7 ms·

Want a better pitch? Watch Elon Musk’s presentation for the Tesla Powerwall

133 points by scardine 11y ago

zhte415 11y ago
Present problem, measurable impact of problem. Present solution, and measurable impact of solution. Have done enough initially to show that is feasible. Fantastic.
- ak39 11y ago
  Not necessarily. I'm not being contrarian for the sake of it. This approach that takes the first third of the time presenting the problem to an audience that arrived to hear the solution to a known problem can sometimes be annoying. It could just as well be done this way: 1. State the problem in a short less than 1 minute summary. 2. Present the solution and sustainability etc (bulk of the presentation) 3. Then, lastly, present the problem that most already know - only this time in detail.
  - zhte415 11y ago
    No time or break down was mentioned. That is your imagination. > For the sake of it.
- drewfish 11y ago
  I see it more in storytelling terms: the existing hell, the seed of hope, the promised land, the hero's path, the hero made real. It's not so much about the consistency of the storyline itself but instead the emotions which develop in the audience as the story is told. While I think the steps in the article make emotional sense, I didn't think Elon's powerwall presentation was all that well done. For example the "seed of hope" came across more as a "seed of desperation." He didn't really explain why we're now _able_ to make progress, in a way we haven't been able to in the past. (The audience at Elon's presentation also seemed rather irrationally exuberant, excited for some reason other than presentation itself.)
Hermel 11y ago
While the presentation succeeds at conveying an appealing vision, it dramatically lacks substance. What is "one pixel" supposed to mean? I'm not a child. Give me square kilometers. Or how does the price compare to competitors? Maybe I'm different than most, but I actually care more about the numbers and cold facts than nicely prepared hot air.
- Jugurtha 11y ago
  I understand, but here's why you can't do that.. Let's look at about a 30 seconds excerpt from his intervention in Norway[0]. From 8m7 to 8m38. Now, he starts explaining the numbers at 8m7s. At 8m38, he's made his point and at that stage, you would be 'convinced'. The interviewer said "Uhuh" (you can hear the audience laugh when she says that). She didn't understand that he has already made his point. (1 kilometre² ==> 1GW). She says "With you so far" and I smiled because she was completely lost and didn't even know it. This is similar to Apple's "1,000 songs in your pocket". First time I heard that I thought "How many gigs?" and it frustrated me. The point of these oversimplifications is to convey a point to the masses. Technical people can find out and understand this and make sense of KWh and what-not.. But you need to simplify to reach a large number of people so that at the very least, the idea of full solar power generation floats in the collective mind. You tell a lambda citizen that the iPod has 2GB of storage capcity, it doesn't "speak" to him. You tell him "1,000 songs in your pocket" and everyone can understand that. From child to grand-mother. You're not the target audience. Yes, it's frustrating, but you're an outlier because you can work out the numbers. He's trying to make it mainstream. Or else the audience would've been as clueless as the journalist in Norway. By the way, he goes into more details in that intervention. It's not "power-pointy" and the audience isn't the cheering and laughing for no reason type (they're in the Oil & Gas industry). [0] https://youtu.be/0ZsVxSDB7NY?t=8m7s https://youtu.be/0ZsVxSDB7NY?t=8m7s
  - Osmium 11y ago
    > You tell a lambda citizen that the iPod has 2GB of storage capcity, it doesn't "speak" to him. I don't really agree with this 'us vs. them' thinking. I'm a technical person, but 2GB doesn't really mean much to me. What bitrate are my songs encoded at on average? Do I use VBR? What bitrates can I get away with? etc. I'd have to do a rough sum in my head, and the only answer I'd get is 'in the 1000s' anyway, so it doesn't give me any extra information. The fact is, even for technical people, approximations and hand waving are great as starting points. They set expectations. I feel like anything more complicated than that (hard numbers) only have the potential to be misleading anyway, because they let us think we have more information than we actually do. It's only when you actually start working things out that those numbers (so how many GW does a city need? a typical house? what's the variance in these numbers?) become more relevant, but that's not the sort of thing you can do in your head anyway.
XJOKOLAT 11y ago
The only bit that really stood to me was when he started talking high level vision. "This is actually within the power of humanity to do, we have done things like this before". goosebumps The rest was standard, average, decent fluff.
mashmac2 11y ago
