5 ms·

If I take a step back from this, I'd say it's bad strategy to bet against Elon Musk. IMHO, part of what makes his companies appealing is that he has a remarkab

by Nrsolis 13y ago

If I take a step back from this, I'd say it's bad strategy to bet against Elon Musk. IMHO, part of what makes his companies appealing is that he has a remarkable track record of keeping his head down and just getting sh!* done. I'm very impressed with his work ethic and vision and I think Tesla is going to go far. Secondly, if he is successful and manages to bootstrap and entire electric car industry from the ground up, what kind of effect do you think this innovation is going to have on the world? Think of the massive investment in geopolitical resource availability that will be mitigated by the diversification of fuel options for auto transport. He already hit one home run with PayPal, hit a triple with SpaceX, and might steal home with Tesla. He's a star player in a very sparse field of real innovators right now. Disclosure: I also trade TSLA options, but I'm quite bullish on the company.

encoderer 13y ago
Musk had very little to do with PayPal. He built a competing product, X.com, which was acquired by PayPal. Musk then served as CEO and if his interview in "Founders at Work" is any indication, he didn't do much besides piss off Max Levchin before stepping down after a relatively short tenure. I love what Musk has done post PayPal, but no reason to rewrite history here.
- pbreit 13y ago
  > Musk had very little to do with PayPal That's false.
- aj37 13y ago
  I know that's what the PayPal Wars book implies but Musk has argued against this version of history pretty strongly - http://gawker.com/230076/an-alternate-history-according-to-elon-musk http://gawker.com/230076/an-alternate-history-according-to-e.... I imagine the truth is somewhere between the two extremes.
- packetbeats 13y ago
  According to the "PayPal wars" book PayPal didn't acquire X.com, it was a 50-50 merger. It is true (again, according to this book written by a PayPaler) that Musk wasn't as important to the PayPal success as the "funder" title would imply, but he did drive innovation into the space as a competitor and then saved the company from the hands a clueless CEO. It's very hard to say if PayPal would have succeeded without him. For one, it would have probably been much harder for PayPal to raise 100 Mio without the X.com merger. They got that amount shortly before the dotcom crash, so it was crucial for their survival.
- wamatt 13y ago
  >Musk had very little to do with PayPal. That's rather inaccurate. Musk's company was X.com and Thiel/Levchin/Noseks's was called Confinity. They had a 50/50 merger in early 2000, and at first the new company was called X.com. Furthermore, Confinity[1] was doing Palm Pilot payments under the PayPal brand[2], while X.com was working on internet money transmission over email. Which idea was more useful in the long run? (hint: if you chose Palm Pilot's - you're wrong) Much of the disinformation stems from a book called the "The Paypal Wars" written by a Thiel fanboy, that is embarrassingly biased. Musk writes: "The only negativity in recent years was due to a book called The PayPal Wars, written by a sycophantic jackass called Eric Jackson. This guy was one notch above an intern at PayPal in the first few years of the company, but gives the impression he was a key player and privy to all the high level discussions. Eric couldn't find a real publisher, so Peter funded Eric to self-publish the book. Since Eric worships Peter, the outcome was obvious - Peter sounds like Mel Gibson in Braveheart and my role is somewhere between negligible and a bad seed. However, to his credit, Peter didn't realize the book would be as bad as it was and apologized to me personally at a Room 9 board meeting at David Sacks's home in LA."[3] Post-merger it's hard to say who did what exactly, and Levchin for example was instrumental in Paypal's anti-fraud system, a key development that allowed the company to navigate around a potentially ruinous situation. The bottom line is, 3 hyper-smart guys (Thiel, Levchin and Nosek), don't give away essentially 50% of their shares to some someone else (X.com) on a whim. This was a calculated and deliberate decision. Similarly, it's unlikely Musk would have succeeded alone either, and thus why they are all called co-founders of PayPal, Inc. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confinity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confinity [2] http://www.halplotkin.com/cnbcs029.htm http://www.halplotkin.com/cnbcs029.htm [3] http://gawker.com/230076/an-alternate-history-according-to-elon-musk* http://gawker.com/230076/an-alternate-history-according-to-e...
  - encoderer 13y ago
    My knowledge of this comes directly from the Levchin interview in Founders at Work by YC's own Jessica Livingston. I consider that a primary source. Regarding the name, PayPal the product -- which included a web app and not just the Palm Pilot product -- launched before the merger. I remember evaluating both x.com and paypal when I was in high school selling computer parts on auction -- at Haggle.com. Finally, starting your comment with "Sigh, blah blah middlebrow blah blah" just kind of makes you seem.... yeah.
mempko 13y ago
cars are not an innovative technology. Cars that run on electricity existed since the 1920s and only recently mass produced by the likes of Nissan and others. Telsa sells expensive, heavy cars that run on batteries. Yes they are shiny. You know what would be innovative? Mass transit on a mass scale, away from automotive transport... but there is no money to be made on any market for that..
- Nrsolis 13y ago
  I don't know what you are talking about. That's about as close to apples and oranges as I can think. In order to have mass transit, you need to have the MASS part. Mass transit only works in areas with sufficient population density and predictable traffic patterns to make the investment in that infrastructure worthwhile. Electric cars, however, help extend the reach of the existing electrical infrastructure into transportation. In the area where I live, we have extensive commuter and long-haul rail. I also saw two different Tesla cars on the road in my neighborhood. The first portable computers were large, heavy, and expensive. Given the technology curve and the total addressable market of transportation, I'd expect we will see much more attention to that solution given the wall we've hit with hydrocarbon based transportation.

