Where Musk's genius lie

[edhopper]

It wasn't in building an electric car, it was in convincing a lot of rich people that the electric equivalent to a Toyota Corolla was an expensive luxury car.

That and the perpetual promise of a "self driving car" that will never come from Tesla.

[Irish_Dem]

1. Yes he appears to be nothing more than a smart con man.

[GoCubsGo]

3. Smart at conning, and born halfway between third and home.

It's easier to con when you can buy your way into a lot more things, thanks to Daddy's emerald mine/real estate fortune.

[Irish_Dem]

5. Exactly. His inherited wealth gave him access to those he wants to fleece.

[Celerity]

12. The only money he got from his family for capital was 28,000 usd his father gave him and his brother

to start up Zip2.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk

Musk attended Waterkloof House Preparatory School, Bryanston High School, and Pretoria Boys High School, from which he graduated. Musk applied for a Canadian passport through his Canadian-born mother, knowing that it would be easier to immigrate to the United States this way. While waiting for his application to be processed, he attended the University of Pretoria for five months.

Musk arrived in Canada in June 1989 and lived with a second cousin in Saskatchewan for a year, working odd jobs at a farm and lumber-mill. In 1990, he entered Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. Two years later, he transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, where he completed studies for a Bachelor of Arts degree in physics and a Bachelor of Science degree in economics from the Wharton School in 1995. He reportedly hosted large, ticketed house parties to help pay for tuition, and wrote a business plan for an electronic book-scanning service similar to Google Books.

In 1994, Musk held two internships in Silicon Valley: one at the energy storage startup Pinnacle Research Institute, which investigated electrolytic ultracapacitors for energy storage, and another at the Palo Alto–based startup Rocket Science Games. In 1995, he was accepted to a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) program in materials science at Stanford University. However, Musk decided to join the Internet boom instead and applied for a job at Netscape, to which he reportedly never received a response.

Zip2

In 1995, Musk, his brother Kimbal, and Greg Kouri founded Zip2. Errol Musk provided them with $28,000 in funding. The company developed an Internet city guide with maps, directions, and yellow pages, and marketed it to newspapers. They worked at a small rented office in Palo Alto, Musk coding the website every night. Eventually, Zip2 obtained contracts with The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune. The brothers persuaded the board of directors to abandon a merger with CitySearch; however, Musk's attempts to become CEO were thwarted. Compaq acquired Zip2 for $307 million in cash in February 1999, and Musk received $22 million for his 7-percent share.

X.com and PayPal

Later in 1999, Musk co-founded X.com, an online financial services and e-mail payment company. X.com was one of the first federally insured online banks and over 200,000 customers joined after its initial months of operation. Even though Musk founded the company, investors regarded him as inexperienced and replaced him with Intuit CEO Bill Harris by the end of the year.

In 2000, X.com merged with online bank Confinity to avoid competition, as Confinity's money-transfer service PayPal was more popular than X.com's service. Musk then returned as CEO of the merged company. His preference for Microsoft over Unix-based software caused a rift among the company's employees, and led Peter Thiel, Confinity's founder, to resign. With the company suffering from compounding technological issues and the lack of a cohesive business model, the board ousted Musk and replaced him with Thiel in September 2000.

Under Thiel, the company focused on the money-transfer service and was renamed PayPal in 2001. In 2002, PayPal was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion in stock, of which Musk—the largest shareholder with 11.72% of shares—received $175.8 million. In 2017, more than one and a half decades later, Musk purchased the X.com domain from PayPal for its sentimental value. In 2022, Musk discussed a goal of creating "X, the everything app".

[Irish_Dem]

14. How many parents can hand their 24 y/o kid almost $30K.

And not care if they lose the money.

Also Musk's wealth upbringing gave him the panache to con others.
He spoke the language of the wealthy.
He knew the norms and mores of the ultra rich.

[Celerity]

19. To answer your question, millions, on a global basis. Parents stake their children all the time.

Also, his family did not even pay all his tuition for uni, which millions of parents do (I see people on DU all the time talk about paying for their children's uni and that is surely ofttimes far more than 28K usd.)

How many parents can hand their 24 y/o kid almost $30K. And not care if they lose the money.

The rest of your reply i agree with for the most part, although I do not know what you mean by 'ultra rich'.

Musk DID have a unique and privileged upbringing (his father is a very interesting character), especially on the experiential end of things, but it wasn't like he was repeatedly funded with a shedload of cash like, for but one example, the motherfucker Trump was (hundreds of millions in Trump's case).

I am NOT defending Musk btw, I think he is a dangerous and unhinged actor, and quite likely a sociopath. He is deffo not a force for good.

[Irish_Dem]

23. Paying for a child's education is totally different from handing them $30K fun money.

Funding an education is a legitimate investment in the child's future.

Turning over $30K so the kid can pretend to be a big shot is another thing altogether.

[Celerity]

26. It was 28K usd, not millions of dollars. nt

[edhopper]

17. Looks like he was more lucky

than shrewd. His bad business decisions still netted him millions. As with PayPal.

[Celerity]

22. Right time, right place for sure aided the hell out of him. Mid to late 90s silicon valley startups

were often snapped up for silly money despite being based upon horrid fundamental business models. This was a huge driver for the dotcom bust in 2000.

[Irish_Dem]

18. He always had a huge financial safety net. He could afford to take big risks.

He knew his father would not let him starve.

I wonder who paid his food and housing bills while Musk was trying to make it big.

