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Comment by xeromal | Hacker News Reader

It kind of works when the leader is a visionary like Steve Jobs and somewhat an Elon musk. They're troubled humans but being confident and aggressive works often works. I don't see Zuch with the same charisma and gusto though. He strikes me more an engineer than a visionary.

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Zuck is absolutely a better presentation speaker than Elon. I don't know how you calculate charisma but Elon is a great leader despite his inability to give an presentation that is interesting vocally.

I'll agree with you there. I've always appreciated that Elon gives presentations if just for the fact that if he can pull it off, hopefully I can too. I hate public speaking but it gives me hope that some people will still listen. lol

I have to admit I've never watched an Elon presentation. Now I'm going to. But:

One thing I always tell people like you is: concentrate on your content. Anticipate every possible question, and have an answer for it. Don't think about hand gestures, eye contact, and all that Toastmasters stuff at all.

Have little note cards with reminders to yourself on what points to hit.

You can only think of ONE thing while you're talking. So let it be this:

I know the stuff.

They don't.

They want to know it.

Maybe that's three things.

"hope that some people will still listen" : Yes, they will, If those three things are true.

Yeah if the content is there... And you run someone of the worlds most exciting companies... You can be terrible and people will still listen. Elon has a bit of awkward charm sometimes but other than that its really all content.

To be fair, while he's clearly a bad presenter, at least I generally get the feeling that Elon is genuinely passionate about what he's presenting on, while Zuck generally gives off heavily polished PR speak vibes.

I definitely fine myself more engaged by Elon's presentations despite his performance.

I'm not sure if that counts as charisma, but it's not nothing.

> He strikes me more an engineer than a visionary.

This doesn't add up with Facebook going "all-in" on the metaverse imo.

I still think Metaverse was a branding/distraction strategy from taking a bath financially. The lack of substance is telling.

This is a perfect example. Zuckerberg wants to be a visionary. But the "metaverse" is a terrible vision whereas visionaries are typically labelled as such because they manage to envision things that others don't AND those visions turn out to be great.

The jury is still out on that, we'll find out in a few years.

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