Want to really dive into this? Read Duarte's Resonate (available free from the author here: http://resonate.duarte.com/ http://resonate.duarte.com/ ) Same concepts, just much more in depth, with great examples.
- vtsrh 11y ago
  I was genuinely interested in the topic and clicked on the link. I was met with an interface that was alien to me, as if someone went out of their way to make it unusable and semi-broken. Browsers have an established UI with a scroll bar, yet people constantly find new ways to break it. Check this page out: http://resonate.duarte.com/#!page226 http://resonate.duarte.com/#!page226 Using a scroll bar to fix the decision to not use the scroll bar as the main navigation tool. ( And the page is torn unless the window has the correct width. )
  - IkmoIkmo 11y ago
    Totally agreed and oh so ironic that a guide to presenting had me leave 15 seconds in due to the way the information was presented.
aw3c2 11y ago
To be honest, the two minutes I could stomach felt like a generic TEDx talk. Cringeworthy dramaticly colored photos, "lol so spontaneous" outbursts from the audience. Hmpf... Don't try to manipulate my emotions, or if you must, do it so well that I don't notice.
Fede_V 11y ago
This is a bit of a pet-peeve of mine, but I really dislike it when people focus on the aesthetic or the presentation style of Musk or Jobs. Musk gives great presentations, but the reason he is widely respected is because he was actually able to deliver what he presented. In the most recent Musk biography, they discuss how he spent time at parties reading obscure russian textbooks on rocket physics while everyone else was having fun. He stresses the importance of estimating things from first principles, instead of relying on existing market estimates. However - these things are hard, take a lot of work, and are not as glamorous as making a fancy presentation. Being able to communicate your ideas clearly and in a compelling way is a very important skill, especially for a leader. But I think it's very important to stress that it's a very small part of the reason certain people are highly successful - it just happens to be very glamourous, and kinda fun, so people like to focus on that. Zuckerberg, Page, etc are all incredibly successful, yet they were not known (at least initially!) for their brilliant public speaking skills.
- cconcepts 11y ago
  Well put. As the adage goes "talk is cheap" or should I say "presentations are cheap".
- Osmium 11y ago
  I don't think it's glamour though, is it? I mean, Musk is not the best public speaker, and yet his presentations are amazing in spite of this. And they're amazing because they're real: backed by logical thinking, real engineering, and an appeal to first principles. Anyone can make a flashy presentation, but I don't think that's what we're celebrating here.
  - thret 11y ago
    I think he's just bad enough at public speaking that it adds to his charm - he comes off as sincere and eager rather than polished and professional.
madeofpalk 11y ago
I've always been incredibly confused as to why everyone clamours over Elon Musk's presentations. IMO, he's actually pretty terrible at presenting. But he delivers great products in a very straightforward kind of way, and he seems to have such a forward-thinking ambition. That's why people idolise him so much.
- sanjeetsuhag 11y ago
  People are not enamored by his presentation skills; they are drawn in by the sincerity and the ingenuity in his manner/style.
- hliyan 11y ago
  I like everything about Musk, and this is the first time I'm actually sitting down and listening to him present. But I was slightly put off by his habit of punctuating significant statements with that characteristic half-hearted chuckle.
- EarlPoncho 11y ago
  yeah since when is stuttering and fumbling your way through a presentation considered good?
27182818284 11y ago
Mad Men's Kodak presentation in season one is one of the best pitches I've seen. If you haven't seen it, and even if you haven't watched the show, you should. https://youtu.be/suRDUFpsHus https://youtu.be/suRDUFpsHus
madengr 11y ago
I don't get the "power wall". Unlike a car, a house has space for lead acid batteries. They are cheap at Costco and recyclable.
- IkmoIkmo 11y ago
  Well don't forget to a large extent it's probably about economies of scale. Lead acid may be more economical when density/weight isn't as big a concern (such as in a home), but Tesla wants to produce cheap car batteries which can't be lead acid for the goals they set for their cars, and if they have a large extra market for the car batteries they produce, they can produce them cheaper, more efficiently, at larger scales. If Tesla wasn't producing cars and somehow found itself wanting to build batteries for homes, still, it may not have gone lithium-ion. Beyond that though there are still (some) issues with the amount of cycles/lifespan, charging speed, disposal and efficiency of lead acid, even if they're cheap and recyclable. And even in houses, space is still a concern with lead acid being a few times more voluminous as lithium-ion, and it's not like the power wall is a tiny unit. Don't forget the standard version has a capacity of 7 kWh, while using a clothes washer and a clothes dryer just once uses up about 5 kwh+ according to Tesla itself. And the Tesla car batteries typically have 75 to 85 kwh of capacity or so, so you'd need 10 units fully charged to charge your car once. They've made it clear that you can buy and link multiple power walls, and I wouldn't be surprised if people ended up having more than 1 in their home. So space is definitely not completely irrelevant unless you're not in a very urban environment (which is a big use case for sure, but not always the case).