[asm128]

31. Maybe relying on Wikipedia might not be the best idea

According to wiki, Musk got a bachelors in Science in physics. According to this thread https://www.democraticunderground.com/100217383462
he did not.

If that is false, who knows what else is false, including the funding amount.

[Celerity]

32. Multiple points: (1) That tweet is 3 days old and has not been definitively proven to be true at all

It may well be shown to be false, or it may well be shown to be accurate, and if the latter, we move to:

(2) Wikipedia is meticulously maintained in terms of bio pages about world famous and controversial figures like Musk. IF it is shown to be the case that those degrees listed (and it is not just Wiki, it is basically all other media and news outlets for ages who have said the same things in regards to his degrees, including legal SEC filings, etc) are fake, then Wikipedia will show all this.

(3) Here is the source for the 28K usd claim:

Vance, Ashlee (2017) [2015]. Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future (2nd ed.). New York: Ecco. p. Ch.4. ISBN 978-0-06-230125-3. Errol Musk gave his sons $28,000 to help them through this period, but they were more or less broke after getting the office space, licensing software, and buying some equipment.

If you have actual evidence that it is inaccurate, then by all means post it. I would be more than happy to retract. I have zero love for Musk.

[2naSalit]

2. And getting...

Taxpayer funds to develop it. And in getting us to pay him to come up with SpaceX stuff. The government should buy SpaceX and be done with that asshole.

[Pachamama]

4. +1000000

Completely agree

[GoCubsGo]

6. Well, paying his engineers to come up with the SpaceX stuff.

Much like Trump, Eloon is all about putting his name on other peoples' hard work and genius.

[2naSalit]

9. Which makes me...

Also wonder how well they where actually paid.

[chia]

10. Musk broke labor laws by firing SpaceX employees for criticizing him in open letter, complaint says

https://fortune.com/2022/11/17/elon-musk-broke-labor-laws-by-firing-spacex-employees-nlrb-complaint/

[2naSalit]

11. Saw that...

And there have been complaints in the past, they were simply squashed by our alleged fair and balanced MSM.

[GoCubsGo]

13. Lots of the same shit going on at his Texas Tesla factory, as well.

Along with dangerous working conditions, wage theft, etc. And, racism has been pervasive in the California plant for years. Part of the reason he's moving to Texas is because the various labor laws are FAR fewer than in CA, so he'll get away with a lot more labor abuse.

[2naSalit]

16. Yes...

That move to Texass was deliberate and a clear indication of what he's about. Sorry for his employees but I hope he crashes real hard real soon.

[patricia92243]

7. Where Musk genius lies - in the ground or wherever things that don't exist are.

[Joinfortmill]

8. He keeps showing himself to be a 'creepy' type. People avoid creepy.

[gulliver]

15. Self-driving's not going to happen until general AI

And Musk has been hedging his bet on FSD. Now he's talking about neural nets doing what the human brain does. In other words, he's giving up and may even know it.

But Musk is a fantastic force for good on the planet. Electric vehicles are the wave of the future, and he created that market. They're not in themselves the best way to reduce carbon emissions dollar-for-dollar, but that ignores a major positive externality, the sheer excitement EVs bring to the climate change challenge.

Liberals are usually open to new ideas and innovation. People like Musk should be on our side.

[Bristlecone]

20. I take it you have never driven a Tesla or a Corolla

Night and day comparison. I despise Elon Musk, but c’mon.

[Celerity]

24. +1

[edhopper]

27. Okay

a Camry then.

[Bristlecone]

28. My boss has a new Camry, he loves it

And he did lease that over a Tesla 3 as it turns out.

So point made!

[BannonsLiver]

29. I should think so

Just like a Ford Focus is “night and day” from a Rolls Royce. No big revelation there.

[edhopper]

30. The Tesla

Is closer to a Focus than a Rolls.

[Kennah]

21. Who will play him in "The Greatest Showman II"?

[Darwins_Retriever]

33. The geniuses at Tesla and SpaceX are the engineers and designers

Just imagine you are an engineer at Tesla, sitting in a meeting, when your billionaire boss says that he wants the car to drive itself. Or he wants a huge electronic tablet that has all the controls for the car (no buttons) and is mounted lower than the dashboard.

[edhopper]

34. So true

[Johnny2X2X]

35. Or at Twitter when he says, "anyone who can actually write code report to the 10th floor"

Then asks them to bring the most relevant lines of code they've recently written.

Musk is not a programmer, he knows some Python, Java, C, and C++. Python is considered the easiest language to learn with the possible exceptions of html or Java. Doubt he knows Scala or Ruby which is what Twitter is written in. But he's got some coding knowledge, but he's dealing with experts at Twitter, people who have forgotten more programming languages than Musk has ever learned. I'm sure those people despise him right now, he's an amateur pretending to be an expert. Probably throws around big words for effect while bullying people. In the end, he won't shut up for a minute and listen to his experts.

[BlueIdaho]

37. I thought his real genius was

Spending daddy’s money. They guy never “invented” anything. He bought others ideas and payed for the talent to bring them to the market.

[edhopper]

38. He only got $28K from daddy

his luck is screwing up a company that got bought by a company that became PayPal.

[BlueIdaho]

39. So his daddy who co-owned an emerald mine

Only gave him 28k? Sorry. Not buying that anymore than TFG being a self made multi-millionaire.

[edhopper]

40. That is what happened

of course he didn't have to worry about failing, as daddy would bail him out.