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Comment by hodder | Hacker News Reader

Tesla investors are learning a hard lesson that just because a company is cool and makes amazing products, that does not make it a buy at any price. There is almost no way to justify the current valuation and Goldman is simply reiterating that.

I have a really nice coffee mug in front of me right now. Best mug I've ever used. Is it worth 1200 dollars? No.

Price matters.

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With a market cap of about $40 billion, I don't think they're learning that yet.

If the price drops to reflect something vaguely resembling the company's current size, rather than wild dreams of massive growth, then they might be learning that. But the current price is still way high if you just look at the present or even the near future.

I often reflect that if Elon Musk died (god forbid) the shares of Tesla would drop to a fifth or a tenth of their current value in the space of a few hours. It's incredible how much a single person can make the difference.

very true in this case, because Elon is a once-in-a-generation, perhaps even once-in-a-century type of person. On the other hand, if he keeps going at this pace for another 15 years, there is a very good chance that Tesla will be the most valuable company in the world. That's the whole risk/reward situation with Tesla, if he dies or loses his abilities with older age, shit hits the fan, otherwise you got a 20-bagger in your hand if you wait 15 years.

wow. The hero worship is strong with you. I agree that he has accomplished some pretty cool things, but calling him a "once-in-a-century" or "once-in-a-generation" person ignores all of the other people who have been as or more successful than him in multiple dimensions of success.

I don't think it's entirely unfair to say he's a "once in a generation" person (once in a century is pushing it), but that has little to do with his actual abilities, and more to do with his perceived abilities. He's got that combination of engineer, businessman and celebrity that people go crazy for. He's the modern Howard Hughes, and people love that. Whether he can deliver on people's expectations or not, he's a rarity.

Edit: Whoops, s/fair/unfair/

please name some of these people who have been as or more successful - and don't go by wealth alone. I'm talking disrupting multiple, huge industries with innovative products.

I think Elon has accomplished a lot, but I think you're ignoring the fact that every one of his companies is still surprisingly risky. Tesla might not get another loan and it could go under in a year. SpaceX has fantastic margins, but they still have significant hurdles with failed launches (although this is true of rocketry in general) and navigating a political landscape. Solar City was going under when Elon saved it by combining it with Tesla, a very controversial move.

Elon has yet to run a profitable electronic vehicle company. Elon has yet to run a stable alternative to NASA. Elon has yet to ween the world off its oil dependence. He is working towards all of them and it's great! But he hasn't succeeded in disrupting any of them yet, because all of the alternatives still exist and are as healthy as ever.

you're avoiding the question. Name someone else that has done more impressive things than what Elon has already accomplished.

Ben Franklin Thomas Edison Ghandi

are these not once-a-century type of person? Where are Elon's contemporaries? You're reinforcing my point.

It's 'Gandhi'.

Apologies, been a while since I played Civ ;)

Norman Borlaug, Marie Curie, Max Planck, Henry Ford, Mahatma Gandhi, Bill Joy, Margaret Hamilton. I could go on.

You are just reinforcing my point. You're listing people that are generations in the past, which is exactly what I said. you're grouping Elon into a once-a-generation / once-a-century type of person.

Based on how deep you are into the Flavor-aid, I'm going to say that Jim Jones is the best comparison to your hero.

Sure. Alistair Pilkington and Arthur Fowle, between the two of them invented the technologies used to create almost all glass. It might not seem like it's high impact, but from the glass in office buildings, to automotive glass, to smartphone/tablet/TV glass, two highly impactful people who touched more than Elon Musk has.

Allan Alcorn invented Pong. It spawned and inspired an industry that grew to almost $100 billion, and the technologies used in video games have spread, again, to every aspect of technology, to the point that Microsoft used Cortana, a video game character, to leverage name/brand recognition with gamers in one if it's core products.

Bill Gates, for better or worse, transformed the personal computing industry, and has been on a humanitarian campaign for the last several years.

