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Comment by njarboe | Hacker News Reader

Elon Musk decided that spending days or a week preparing for a presentation is not the best use of his time. At least that much time is generally what it takes to pull off a really smooth presentation. I heard that he does not script them and just does them off the top of his head.

Tim Urban has a great essay about different levels of prep people do for talks [1] which he wrote when preparing to give a Ted talk. Musk's talks are on the "Wing it" side of prep while a Ted talk is suppose to be on the "Follow an exact script - Happy-Birthday-Level memorized" level.

[1] https://waitbutwhy.com/2016/03/doing-a-ted-talk-the-full-sto...

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Considering Tesla is depending on it's image to get more money to fill the gap of it's ever deepening losses, spending days preparing a presentation is the best use of his time.

Tesla has a price-to-sale ration of nearly 6, while Nissan and GM are <0.5. So Tesla is mostly image and vision, not reality. Therefore it depends on Musks presentations with visions of a glorious future.

I don't think Elon Musk's plan is to build up Tesla as a huge pyramid scheme, cash out at the peak, and move to Mars before he gets arrested. He is running a couple of very technical companies and is down in the trenches working 80-100 hours weeks to keep them moving forward as fast as possible. Getting the Model 3 up to a production rate of 5,000 a week is what will start to prove out Tesla's current stock price, not a slick demo.

I didn't want to imply that, it's more about staying afloat.

"Getting the Model 3 up to a production rate of 5,000 a week is what will start to prove out Tesla's current stock price, not a slick demo."

Yes, currently it looks like this is out of reach of Tesla.

Have you forgotten Job's reality disortion field?

Sometimes you gotta get people to believe in a better reality :P

Tesla obviously has to and always has.

  "[...] as long as 1) wealthy consumers in western
   nations but also China are eager to seek indulgence
   by way of green-washing and, 2) are in search of a
   Steve Jobs replacement persona onto which they can
   project their hopes for a gleaming future and, 
   3) are disillusioned with the establishment and 
   its leaders, the company will likely succeed to 
   raise cash again."

https://seekingalpha.com/article/4122890-tesla-approaches-te...

> Tesla has a price-to-sale ration of nearly 6, while Nissan and GM are <0.5. So Tesla is mostly image and vision, not reality.

The stock price is not the arbiter of whether a company is vision or reality. Nothing would change about those companies if public opinion suddenly shifted and made those ratios go the other way.

Or maybe Tesla's "image and vision" stem from its founder's tendency to completely ignore sideline commentary on non-substantive issues and focus on product.

Could it be that the stuttering is part of Musk's brand? Why try to be someone else? The Apple inspired pauses for applause at many tech reveals are cringe-worthy, e.g.

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