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Comment by dbosch | Hacker News Reader

"World's most valuable privately held companies". Sounds weird, no?

What about Vitol (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitol), Saudi Aramco, Koch Industries (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koch_Industries) ... etc ?

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The article says 7 venture-backed companies, but this awkward adjective was dropped from the title.

Saudi Aramco is indeed much more valuable than the lot combined, but it's not exactly a startup.

You're improperly editing... both the HN title and the NYT piece say "One of the (start your quote) World's most valuable privately held companies".

It's still kind of implying that it's up there with the big boys, but it's really not. Especially since this is just based on a round of funding which creates unreasonable valuations by design.

You're right. I should have edited my comment properly. I sincerely apologize. My point was to indicate that they are non startup companies, privately held, that are wayyy more valuable than SpaceX or Uber. Sorry about this.

This is what you call a fluff piece. HN and the broader computer technology industry is sycophantic for Elon Musk, and will ignore that all of his companies would be dead in the water if it weren't for the questionable appropriation of government funds, at least if they spent and marketed the way that they do. The products are great, but the money comes out of everyone's pockets. You're all paying for some guy's Model S.

Sure.

However, in space launch it's not like Lockheed Martin and Arianne didn't do the same.

The difference with SpaceX is that for once a government got value for money on an Aerospace deal.

I agree, I'm not against it at all. SpaceX is definitely improving the ROI of NASA, and I love it.

The old/print media likes to flaunt misleading headlines where Musks seems to be getting billion dollar subsidies from state and federal government but they're more like hit pieces if anything.

http://www.cnbc.com/video/2015/06/01/musk-article-on-subsidi...

> You're all paying for some guy's Model S

We're also paying for all the wars in the middle east that keep the oil flowing.

Wars, terrorism and many assorted niceties, both here and there.

You clearly have no clue how the rest of government contracting works.

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