  - ZeroGravitas 11y ago
    Two potential other things that Tesla might have up their sleeve: Creating a product that gives car batteries a second life (and therefore a resale value when no longer suitable for use in cars). I don't think Tesla has officially commented on this but some of their competitors are explicit about this use case. The battery in your car(s) acting like a powerwall when plugged in, so sharing software for demand management.
    - 11y ago
brianstorms 11y ago
It was a mediocre presentation, thanks to Musk's Muskifying it to the max. Stammering, mumbling, nervous, rushing here and there, not connected with the pace of the audience, assuming the audience understands certain terminology... oh, and having the audience wait like 45 minutes, 50 minutes (or was it over an hour, I forget) for the event to start, and not apologizing at all for making the audience wait so long. The media often like to say Musk is the next Steve Jobs. It's just the opposite. Musk is the anti-Jobs. He doesn't give a damn about his presentations, he doesn't rehearse for them, doesn't care whether the message gets through or not. If you are bright, and you grok what he's saying, fine. If you are new to EVs, or solar, or stationary storage, or battery technology, too bad. It's part of a company-wide problem at Tesla: communications. It's really bad. Internal, and external. I believe it's because Musk doesn't value it. It could wind up hurting Tesla and I would argue it already is hurting the company.
- josefresco 11y ago
  "Musk is the anti-Jobs." I find that very refreshing and exciting. I think we're all hung-over from the over polished, maniacally-focused presentations/shows and overall approach that Jobs was famous for. With Elon you feel like you're hearing from a really bright guy, who'd rather be engineering something in the back room. The fact that he actually delivers, AND seems to deliver on the design side as well - makes it all the more intriguing. You could argue that Jobs did both - but I think Elon's quirkiness, and outspoken nature/transparency is a pleasant contrast.
- jczhang 11y ago
  Wait you think Musk doesn't value communications? I think it doesn't make sense to jump to that conclusion simply because he doesn't rehearse for PR events. I think any company that doesn't value communication as a top priority could not have made it as far as spacex or tesla. It's the reason he puts machines next to designers and programmers at both tesla and spacex. It's the reason he'll push people to work 80+ hours, because it's more efficient to have one person work 80 hours than two people at 40 due to communication/knowledge transfer efficiencies. It's the reason he has banned most acronyms at spacex. I mean I feel I could keep going on because you have to have to prioritize communications internally if any company, especially a startup, is to do well.
twlng 11y ago
I think Steve Jobs 'one more thing' is an excellent counterpoint to point 3 -'Show the promised land before explaining how you’ll get there.'
zxcvvcxz 11y ago
This article completely misses the point. Musk is not a great presenter. He stutters, mumbles, goes off topic, etc as others have pointed out. Do you know what makes his presentations more worthwhile than pretty much anyone else in the Valley? The substance. He works on hard problems, and he fucking delivers. Who's got time for style when you're revolutionizing multiple industries? We see that it doesn't matter, people will watch his presentations, buy his products, and back his companies regardless. The real problem is that most people don't have anything worth pitching.
donaldmcintyre 11y ago
The part that impacted me in terms of presentation was the data: - With 160 million packs the US transitions to renewable energy. - With 900 million packs the world transitions to renewable energy. - With 2 billion packs everything in the world, including transport and heating, may transition to renewable energy. The general pitch is a classic fear mongering strategy used in sales for decades: 1. Beware, something very bad will happen to you. 2. But there is a solution. 3. I have that solution so you need to buy it from me. In finance it is used to sell insurance, retirement, and trust products.

