I applaud Elon, but I gotta say I'm uncomfortable with the extreme adulation. His company merged into Paypal -- he did not invent that payment solution. He was an investor in Tesla before taking it over -- the original idea and company were not his. The press paints him otherwise on both counts. That's undoubtedly a better story (and perhaps we're at a point where we need to believe in a hero-inventor), but I don't think inaccuracy actually serves us well.
There is a certain kind of crazy, the one where you can have $10M in the bank after a lot of hard work and struggle. And then put all of it at risk for something you believe in and everyone else is telling you is stupid. In gambling it is that person who has a fortune in their chip pile and they say "let it ride", except in this case bankruptcy is on the other side.
I think Elon deserves all the credit there. I think of it as a Ferris Beuller complex, people who just "go for it" without a safety net, betting they will be able to adapt, avoid, and overcome any obstacle that gets thrown at them. It is a level of fearlessness that is not supported by any rational process, and it is the thing that turns people from ordinary into extraordinary.
It doesn't always work out. There are always stories of people for whom they didn't dodge when they needed to. And like stories of "can't miss" hedge fund traders, are suddenly just as broke as most of the world. But you have to respect people that can operate at that level of stress. The money quote is this one:
“What he went through in 2008 would have broken anyone else. Most people who are under that sort of pressure fray. Their decisions go bad. Elon gets hyperrational. He’s still able to make very clear, long-term decisions. The harder it gets, the better he gets.”
With Jobs gone, we need a new hero-inventor to worship. Such is life.
Seriously though, when I was a kid I would read about "famous scientists of old" every night. They were my rockstars. Edison, Watt, Lister, the list goes on. I had a book about them, their lives, their inventions. Everything. I must have read that book a thousand times before I was 14.
Then one day when I was 18 I visited the London technical museum. In it was a Watt exhibit. It said "Watt bought a lot of patents, he invented a few small things, but his main innovation was leasing steam engines instead of selling them."
It was then that I realized all those scientists of old I worship weren't scientists at all. They were good engineers. Excellent integrators of other people's inventions and work. Magnificent funders of scientists' work.
But most of all they were businessmen. Because it doesn't matter who invents a thing, what matters is who uses the thing to bring actual change to people.
It doesn't matter who invented the lightbulb. It matters who invented the electricity grid so people could actually use lightbulbs in their homes.
Reading the article, there is enough even there to give credit to the adulation. The guy's main company is SpaceX, oh and while he was figuring out how to launch rockets into space at a fraction of the cost of the norm (a massive challenge), he happened to rescue another company that he became CEO of from bankruptcy.
The big losers in Musk's life are clearly his wife and kids, but I don't see how you can suggest he didn't do (and continues to do) some very very special things for humanity as a whole. If the electric car succeeds and we move from fossil fuels in a big way, he will be a major reason for this. If we commercialize space and become a space-faring species, the same position holds.
Paypal did not invent electronic payment.
Tesla did not invent the electric car or batteries.
SpaceX did not invent rockets.
SolarCity did not invent solar roofs.
But I have an enormous respect for this man, just making rockets affordable is a great service for humanity.
"That's undoubtedly a better story"
(Citation needed) This sounds to me like : I feel so envious because someone else did something remarkable, that if I accept to give merit to him I will be accepting that I could do better than I do. So something, somewhere must exist to prove he has not merit.
"but I don't think inaccuracy actually serves us well."
Again (Citation needed), after stating your prejudice, you jump to take it as fact.
What is inaccurate about Elon here?
The article talks about good, but also not so good things about Elon personality.
I created my own companies and had to take very similar risks in my life, with everybody in my life believing I was crazy when I put "safe" money in the bank at risk(specially in Europe and Asia taking risks is a big no,no). Everything in the article sounds pretty veridical for anyone with experience in this field.
All three of Musk's most recent ventures (SolarCity, Tesla, and SpaceX), depend either on direct or indirect government subsidies. It's not just that Musk is a workaholic, or possibly innovative, but his ability to "work" the system that sets him apart. US tax payers are paying a significant portion of the bills for his ventures. Since I agree with his goals, it doesn't personally bother me very much but it still is something worth thinking about.
I've tried editing a bunch but always get downvotes, so here it is on a throwaway.
-> how would you work Hyperloop into your list of examples?
