Five People Founded Tesla, But Only Elon Musk Became Extremely Rich
Five People Founded Tesla, But Only Elon Musk Became Extremely Rich
The untold story of Tesla’s unlucky co-founders and how they missed the billionaire bus
You're viewing a single thread.
Mush didn't found Tesla. He bought it later and put in the contract that he was able to call himself a founder
Or it could be said that he found Tesla in the "finders keepers" sense.
My brain now can't unsee how stupid the word Founded looks next to found.
Is it shaking your entire foundation?
He didn't found it, he found it.
👍 the English language is great
Exactly, but "technically" he is credited as a founder. He's a really good business man.
He isn't a "really good business man", everything he's made is built on a foundation of lies. Eventually, it'll collapse or be saved by socialised systems for being too big to fail. Musk is a con man, not a businessman. He's just made a living out of conning investors and the public alike.
I don't know, it sounds like the definition of a business man. Not one I'd admire, but not unlike lots of other business men.
No, businessmen do business. Steve Jobs did business, he figured out markets, created markets based on what his business could provide. That's actual business.
A grifter, a con man, is not a business man, they wear the skin of one to fool people like yourself into buying into the con. Looks like it works.
created markets based on what his business could provide.
As much as I loathe musk, this is exactly what Starlink is. It's a company founded solely to buy the product SpaceX is making, because other people couldn't buy enough.
Of course, Starlink is floating almost entirely on venture capital, but that's how Amazon got started too.
Here's the rub. Starlink is not and can not be profitable without venture capital and subsidies. It exists to funnel money away from taxpayers. It's a con built on lies like the rest. At least some people get to benefit from this, unlike people sold overhyped cars and promises of Mars colonies, but that's changing with price hikes and service degredations too.
can I get a source on the math for this? I haven't heard that before
What math do you want? The cost of launching infinite space ships forever is more than what subscribers pay. The satellites fall down in about a year and new ones need to be launched. The subscribers would have to pay for every single rocket launch. Right now American tax payers do.
True.
I think it was sarcasm.
Sarcasm doesn’t travel well through text.
Wasn't sarcasm, some are that gullible
Oh it wasn't.
Well then ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I understand where you're coming from, but business is brutal and things like this happen in that world. PayPal (formely X .com) was also started by Elon, I don't think he "scammed/tricked" anyone on that. And he has made billions for his investors over the years. I mean Tesla is worth over $600 billion, due to the marketing genius that is Elon. [Mistake: Elon didn't start PayPal, just X .com]
Man, learn something about someone before you go worshipping them.
X was bought by paypal, but was far from "integral." It was just its largest competitor for Confinidy at the time because Musk was washing it in money he made from a previous venture.Paypal was the more popular money transfer software, and it's the platform the new company formed around, even taking its name.
Musk was a actually briefly the CEO of PayPal, but his decisions were so poor that he was forced out.. He still retained enough shares of paypal to hit it big time, which is when he poured all that money into a long shot bet called Tesla, which he used goverment funds and seed capitol from his rich friends to keep alive until it turned an actual profit a decade later. With SpaceX, he leaned into fanboys like you calling him Tony stark, and managed to hire Gwynne Shotwell, a goddamn aeronautics powerhouse, as CEO the same year it was founded. She has brought SpaceX to success, by all accounts in spite of him. Its rumored that SpaceX keeps people around just to sideline Musk. That how disruptive he is to actual work. SpaceX was also utterly dependent on goverment subsides for most its existence, just like Tesla.
Dude grew up with emerald mine money, then just kept taking outlandish risks because he had an emerald mine to keep his ass housed and fed, and yeah, eventually hit it big, with a big heaping of help from our tax dollars and mega rich pals. Big surprise.
Turns out that if you have a wealthy life secured, you too can gamble big and make even more money. Thats how capitalism is designed to work. Capital makes more capital.
The fact that you're suckered in by the worlds luckiest gambler playing a game that had no actual stakes for him is sad as fuck man. Be proud of someone who overcame actual adversity. Go find a hero that wants to help people, not to rule them.
Interesting, thanks for sharing. I'll have to do some more research on Elon then.
Don't forget blatant market manipulation. Pump&dumps on Bitcoin, doge coin, TWTR, and TSLA...
I still don't get the emerald mine money bit. Even snopes ran on it that the perpetuated story is bogus, with properly cited sources on where the whole comment originated from.
I think Musk is a grifter, but let's stick to facts instead of hearsay.
Edit: for those asking:
https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/11/17/elon-musk-emerald-mine/
Could you link that source? I can’t find it
here it is. The whole thing seems rather murky and somewhat shady too. The most specific statement on it is this:
Arnold's story included answers from Errol about the mine, who said he had "very limited involvement" in it. Arnold paraphrased his answers, publishing that he said "it was a handshake deal with a Panamanian man that resulted in something like 110 emeralds up front and then a semi-regular trickle of rough stones over a few years following," and that "there was never formal ownership."
The wealth earned from the investment in the mine was quantified to be about $400,000 USD, taking into account inflation when Arnold's piece was written in 2021, according to Errol. "Errol also quoted a lower number to me over the phone," Arnold wrote. "He also claims he was getting emeralds from other sources, with only 60-70% coming from this venture."
So maybe not a whole emerald mine, but like an unofficial small stake in an emerald mine? Still, 400k ain't bad at all for a handshake deal.
Yeah, I don’t buy it. Rich people lie and hide their money all the time.
Honestly it sounds to me like there’s an effort to keep his father’s involvement in emeralds a secret.
He didn’t start PayPal. It was founded by Pieter Thiel, another billionaire christofascist, and four other guys and non of them are called Elon Musk. X.com was bought by PayPal.
It's wild how little this dude knows about Elon musk while singing his praises to the heavens, but I guess those two things go hand in hand.
Muskrats are always the least informed people in the room when it concerns Elon Musk. It'd be a lot funnier if it weren't so damn easy to find the actual facts. There's really no excusing it, they're just willfully ignorant.
"Oh yeah he didn't actually do that.. Still, what a genius amirite?"
He isn't a "really good business man"
I find it absolutely hilarious that literally anyone thinks one of the wealthiest people in the world "isn't a good business man". Like how completely proposterous is that?
It just speaks the the absolute bias of people who don't like him and can't possibly say anything that might be poorly construed as positive.
I think that the criticism is that our system does not raise the smartest or the best to the top.
I think the whole Twitter debacle has disproven that he's a good businessman. Rather, it highlights how far one can get by having heritable wealth and being in the right place at the right time.
He's successful in spite of himself. He makes terrible decisions constantly.
He seems like the avatar of the concept that rich people are not allowed to fail in society, no matter how hard they try. Once you reach a certain size, there will always be an army of people around them to hold them up. You just sit at the top and everyone under you needs you to succeed otherwise they're also fucked.
Musk is too big to fail.
I guess when you have enough money you get to try enough times that you accidentally make good choices sometimes. Or people just think he's smart because he's rich.
Being credited as something doesn't mean you are that something. My ex credited me for having a big penis.
Elon is not a founder of Tesla, no matter what any documents say. Calling him such when you know he isn't makes you a liar, a fool or a co-conspirator.
Now I am laughing because I am imagining you working the big penis anecdote into every comment and conversation.
That would be a funny bit.
twist: Plopp is the penis' account.