133 points by scardine 11y ago

Present problem, measurable impact of problem. Present solution, and measurable impact of solution. Have done enough initially to show that is feasible. Fantastic.

ak39 11y ago
Not necessarily. I'm not being contrarian for the sake of it. This approach that takes the first third of the time presenting the problem to an audience that arrived to hear the solution to a known problem can sometimes be annoying. It could just as well be done this way: 1. State the problem in a short less than 1 minute summary. 2. Present the solution and sustainability etc (bulk of the presentation) 3. Then, lastly, present the problem that most already know - only this time in detail.
- zhte415 11y ago
  No time or break down was mentioned. That is your imagination. > For the sake of it.
drewfish 11y ago
I see it more in storytelling terms: the existing hell, the seed of hope, the promised land, the hero's path, the hero made real. It's not so much about the consistency of the storyline itself but instead the emotions which develop in the audience as the story is told. While I think the steps in the article make emotional sense, I didn't think Elon's powerwall presentation was all that well done. For example the "seed of hope" came across more as a "seed of desperation." He didn't really explain why we're now _able_ to make progress, in a way we haven't been able to in the past. (The audience at Elon's presentation also seemed rather irrationally exuberant, excited for some reason other than presentation itself.)

Hermel 11y ago

While the presentation succeeds at conveying an appealing vision, it dramatically lacks substance. What is "one pixel" supposed to mean? I'm not a child. Give me square kilometers. Or how does the price compare to competitors? Maybe I'm different than most, but I actually care more about the numbers and cold facts than nicely prepared hot air.

Jugurtha 11y ago
I understand, but here's why you can't do that.. Let's look at about a 30 seconds excerpt from his intervention in Norway[0]. From 8m7 to 8m38. Now, he starts explaining the numbers at 8m7s. At 8m38, he's made his point and at that stage, you would be 'convinced'. The interviewer said "Uhuh" (you can hear the audience laugh when she says that). She didn't understand that he has already made his point. (1 kilometre² ==> 1GW). She says "With you so far" and I smiled because she was completely lost and didn't even know it. This is similar to Apple's "1,000 songs in your pocket". First time I heard that I thought "How many gigs?" and it frustrated me. The point of these oversimplifications is to convey a point to the masses. Technical people can find out and understand this and make sense of KWh and what-not.. But you need to simplify to reach a large number of people so that at the very least, the idea of full solar power generation floats in the collective mind. You tell a lambda citizen that the iPod has 2GB of storage capcity, it doesn't "speak" to him. You tell him "1,000 songs in your pocket" and everyone can understand that. From child to grand-mother. You're not the target audience. Yes, it's frustrating, but you're an outlier because you can work out the numbers. He's trying to make it mainstream. Or else the audience would've been as clueless as the journalist in Norway. By the way, he goes into more details in that intervention. It's not "power-pointy" and the audience isn't the cheering and laughing for no reason type (they're in the Oil & Gas industry). [0] https://youtu.be/0ZsVxSDB7NY?t=8m7s https://youtu.be/0ZsVxSDB7NY?t=8m7s
- Osmium 11y ago
  > You tell a lambda citizen that the iPod has 2GB of storage capcity, it doesn't "speak" to him. I don't really agree with this 'us vs. them' thinking. I'm a technical person, but 2GB doesn't really mean much to me. What bitrate are my songs encoded at on average? Do I use VBR? What bitrates can I get away with? etc. I'd have to do a rough sum in my head, and the only answer I'd get is 'in the 1000s' anyway, so it doesn't give me any extra information. The fact is, even for technical people, approximations and hand waving are great as starting points. They set expectations. I feel like anything more complicated than that (hard numbers) only have the potential to be misleading anyway, because they let us think we have more information than we actually do. It's only when you actually start working things out that those numbers (so how many GW does a city need? a typical house? what's the variance in these numbers?) become more relevant, but that's not the sort of thing you can do in your head anyway.