You couldn't, in my opinion, because it's counter to your argument and position, which is needlessly, gratuitously negative. Perhaps you can't see the difference between someone to idolize, who is an engineer that can proceed from first principles to leaving no stone, degree of freedom, or axis unturned and delivering a solution...and, someone like kzhahou above who literally ignores 1 out of 4 examples we have of Musk's invention, creativity and leadership. (The 4 examples we have are as a PayPal cofounder only, as a Tesla investor and ALSO product architect - his official role -, which we can see whenever he talks about the trade-offs, as a SpaceX investor, and in envisioning and engineering the basic constraints in HyperLoop.)
you are saying the "inaccuracy" of him being a hero-inventor doesn't serve us well. I say it does, because people will give him money, and he can deliver on great designs as he has proven an ability to do.
taking that away from him because you're uncomfortable with extreme adulation is the opposite of everything capitalism stands for: if you prove you can design, engineer, build, manage, and lead to great things, you get to do more of them.
(sorry you can't tell the difference, but reflecting on why you chose to leave out the quarter of his ventures that he is chief inventor on would serve you well. also reflecting on the degree to which he is product architect at tesla would do the same. finally you can look at zip2, which is what he did, including personally, before payapl.)
You can become a millionaire or even a billionaire by luck.
Risking an entire 9 figure fortune in order to run both
1) a business that most at the time thought was impossible (mass produced electric cars)
2) a space company that most at the time thought was impossible to do without being a nation state
and managing to against the odds make both of them succeed and become 11 figure companies is not luck. it is immeasurable slog, vision and competence.
there are tens of thousands of people worth hundreds of millions and ~1500 billionaires on earth, can you name a single one taking anything like the risks and producing the results elon is producing?
While both side are impressive, I think the risk is really the big story. Of those people worth at least tens of millions, how many would be willing to risk their entire fortune on a venture that, in their honest assessment, would probably fail? (There's a quote somewhere, where Musk actually says he expected SpaceX to fail, but did it anyway because of how great it could be if it succeeded.)
I bet the number is pretty damn small. A big part of how he got to this point is simply the fact that almost no one else would have been willing to try. Beyond that, he must have been extremely skillful and lucky to actually succeed.
I don't have a link to further into that story, but after being screwed by the Russians on the price (they did a bait and switch, increasing the price four fold when he arrived), he asked on the plane ride home "How hard can it be to build a rocket?".
EDIT: To add to this, the US government created sanctions against Russia, causing the Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin to say "Use a trampoline to get to the ISS then" [1], which prompted Elon to unveil the Dragon Mk2 crew capsule: "Sounds like this might be a good time to unveil the new Dragon Mk 2 spaceship that @SpaceX has been working on w @NASA. No trampoline needed" [2].
I guess I was so caught up in the fact that he was trying to buy an ICBM. I didn't really think about the timing as well. This would have been within 30 days of 9/11 happening. Hard to imagine even thinking about doing something like that.
What an absolutely riveting, brilliant article. The title doesn't give it justice -- this article is about a dream, and about a man's relentless pursuit of that dream. Incredible.
I wonder what SpaceX's long term goals are. Much of the article suggests that it's Mars. But SpaceX probably wants to do something that's profitable, right? Missions to Mars won't be profitable for probably a very long time, if ever. I wonder about something like a mining operation on the Moon or other near-Earth objects?
Right now, it's hard to imagine anything more profitable than deploying satellites.
Mars, vis-a-vis making buttloads of money on Earth.
Elon is positioning to launch a 4k-strong comsat fleet, with which he hopes to commandeer a large fraction of Earth's internet backhaul traffic (in addition to securing millions+ of internet customers around the planet, otherwise too expensive and sparse to reach with cables).
My bet is that it will turn out to be SpaceX's biggest financial play, and that the private + NASA orbital launch contracts are functioning as a way to get someone to pay for rocket development and build the necessary capital for the telecom move.
Although once a reusable first stage has been demonstrated, I imagine launch costs will drop by a large fraction, and possibly open up a new rush of investment and innovation in low Earth orbit-- with Musk selling pickaxes and shovels.
It's possible if more people knew the price drop that's about to happen in rocket launches, they'd be scrambling to launch their own 4k-satellite constellations, and that Musk's inside knowledge and control gives him a huge head start into the business.
Super fascinating read. It's also great because it will create a commercially viable reason for companies to want to explore space, which will make it cheaper for everyone else.
