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Comment by keithwhor | Hacker News Reader

Elon Musk is the greatest PR savant of our generation. I mean, he's an absolutely outstanding entrepreneur, genius engineer and fascinating technologist. But, wow. His personal brand carries so much weight, I'm definitely interested in learning about the PR people and / or firms behind his success.

Buying a single-letter domain is impressive, to say the least.

But a whole TechCrunch article, headlining with your face and name, because you tweeted about a domain name purchase for sentimental value is really next level. How did he manage to build such an impressive cognitive footprint in a world that's constantly fighting for your attention and ad revenue?

(... but then again, in the world of domain name purchases, I'm sure we'd all share a laugh if Sean Parker and / or Justin Timberlake bought "thefacebook.com" from Facebook.)

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Who else is creating exciting companies such as Tesla, OpenAI, Neuralink, and SpaceX? I can't think of anyone else who has started such exciting companies. No need for a PR firm at that point.

Literally thousands of researchers, professors, entrepreneurs and engineers.

You know of those four (and can't think of anyone else!) because Elon Musk sold his vision to investors, employees, and the public through impressive salesmanship and an obscene amount of both grit and persistence. He aggregated resources and did what you do when you accumulate wealth for business purposes; he spent it to forward his goals. Some of which went towards impressive PR stunts and people wrangling.

I'm guessing he meant who's creating all those kind of companies at the same time. There's definitely thousands of peoples/companies working on those same problems/markets.

I'm going to call bullshit on the PR sotext of it. Musk had THE most successful internet finance company originally with PayPal, then parlayed that into extremely risky, potentially world-changing bets with SpaceX, Tesla, SolarCity, and others.

Musk gets such great PR because the stuff he's done is actually an order of magnitude more impressing than others who have done "similar" things.

It's pretty analogous to people saying Steve Jobs had "amazing PR". It's easy to have amazing PR when you have amazing products, and so many of Apple's products (the Mac, iMac, iPod, iPhone, iPad) really were game changers in terms of functionality and usability.

PR isn't something you "get", it's something you actively work for. Conference appearances, press releases, interviews, television spots, documentary participation... these all take time, energy and planning. Yes, as you get more and more well-known these opportunities appear spontaneously, but it doesn't make them any less time-consuming - I would argue the opposite, they become an increasingly important commitment. Elon undoubtedly hustled for a lot of this stuff on his own, but I would be extremely surprised if he hasn't been supported by at least tens of individuals (and / or firms) over the years just for his personal brand alone (not including company-specific PR that's run by internal marketing teams).

The thing is; the entire point of his PR, no matter who helps perpetuate it, is built to craft the very opinion you have: Elon is amazing, and he can do it all on his own. While that's probably true to a large extent, it's not the only "truth" and reality. I, personally, am interested in the stories of the people who have helped him along the way - however few or many there may be.

I see your point but you're falling into circular logic, with PR becoming the answer to any question concerning his success. It's likely the case that great PR resulted from extraordinary products and those products succeeded from both solvIng problems and well, great PR.

Musk actually builds things that no one else is, over and over again. It gets written about because he's accomplishing results - it's different than just having ideas. I have ideas, but I never built them out in the world.

Yes. Non one has built an electric car. A rocket engine. and a payment gateway.

Paypal was not even built by Elon Musk...By the way.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confinity

I think that totally misses the point. Yes, there have been other electric cars. There have been no other electric cars that have integrated such great functionality in such a desirable body. Musk proved electric cars could be cool. Same thing goes for private spaceflight. There are other private spaceflight companies, but no others are doing as much to advance the reduction of launch costs.

Again, it's similar to the argument some people make that the iPod was just another MP3 player, or the iPhone was just another phone.

I love Elon Musk. Calling me a fanboy is an understatement. But yeah agree with what you say. His PR and brand are top notch. The article is indeed not really needed.

He feels like the individual equivalent to Google in the 00s and early parts of this decade when they were close to being infallible in the eyes of the general public and especially to the tech community.

Impressive job by the both of them!

He also has what I imagine to be 'Howard Hughes' heroic-visionary-craziness (from before the pain relief medication turned Howard Hughes actually crazy). Like most people here I was not around when Howard Hughes was, however, having an Elon Musk around on planet earth right now does make you wonder what times must have been like at the start of aviation or motoring when there were apparently more popular visionary geniuses around getting stuff done.

I also think Elon Musk is reminiscent of the early railway pioneers - Brunel and Stephenson's son spring to mind.

thefacebook.com is/was the web mail portal: https://mail.thefacebook.com/

Are they really running Exchange 2010?

Wouldn't be surprising. As it turns out, lots of businesses run on Microsoft technologies.

I think the poster was questioning why they weren't running a more recent version of Exchange such as 2013/2016

My company uses 2010 as well. It's regularly patched and supported for another two or three years. Why fix what's not broken?

(Yes, I know Clinton used 2010. Her admin was a dumbass though).

That's both disturbing and sad.

So does Amazon and most major tech firms not named Google. There's literally no better alternative for a large enterprises.

I mean that it's seven years out of date. That part.

It would also be nice if there was an enterprise alternative to Exchange that isn't Google Apps, but hey, dreams.

What were you expecting? GMail?

Actually, yes

Yeah, they do. Turns out the product actually works, who knew!

That's fb.com's exchange server; I know, because my credentials auto filled. Not related to whatever used to be there.

They sure won't ever be using Google Suites

It helps that his name sounds cool as hell, or at the very least it's quite different.

Of course, being awesome enough to have Robert Downey Jr. model his portrayal of Tony Stark in Iron Man after you accounts for most of it.

isn't it more like Richard Branson or Larry Ellison. I mean I can't imagine Elon spending so much money on such poor things like Yacht or private island. :)

Buying expensive toys isn't the point, it's primarily the voracious intellectual nature of the character that makes Tony Stark.

“But Robert Downey, when we were prepping ‘Iron Man,’ said, ‘There’s somebody we should sit down and talk with.’”

“[He] said, ‘This is a guy who can give us some insight into what it’d really be like to be Tony Stark.’”[0]

[0] https://www.recode.net/2016/10/12/13259344/elon-musk-iron-ma...

That's stuff he did on the side. A major part of Iron Man and RDJ in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is his intense work ethic and intelligence with building the suit among other edgy tech stuff. Elon seems best suited.

That'd be extra weird considering Justin Timberlake was a major investor in Myspace...

Elon Musk is the Christopher Nolan of Tech.

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