XJOKOLAT 11y ago

The only bit that really stood to me was when he started talking high level vision. "This is actually within the power of humanity to do, we have done things like this before". goosebumps The rest was standard, average, decent fluff.

mashmac2 11y ago

Want to really dive into this? Read Duarte's Resonate (available free from the author here: http://resonate.duarte.com/ http://resonate.duarte.com/ ) Same concepts, just much more in depth, with great examples.

vtsrh 11y ago
I was genuinely interested in the topic and clicked on the link. I was met with an interface that was alien to me, as if someone went out of their way to make it unusable and semi-broken. Browsers have an established UI with a scroll bar, yet people constantly find new ways to break it. Check this page out: http://resonate.duarte.com/#!page226 http://resonate.duarte.com/#!page226 Using a scroll bar to fix the decision to not use the scroll bar as the main navigation tool. ( And the page is torn unless the window has the correct width. )
- IkmoIkmo 11y ago
  Totally agreed and oh so ironic that a guide to presenting had me leave 15 seconds in due to the way the information was presented.

aw3c2 11y ago

To be honest, the two minutes I could stomach felt like a generic TEDx talk. Cringeworthy dramaticly colored photos, "lol so spontaneous" outbursts from the audience. Hmpf... Don't try to manipulate my emotions, or if you must, do it so well that I don't notice.

Fede_V 11y ago

This is a bit of a pet-peeve of mine, but I really dislike it when people focus on the aesthetic or the presentation style of Musk or Jobs. Musk gives great presentations, but the reason he is widely respected is because he was actually able to deliver what he presented. In the most recent Musk biography, they discuss how he spent time at parties reading obscure russian textbooks on rocket physics while everyone else was having fun. He stresses the importance of estimating things from first principles, instead of relying on existing market estimates. However - these things are hard, take a lot of work, and are not as glamorous as making a fancy presentation. Being able to communicate your ideas clearly and in a compelling way is a very important skill, especially for a leader. But I think it's very important to stress that it's a very small part of the reason certain people are highly successful - it just happens to be very glamourous, and kinda fun, so people like to focus on that. Zuckerberg, Page, etc are all incredibly successful, yet they were not known (at least initially!) for their brilliant public speaking skills.

cconcepts 11y ago
Well put. As the adage goes "talk is cheap" or should I say "presentations are cheap".
Osmium 11y ago
I don't think it's glamour though, is it? I mean, Musk is not the best public speaker, and yet his presentations are amazing in spite of this. And they're amazing because they're real: backed by logical thinking, real engineering, and an appeal to first principles. Anyone can make a flashy presentation, but I don't think that's what we're celebrating here.
- thret 11y ago
  I think he's just bad enough at public speaking that it adds to his charm - he comes off as sincere and eager rather than polished and professional.

madeofpalk 11y ago

I've always been incredibly confused as to why everyone clamours over Elon Musk's presentations. IMO, he's actually pretty terrible at presenting. But he delivers great products in a very straightforward kind of way, and he seems to have such a forward-thinking ambition. That's why people idolise him so much.

sanjeetsuhag 11y ago
People are not enamored by his presentation skills; they are drawn in by the sincerity and the ingenuity in his manner/style.
hliyan 11y ago
I like everything about Musk, and this is the first time I'm actually sitting down and listening to him present. But I was slightly put off by his habit of punctuating significant statements with that characteristic half-hearted chuckle.
EarlPoncho 11y ago
yeah since when is stuttering and fumbling your way through a presentation considered good?

27182818284 11y ago

Mad Men's Kodak presentation in season one is one of the best pitches I've seen. If you haven't seen it, and even if you haven't watched the show, you should. https://youtu.be/suRDUFpsHus https://youtu.be/suRDUFpsHus

madengr 11y ago

I don't get the "power wall". Unlike a car, a house has space for lead acid batteries. They are cheap at Costco and recyclable.