1) Elon's tremendous luck. He took huge gambles, repeatedly, and they all turned up heads. They were all very worthy ambitions, but nine times out of ten, they would not have worked out. I don't condemn him for taking those risks at all (in fact I applaud it), but:
There are probably plenty of entrepreneurs out there with comparable intelligence or ambition, but when they fall on their faces, we just shake our heads at them and say "well, that's what you get". But each of them simply wasn't lucky enough to have an Elon story. We should keep this in mind either while heaping adoration on Musk or while rationalizing someone else's failure.
2) Elon almost didn't succeed on more than one occasion because somebody else was actively trying to screw him over. And that (human shittiness) is one of the stochastic forces that made his success so unlikely. The world would have been a worse place and civilization would have been set back, all by the selfish behavior of some VC company. It is reprehensible that lollipop-yanking and sandcastle-stomping is not only actively impeding our society's progress, but despite this, it is actually tolerated or even revered.
True. If NASA had awarded the contract to someone else and SpaceX had folded, we wouldn't be saying "look at that brilliant guy who got dealt a bad hand", we'd be saying "look at that asshole who earned a fortune and then blew it all on an idea that everyone warned him was nuts"... or more likely "who? never heard of him".
Also applies to other kinds of uber achievers outside of entrepreneurship. Like Mandela and Gandhi, both struggled with normal expectations a person has regarding the family. Hard to be a present parent/spouse when you are committing your life and mind to a country.
There are lots of point of views around the thoughts:
- He did not invent anything
- He had privileged background, education and luck
- He takes extreme risk but has background to fall upon
etc etc ... So he is not great or a hero.
The fact of matter is that he has a personality and attitude for getting things done. He dreams of something, faces extreme challenges but still pursues it and gets it done.
What matters is this attitude of never giving up. The extreme odds against which the person fights, makes him stand apart. But people with similar attitude, fighting against extreme odds can be found in all walks of life. Whether we find that narrative interesting or not depends on "our" background/interest etc.
Example could be someone with no means for basic education and learns on his own to become a great mathematician(or a architect who turns desert into greenfield) or someone who becomes a great artist/sportsman/writer(basically excellence in anything) against extreme odds.
I bet people with this kind of attitude don't care whether you find them heroic or not. The may even not care to read things like this. Fighting on this (whether its heroic or not) is just silly. Some people will find the story of single mother, working multiple jobs to provide for her family more heroic. But then that's good for them and does not steal the fact that Elon musk is hero for lot of us.
Here's the video of the first Falcon 1 launch that reaches orbit. The series of cheers at each milestone, as the article mentions, is pretty awesome.
https://youtu.be/8FQhtMrUQlE?t=18m34s
the man is pure inspiration. 10 years ago, i was asked who i admired, and couldn't think of a single answer. Maybe that's sad on my part, but when asked now, he's at the top of my list.
Wow, reading through this story and you can't help but notice some comparative traits to the late Steve Jobs. The incredibly high work ethic, not taking no for an answer and being highly optimistic in the face of bankruptcy. Those familiar with Steve Jobs and the story of Apple will know that Apple found themselves in this exact situation, a man with a vision burning through cash and not really making any ground - only for them to become a highly profitable company.
After all is said and done, SpaceX is not only profitable, but Musk somehow remains its largest stakeholder, even though he went through a desperate period of trying to raise more capital. Seems taking on debt helped Musk retain SpaceX's majority stakeholder (a brilliant move if you know you're going to succeed).
This is probably one of the most inspiring things I have read in a very long time. A very well-written article that doesn't skip on the details. Absolutely riveting, I was supposed to be working and I could not stop reading this. We need more opportunistic thinkers like Musk, everyone thought he was mental or was having a breakdown, but he proved his detractors wrong by not giving up (even when it looked like bankruptcy was the likely option).
This is a really great article. As a casual observer of SpaceX, it seemed to me that they just came out of nowhere a few years ago. It's really great to see a story about their origins.
> Downey appreciated that Musk was not a foul-smelling, fidgety, coder whack job.
Always good to know how the rest of us "coders" are looked upon by Bloomberg, and presumably the average person while they are busy singing Elon Musk's praises.
"they were in the process of finalizing the paperwork for the funding round when Musk noticed a problem. VantagePoint Capital Partners had signed all of the paperwork except for one crucial page...Musk believed that Salzman’s tactics were part of a mission to bankrupt Tesla. Musk feared that VantagePoint would oust him as CEO, recapitalize Tesla, and emerge as the major owner of the carmaker."