Setting aside food supply management politics, Robert Fraley introduced the first work on transgenic foods and continues to be a strong contributor to modern food science.

Norman Borlaug. "and is credited with saving over a billion people worldwide from starvation" is the best introduction a human could have. If you don't know who he is or what he did, you owe it to yourself to learn more :)

Moving on to relative contemporaries:

Linus Torvalds made Linux, which as you may have heard, has impacted technology a bit.

Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau basically invented the web and inspired the modern web.

On the tech and financial side, Mark Zuckerberg has done quite well with Facebook, and for better or worse is driving connectivity into unconnected parts of the world.

Elon Musk is a visionary, and is pretty cool, but he is not exactly once-in-a-generation.

sorry, but those people are just not on the same level.

I literally laughed out loud at this. Obviously greatness is subjective, but you are really reaching if you think someone saving a billion lives isn't 'on the same level' as Elon Musk who has yet to go to the moon (although I'm sure he will), who has yet to make a profitable car company (this one I'm not so sure about), who has yet to change the energy infrastructure of the world (he's chipping away at this one steadily).

The important thing about history is it's written after the fact. If Elon Musk died today he would be remembered for his work at PayPal and starting several ambitious companies before they achieved financial success. I'd wager that if he died today all of his companies would fail and he would be remembered for trying to do too much and working himself to death before he achieved his goals. He could very well end up as a Greek tragedy.

If you say this about a number of the people on that list, you're going to say that about anyone from this generation.

An alternative to NASA is an odd and incorrect way of describing SpaceX. NASA is a customer to SpaceX, there is no intention of being a NASA alternative. You could say they want to be an alternative/competitor to the aerospace and defense contractors though

Steve Jobs

   personal computer

   modern smartphone

Jeff Bezos

   Online commerce

   Cloud computing

Wayne Huizenga

   Waste management

   Video rentals

   Auto sales

C'mon, Elon has surpassed all of these guys. Steve Jobs comes the closest, but he was a brilliant designer, not an engineer like Elon. Wayne Huizenga is an interesting character, obvious business genius, but nothing like Elon. Jeff Bezos is brilliant at executing, but he has only really built one company, and is dabbling/nowhere close to what Elon accomplished with space ventures.

Actually Elon isn't an engineer, he has Bachelor of Science degrees in Physics and Economics (Wharton) as well as 2 days worth of a PhD in Applied Physics and Materials Science (Stanford).

What I didn't know was that Jeff Bezos actually does have an engineering degree, a Bachelor of Science in Engineering (Princeton).

You don't have to have a formal education to be considered an engineer. His bio says "engineer, inventor, explorer" http://www.biography.com/people/elon-musk-20837159

I disagree, being an engineer is similar to being a doctor, meaning you go through training and take an oath before officially becoming one. I wouldn't consider a colleague an engineer if they didn't take the engineering oath.

That's to be a registered engineer. It means you can sign off on human-used structures and machines. Lots of people are engineers, and just get a registered engineer to look it over and sign off before production.

>Tesla will be the most valuable company in the world

Slow down there a little bit. They're an AI and battery company. Batteries are commodities and there are several other companies that are working on AI.

Nice of you to take the quote totally out of context. Why didn't you include the words directly before that: "if he keeps going at this pace for another 15 years, there is a very good chance..."

Because that part wasn't relevant. If any company with explosive growth and valuation kept going at that rate for 15 years, they would be the largest company in the world. It's the idea that they'll maintain explosive growth for 15 years selling commodities.

So do you mean he is even above Albert Einstein and his achievements thus far are even bigger than the likes of theory of relativity, invention of airplane? ABSURD. Once-in-a-century is going too too far here.

But if I got 400000 preorders for that $1200 mug?

Doesn't guarantee sustainability.

TSLA is up over a 5 year period, a 1 year period, and 25% in the last 3 months alone. As far as I can tell the only people who learned a hard lesson were those who bought in the last week or so. I believe the lesson they learned is: past performance does not guarantee future results.

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