IkmoIkmo 11y ago
Well don't forget to a large extent it's probably about economies of scale. Lead acid may be more economical when density/weight isn't as big a concern (such as in a home), but Tesla wants to produce cheap car batteries which can't be lead acid for the goals they set for their cars, and if they have a large extra market for the car batteries they produce, they can produce them cheaper, more efficiently, at larger scales. If Tesla wasn't producing cars and somehow found itself wanting to build batteries for homes, still, it may not have gone lithium-ion. Beyond that though there are still (some) issues with the amount of cycles/lifespan, charging speed, disposal and efficiency of lead acid, even if they're cheap and recyclable. And even in houses, space is still a concern with lead acid being a few times more voluminous as lithium-ion, and it's not like the power wall is a tiny unit. Don't forget the standard version has a capacity of 7 kWh, while using a clothes washer and a clothes dryer just once uses up about 5 kwh+ according to Tesla itself. And the Tesla car batteries typically have 75 to 85 kwh of capacity or so, so you'd need 10 units fully charged to charge your car once. They've made it clear that you can buy and link multiple power walls, and I wouldn't be surprised if people ended up having more than 1 in their home. So space is definitely not completely irrelevant unless you're not in a very urban environment (which is a big use case for sure, but not always the case).
- ZeroGravitas 11y ago
  Two potential other things that Tesla might have up their sleeve: Creating a product that gives car batteries a second life (and therefore a resale value when no longer suitable for use in cars). I don't think Tesla has officially commented on this but some of their competitors are explicit about this use case. The battery in your car(s) acting like a powerwall when plugged in, so sharing software for demand management.
  - 11y ago

brianstorms 11y ago

It was a mediocre presentation, thanks to Musk's Muskifying it to the max. Stammering, mumbling, nervous, rushing here and there, not connected with the pace of the audience, assuming the audience understands certain terminology... oh, and having the audience wait like 45 minutes, 50 minutes (or was it over an hour, I forget) for the event to start, and not apologizing at all for making the audience wait so long. The media often like to say Musk is the next Steve Jobs. It's just the opposite. Musk is the anti-Jobs. He doesn't give a damn about his presentations, he doesn't rehearse for them, doesn't care whether the message gets through or not. If you are bright, and you grok what he's saying, fine. If you are new to EVs, or solar, or stationary storage, or battery technology, too bad. It's part of a company-wide problem at Tesla: communications. It's really bad. Internal, and external. I believe it's because Musk doesn't value it. It could wind up hurting Tesla and I would argue it already is hurting the company.

josefresco 11y ago
"Musk is the anti-Jobs." I find that very refreshing and exciting. I think we're all hung-over from the over polished, maniacally-focused presentations/shows and overall approach that Jobs was famous for. With Elon you feel like you're hearing from a really bright guy, who'd rather be engineering something in the back room. The fact that he actually delivers, AND seems to deliver on the design side as well - makes it all the more intriguing. You could argue that Jobs did both - but I think Elon's quirkiness, and outspoken nature/transparency is a pleasant contrast.
jczhang 11y ago
Wait you think Musk doesn't value communications? I think it doesn't make sense to jump to that conclusion simply because he doesn't rehearse for PR events. I think any company that doesn't value communication as a top priority could not have made it as far as spacex or tesla. It's the reason he puts machines next to designers and programmers at both tesla and spacex. It's the reason he'll push people to work 80+ hours, because it's more efficient to have one person work 80 hours than two people at 40 due to communication/knowledge transfer efficiencies. It's the reason he has banned most acronyms at spacex. I mean I feel I could keep going on because you have to have to prioritize communications internally if any company, especially a startup, is to do well.

twlng 11y ago

I think Steve Jobs 'one more thing' is an excellent counterpoint to point 3 -'Show the promised land before explaining how you’ll get there.'

zxcvvcxz 11y ago

This article completely misses the point. Musk is not a great presenter. He stutters, mumbles, goes off topic, etc as others have pointed out. Do you know what makes his presentations more worthwhile than pretty much anyone else in the Valley? The substance. He works on hard problems, and he fucking delivers. Who's got time for style when you're revolutionizing multiple industries? We see that it doesn't matter, people will watch his presentations, buy his products, and back his companies regardless. The real problem is that most people don't have anything worth pitching.

donaldmcintyre 11y ago

The part that impacted me in terms of presentation was the data: - With 160 million packs the US transitions to renewable energy. - With 900 million packs the world transitions to renewable energy. - With 2 billion packs everything in the world, including transport and heating, may transition to renewable energy. The general pitch is a classic fear mongering strategy used in sales for decades: 1. Beware, something very bad will happen to you. 2. But there is a solution. 3. I have that solution so you need to buy it from me. In finance it is used to sell insurance, retirement, and trust products.