From other sources it seems that VantagePoint may have owned less than 10% of the company. I am surprised that a minority shareholder could legally have the power to block an additional funding round; couldn't the other shareholders have brought it to a vote and overrule VantagePoint? Was the reason this wasn't done just the lack of time, or could VantagePoint really have had some procedural right to block this?
When I was going through the article, these two quotes came to my mind.
“There are some people who just get what they want in the world. If you want to start a startup you have to be one of those people. You can’t be passive and wishy-washy,”
– Paul Graham
"A formidable person is one who seems like they'll get what they want, regardless of whatever obstacles are in the way."- pg
[+] [-] kzhahou|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|10 years ago|reply
I think Elon deserves all the credit there. I think of it as a Ferris Beuller complex, people who just "go for it" without a safety net, betting they will be able to adapt, avoid, and overcome any obstacle that gets thrown at them. It is a level of fearlessness that is not supported by any rational process, and it is the thing that turns people from ordinary into extraordinary.
It doesn't always work out. There are always stories of people for whom they didn't dodge when they needed to. And like stories of "can't miss" hedge fund traders, are suddenly just as broke as most of the world. But you have to respect people that can operate at that level of stress. The money quote is this one:
“What he went through in 2008 would have broken anyone else. Most people who are under that sort of pressure fray. Their decisions go bad. Elon gets hyperrational. He’s still able to make very clear, long-term decisions. The harder it gets, the better he gets.”
That is a rare thing
[+] [-] Swizec|10 years ago|reply
Seriously though, when I was a kid I would read about "famous scientists of old" every night. They were my rockstars. Edison, Watt, Lister, the list goes on. I had a book about them, their lives, their inventions. Everything. I must have read that book a thousand times before I was 14.
Then one day when I was 18 I visited the London technical museum. In it was a Watt exhibit. It said "Watt bought a lot of patents, he invented a few small things, but his main innovation was leasing steam engines instead of selling them."
It was then that I realized all those scientists of old I worship weren't scientists at all. They were good engineers. Excellent integrators of other people's inventions and work. Magnificent funders of scientists' work.
But most of all they were businessmen. Because it doesn't matter who invents a thing, what matters is who uses the thing to bring actual change to people.
It doesn't matter who invented the lightbulb. It matters who invented the electricity grid so people could actually use lightbulbs in their homes.
[+] [-] run4yourlives2|10 years ago|reply
The big losers in Musk's life are clearly his wife and kids, but I don't see how you can suggest he didn't do (and continues to do) some very very special things for humanity as a whole. If the electric car succeeds and we move from fossil fuels in a big way, he will be a major reason for this. If we commercialize space and become a space-faring species, the same position holds.
I'm not sure how admiring that is hero worship.
[+] [-] Htsthbjig|10 years ago|reply
But I have an enormous respect for this man, just making rockets affordable is a great service for humanity.
"That's undoubtedly a better story" (Citation needed) This sounds to me like : I feel so envious because someone else did something remarkable, that if I accept to give merit to him I will be accepting that I could do better than I do. So something, somewhere must exist to prove he has not merit.
"but I don't think inaccuracy actually serves us well." Again (Citation needed), after stating your prejudice, you jump to take it as fact.
What is inaccurate about Elon here? The article talks about good, but also not so good things about Elon personality.
I created my own companies and had to take very similar risks in my life, with everybody in my life believing I was crazy when I put "safe" money in the bank at risk(specially in Europe and Asia taking risks is a big no,no). Everything in the article sounds pretty veridical for anyone with experience in this field.
[+] [-] whyenot|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway23432|10 years ago|reply
-> how would you work Hyperloop into your list of examples?
You couldn't, in my opinion, because it's counter to your argument and position, which is needlessly, gratuitously negative. Perhaps you can't see the difference between someone to idolize, who is an engineer that can proceed from first principles to leaving no stone, degree of freedom, or axis unturned and delivering a solution...and, someone like kzhahou above who literally ignores 1 out of 4 examples we have of Musk's invention, creativity and leadership. (The 4 examples we have are as a PayPal cofounder only, as a Tesla investor and ALSO product architect - his official role -, which we can see whenever he talks about the trade-offs, as a SpaceX investor, and in envisioning and engineering the basic constraints in HyperLoop.)
you are saying the "inaccuracy" of him being a hero-inventor doesn't serve us well. I say it does, because people will give him money, and he can deliver on great designs as he has proven an ability to do.
taking that away from him because you're uncomfortable with extreme adulation is the opposite of everything capitalism stands for: if you prove you can design, engineer, build, manage, and lead to great things, you get to do more of them.