by Nrsolis 13y ago

encoderer 13y ago

Musk had very little to do with PayPal. He built a competing product, X.com, which was acquired by PayPal. Musk then served as CEO and if his interview in "Founders at Work" is any indication, he didn't do much besides piss off Max Levchin before stepping down after a relatively short tenure. I love what Musk has done post PayPal, but no reason to rewrite history here.

pbreit 13y ago
> Musk had very little to do with PayPal That's false.
aj37 13y ago
I know that's what the PayPal Wars book implies but Musk has argued against this version of history pretty strongly - http://gawker.com/230076/an-alternate-history-according-to-elon-musk http://gawker.com/230076/an-alternate-history-according-to-e.... I imagine the truth is somewhere between the two extremes.
packetbeats 13y ago
According to the "PayPal wars" book PayPal didn't acquire X.com, it was a 50-50 merger. It is true (again, according to this book written by a PayPaler) that Musk wasn't as important to the PayPal success as the "funder" title would imply, but he did drive innovation into the space as a competitor and then saved the company from the hands a clueless CEO. It's very hard to say if PayPal would have succeeded without him. For one, it would have probably been much harder for PayPal to raise 100 Mio without the X.com merger. They got that amount shortly before the dotcom crash, so it was crucial for their survival.
wamatt 13y ago
>Musk had very little to do with PayPal. That's rather inaccurate. Musk's company was X.com and Thiel/Levchin/Noseks's was called Confinity. They had a 50/50 merger in early 2000, and at first the new company was called X.com. Furthermore, Confinity[1] was doing Palm Pilot payments under the PayPal brand[2], while X.com was working on internet money transmission over email. Which idea was more useful in the long run? (hint: if you chose Palm Pilot's - you're wrong) Much of the disinformation stems from a book called the "The Paypal Wars" written by a Thiel fanboy, that is embarrassingly biased. Musk writes: "The only negativity in recent years was due to a book called The PayPal Wars, written by a sycophantic jackass called Eric Jackson. This guy was one notch above an intern at PayPal in the first few years of the company, but gives the impression he was a key player and privy to all the high level discussions. Eric couldn't find a real publisher, so Peter funded Eric to self-publish the book. Since Eric worships Peter, the outcome was obvious - Peter sounds like Mel Gibson in Braveheart and my role is somewhere between negligible and a bad seed. However, to his credit, Peter didn't realize the book would be as bad as it was and apologized to me personally at a Room 9 board meeting at David Sacks's home in LA."[3] Post-merger it's hard to say who did what exactly, and Levchin for example was instrumental in Paypal's anti-fraud system, a key development that allowed the company to navigate around a potentially ruinous situation. The bottom line is, 3 hyper-smart guys (Thiel, Levchin and Nosek), don't give away essentially 50% of their shares to some someone else (X.com) on a whim. This was a calculated and deliberate decision. Similarly, it's unlikely Musk would have succeeded alone either, and thus why they are all called co-founders of PayPal, Inc. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confinity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confinity [2] http://www.halplotkin.com/cnbcs029.htm http://www.halplotkin.com/cnbcs029.htm [3] http://gawker.com/230076/an-alternate-history-according-to-elon-musk* http://gawker.com/230076/an-alternate-history-according-to-e...
- encoderer 13y ago
  My knowledge of this comes directly from the Levchin interview in Founders at Work by YC's own Jessica Livingston. I consider that a primary source. Regarding the name, PayPal the product -- which included a web app and not just the Palm Pilot product -- launched before the merger. I remember evaluating both x.com and paypal when I was in high school selling computer parts on auction -- at Haggle.com. Finally, starting your comment with "Sigh, blah blah middlebrow blah blah" just kind of makes you seem.... yeah.

mempko 13y ago

cars are not an innovative technology. Cars that run on electricity existed since the 1920s and only recently mass produced by the likes of Nissan and others. Telsa sells expensive, heavy cars that run on batteries. Yes they are shiny. You know what would be innovative? Mass transit on a mass scale, away from automotive transport... but there is no money to be made on any market for that..

Nrsolis 13y ago
I don't know what you are talking about. That's about as close to apples and oranges as I can think. In order to have mass transit, you need to have the MASS part. Mass transit only works in areas with sufficient population density and predictable traffic patterns to make the investment in that infrastructure worthwhile. Electric cars, however, help extend the reach of the existing electrical infrastructure into transportation. In the area where I live, we have extensive commuter and long-haul rail. I also saw two different Tesla cars on the road in my neighborhood. The first portable computers were large, heavy, and expensive. Given the technology curve and the total addressable market of transportation, I'd expect we will see much more attention to that solution given the wall we've hit with hydrocarbon based transportation.