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Comment by NathanKP | Hacker News Reader

I'd still say that John Rockefeller is more impressive. Adjusted for inflation John Rockefeller's company Standard Oil was worth over $1 trillion.

Or Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, the guy who started the Dutch East India company, which adjusted for inflation was worth over $8.2 trillion.

Modern companies have nothing on what entrepreneurs did in the past and how much money they made. It doesn't matter how many markets Elon Musk "disrupts" nothing he can do will ever match the impact that the Dutch East India company had on the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_East_India_Company

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>I'd still say that John Rockefeller is more impressive. Adjusted for inflation John Rockefeller's company Standard Oil was worth over $1 trillion dollars. >Or Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, the guy who started the Dutch East India company

Yeah, it's amazing what those guys could get away with back in the days of slavery and before regulation. /sarcasm

Yep to be clear I think Standard Oil and Dutch East India company did a lot of bad things. And that's part of the point... If you are saying Elon Musk is impressive just because he started four companies that are worth a lot of money that means nothing. There are better ways to judge a CEO, and better ways to build a company, and that's what the Shopify CEO was saying in his Twitter thread.

Standard Oil was founded in 1870, five years after the 13th amendment completely abolished slavery in the US.

Rockefeller's success is attributed to his relentless pursuit of horizontal and vertical integration, not cheap labor via slavery.

Hence the >and before regulation.

From the Wikipedia article on Dutch East India Company:

"The company has been criticised for its monopolistic policy, exploitation, colonialism, uses of violence, and slavery."

I'm pretty sure many of the today's companies would do just as well or even better if they could have their own military force and free ticket on slavery.

Microsoft and Apple are both worth over 1T at the moment.

Granted, DEIC is in a league of its own, but it was also a state sponsored company, more akin to Saudi-ARAMCO (2T).

Well sure, but these guys did not make that much money because they were better CEO's, they benefited from the context of the times. What Musk has done with Tesla and SpaceX, simultaneously is absolutely mind blowing and it is hard to imagine anyone topping that, like ever. He created incredibly successful companies in some of the most competitive, most capital intensive, most research driven businesses that exist. It is amazing to me the man is not given his proper due. What he did was super-human and, in the long, could actually put a dent in the Universe.

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