(sorry you can't tell the difference, but reflecting on why you chose to leave out the quarter of his ventures that he is chief inventor on would serve you well. also reflecting on the degree to which he is product architect at tesla would do the same. finally you can look at zip2, which is what he did, including personally, before payapl.)
[+] [-] anon4this1|10 years ago|reply
You can become a millionaire or even a billionaire by luck.
Risking an entire 9 figure fortune in order to run both 1) a business that most at the time thought was impossible (mass produced electric cars) 2) a space company that most at the time thought was impossible to do without being a nation state
and managing to against the odds make both of them succeed and become 11 figure companies is not luck. it is immeasurable slog, vision and competence.
there are tens of thousands of people worth hundreds of millions and ~1500 billionaires on earth, can you name a single one taking anything like the risks and producing the results elon is producing?
[+] [-] tempestn|10 years ago|reply
I bet the number is pretty damn small. A big part of how he got to this point is simply the fact that almost no one else would have been willing to try. Beyond that, he must have been extremely skillful and lucky to actually succeed.
[+] [-] lloeki|10 years ago|reply
> immeasurable slog, vision and competence.
In many ways I find luck is to competence what magic is to technology: indistinguishable for the uninitiated.
[+] [-] tbabb|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] appden|10 years ago|reply
Has there ever been a better introductory sentence?
[+] [-] toomuchtodo|10 years ago|reply
EDIT: To add to this, the US government created sanctions against Russia, causing the Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin to say "Use a trampoline to get to the ISS then" [1], which prompted Elon to unveil the Dragon Mk2 crew capsule: "Sounds like this might be a good time to unveil the new Dragon Mk 2 spaceship that @SpaceX has been working on w @NASA. No trampoline needed" [2].
I would not want to be on Elon's bad side.
[1] http://space.io9.com/russia-to-nasa-try-jumping-to-iss-on-a-...
[2] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/461279062837968897
[+] [-] benmorris|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] agumonkey|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kposehn|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] methodover|10 years ago|reply
I wonder what SpaceX's long term goals are. Much of the article suggests that it's Mars. But SpaceX probably wants to do something that's profitable, right? Missions to Mars won't be profitable for probably a very long time, if ever. I wonder about something like a mining operation on the Moon or other near-Earth objects?
Right now, it's hard to imagine anything more profitable than deploying satellites.
[+] [-] tbabb|10 years ago|reply
Mars, vis-a-vis making buttloads of money on Earth.
Elon is positioning to launch a 4k-strong comsat fleet, with which he hopes to commandeer a large fraction of Earth's internet backhaul traffic (in addition to securing millions+ of internet customers around the planet, otherwise too expensive and sparse to reach with cables).
My bet is that it will turn out to be SpaceX's biggest financial play, and that the private + NASA orbital launch contracts are functioning as a way to get someone to pay for rocket development and build the necessary capital for the telecom move.
Although once a reusable first stage has been demonstrated, I imagine launch costs will drop by a large fraction, and possibly open up a new rush of investment and innovation in low Earth orbit-- with Musk selling pickaxes and shovels.
It's possible if more people knew the price drop that's about to happen in rocket launches, they'd be scrambling to launch their own 4k-satellite constellations, and that Musk's inside knowledge and control gives him a huge head start into the business.
[+] [-] run4yourlives2|10 years ago|reply
Similar to Tesla selling a nice car so it is in a position to build a battery factory, no?
[+] [-] futuretext|10 years ago|reply
Super fascinating read. It's also great because it will create a commercially viable reason for companies to want to explore space, which will make it cheaper for everyone else.
[+] [-] hinkley|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tbabb|10 years ago|reply
1) Elon's tremendous luck. He took huge gambles, repeatedly, and they all turned up heads. They were all very worthy ambitions, but nine times out of ten, they would not have worked out. I don't condemn him for taking those risks at all (in fact I applaud it), but:
There are probably plenty of entrepreneurs out there with comparable intelligence or ambition, but when they fall on their faces, we just shake our heads at them and say "well, that's what you get". But each of them simply wasn't lucky enough to have an Elon story. We should keep this in mind either while heaping adoration on Musk or while rationalizing someone else's failure.
