True - but I don't think it's necessarily quite so polarized in this case. When Musk went off and screamed fraud at the New York Times for their review, one can reasonably explain it away as a passionate man protecting his dream company - an example of being on the latter end of the spectrum. This is a bit different - and I think this Tesla financing brouhaha is proving that Musk has more of the former in him than we'd like to admit. I for one am a bit disillusioned. We have heard the conveniently woven story many times - passionate individual starts a company to change the world for the better - but that's always overly simplistic. While I wouldn't describe Musk as a pure money grubber, I honestly do not believe Musk is as far down that spectrum as popularly believed.

Hitchhiker 14y ago

Elon's more of the real deal than most of the ecosystem out there.. his degree of belief is evident post Paypal. Most exits of that scale spawn VCs or incubator dons.. “There’s a tremendous bias against taking risks. Everyone is trying to optimize their ass-covering.”[1] [1] - http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/10/ff-elon-musk-qa/all/ http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/10/ff-elon-musk-qa/al...