Why the Future of Tesla May Depend on Knowing What Happened to Billy Durant

it's often said that if a headline is posited as a question, the answer to that question is "no".

if that question begins with "how" or "why" however, the answer is better phrased as "it doesn't".

/rant

not very inspired analysis of Tesla's challenges, with a comparison to a just barely similar historical case.

> One of the common traits of a visionary founder is that once you have proven the naysayers wrong, you convince yourself that all your pronouncements have the same prescience.

That line rings true.

This was discussed earlier on HN:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16891651

A good read, but I really wish the author would stop the constant equation of visionary and founder and remove the couple of factually wrong insinuations that Musk was the founder of Tesla. Elon Musk did not found the company he did definitely help it survive its infancy and grew it to what it is today (which either market leading or nearly bancrupt depending of who you ask), but he didn’t found it.

This line of thought might be a "natural inception[0]" from Tesla using the very same auto plant[1] where Toyota taught GM some of their trade secrets. After hearing this and knowing both are American automakers, many humans would continue the comparison, and some would find similar events somewhere in GM's long history. Because of the length of GM's history, it's probable that you'll find a similar event - somewhat reminiscent of "Bible codes" showing encoded prophecy, except long works such as Moby Dick accidentally have the same encodings. [2]

Though it would be "symmetrical" if Toyota formed a similar partnership with Tesla for a similar purpose.

[0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1375666/ (Inception (2010))

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

[2] http://www.awitness.org/essays/bibcode.html

TL;DR: "Yet, as Durant’s story typifies, one of the challenges for visionary founders is that they often have a hard time staying focused on the present when the company needs to transition into relentless execution and scale."