2) Elon almost didn't succeed on more than one occasion because somebody else was actively trying to screw him over. And that (human shittiness) is one of the stochastic forces that made his success so unlikely. The world would have been a worse place and civilization would have been set back, all by the selfish behavior of some VC company. It is reprehensible that lollipop-yanking and sandcastle-stomping is not only actively impeding our society's progress, but despite this, it is actually tolerated or even revered.
[+] [-] titanomachy|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sumedh|10 years ago|reply
http://www.quora.com/How-can-I-be-as-great-as-Bill-Gates-Ste...
[+] [-] js2|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] soneca|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ska|10 years ago|reply
?
[+] [-] loco5niner|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] eellpp|10 years ago|reply
- He did not invent anything
- He had privileged background, education and luck
- He takes extreme risk but has background to fall upon etc etc ... So he is not great or a hero.
The fact of matter is that he has a personality and attitude for getting things done. He dreams of something, faces extreme challenges but still pursues it and gets it done. What matters is this attitude of never giving up. The extreme odds against which the person fights, makes him stand apart. But people with similar attitude, fighting against extreme odds can be found in all walks of life. Whether we find that narrative interesting or not depends on "our" background/interest etc.
Example could be someone with no means for basic education and learns on his own to become a great mathematician(or a architect who turns desert into greenfield) or someone who becomes a great artist/sportsman/writer(basically excellence in anything) against extreme odds.
I bet people with this kind of attitude don't care whether you find them heroic or not. The may even not care to read things like this. Fighting on this (whether its heroic or not) is just silly. Some people will find the story of single mother, working multiple jobs to provide for her family more heroic. But then that's good for them and does not steal the fact that Elon musk is hero for lot of us.
[+] [-] unknown|10 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] cspags|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrt0mat0|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] baby|10 years ago|reply
For research I would say Stephen Hawking
For education I would say Neil deGrasse Tyson
( I would put Neil in the inspiring "anti-racism" category as well https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQLtPWPqsjA )
[+] [-] DigitalSea|10 years ago|reply
After all is said and done, SpaceX is not only profitable, but Musk somehow remains its largest stakeholder, even though he went through a desperate period of trying to raise more capital. Seems taking on debt helped Musk retain SpaceX's majority stakeholder (a brilliant move if you know you're going to succeed).
This is probably one of the most inspiring things I have read in a very long time. A very well-written article that doesn't skip on the details. Absolutely riveting, I was supposed to be working and I could not stop reading this. We need more opportunistic thinkers like Musk, everyone thought he was mental or was having a breakdown, but he proved his detractors wrong by not giving up (even when it looked like bankruptcy was the likely option).
[+] [-] toxican|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] parennoob|10 years ago|reply
> Downey appreciated that Musk was not a foul-smelling, fidgety, coder whack job.
Always good to know how the rest of us "coders" are looked upon by Bloomberg, and presumably the average person while they are busy singing Elon Musk's praises.
[+] [-] dfgray|10 years ago|reply
I got the impression that was Downey's expectation, not Bloomberg's. People don't smell or fidget in Hollywood..
[+] [-] cdelsolar|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BrandonMarc|10 years ago|reply
http://www.parabolicarc.com/2011/12/30/elon-musk-tweets-on-c...
[+] [-] alexqgb|10 years ago|reply
http://aeon.co/magazine/technology/the-elon-musk-interview-o...
[+] [-] ljk|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bpicolo|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bshanks|10 years ago|reply
From other sources it seems that VantagePoint may have owned less than 10% of the company. I am surprised that a minority shareholder could legally have the power to block an additional funding round; couldn't the other shareholders have brought it to a vote and overrule VantagePoint? Was the reason this wasn't done just the lack of time, or could VantagePoint really have had some procedural right to block this?
[+] [-] m52go|10 years ago|reply
I fear it's a ploy to keep my eyeballs on the site for as long as possible. Not a fan of this at all.
[+] [-] redmaverick|10 years ago|reply
“There are some people who just get what they want in the world. If you want to start a startup you have to be one of those people. You can’t be passive and wishy-washy,” – Paul Graham
"A formidable person is one who seems like they'll get what they want, regardless of whatever obstacles are in the way."- pg
[+] [-] marze|10 years ago|reply
You could certainly argue that Musk was quite fortunate at certain key points, but really, who else has accomplished anything remotely similar?