Elon Musk’s Texts Shatter the Myth of the Tech Genius | Hacker News Reader

Elon Musk’s Texts Shatter the Myth of the Tech Genius

theatlantic.com

- "Indeed, both examples from the document offer a look at the boys’ club and power networks of the tech world in action. Is it surprising that rich people (including one of the world’s 10 richest men) are throwing money at their friends the way you might on a low-stakes poker night?"

Aren't they simply investing in a person with a proven track record of serial business success, because they're rational adults?

I think it's more a matter of the what (Twitter) than the who.

>serial business success

Only if you ignore the failures.

Which ones?

This article shatters the myth The Atlantic publishes anything worth reading.

I swear I read this exact comment yesterday or the day before. Am I losing my mind?

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Shows no matches :-/

You're not losing your mind - there was a similar riff on the title of the same article:

'The Atlantic's articles shatter the myth of respected media.'

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33047137

This is a very broad-strokes indicator. But if you wonder if Elon could, in fact, be wrong about the economics of LEO telecom satellites and the rockets to launch them, and still insist they be built based on a hunch and his buddies' encouragement, these texts show that, yes, he could be doing that.

How, then, do you account for Elon Musk's incredible success? Something has to cause it.

Paypal's success came out of eBay's success. Tesla's success was the result of US government subsidies. Even then, Tesla was on the verge of failure, and Elon was broke, and only loans from his network allowed it survive until it could turn the tide.

> "only loans from his network allowed it survive"

You're saying this as if networking and convincing acquaintances to offer financial assistance is cheating, rather than a normal part of starting up a company

Anyway, how about SpaceX? I suppose that's a similar story? It's true that SpaceX also was really on the verge of failure, and it survived because of government subsidies and private loans

But there does seem to be a rare pattern of repeated success here. Elon started with ZipX ($22m in 4 years), then X.com/Paypal ($175m in 2 years), then Tesla and SpaceX.

He's repeatedly creating valued companies, and in the SpaceX case, real innovation. Is this 100% luck, is it all a scam? I find that difficult to believe.

It's not cheating, its just unrelated to being a genius. And Musk didn't found Tesla or SpaceX.

I believe he founded SpaceX (but wasn't a founder of Tesla or Paypal)

Well he founded X.com, which merged into what became paypal, so I gave him that one. I must have just misremembered about SpaceX.

Didn't say he cheated. Just countering the revisionist history that he did it all himself, and that it has been nothing but success for him. As the sibling comment pointed out, he didn't "create" Paypal and Tesla (though he certainly has led them). He's a successful entrepreneur, but not necessarily a "tech genius".

Also I believe Tesla's valuation is not inherent to company and what it is doing, but hype and our entirely broken capital system with enough players there in pumping its valuation to massive levels.

What caused Bezo's success or Zuckerberg's?

Being in the right place at the right time and then being ruthless and inconsiderate.

And then you are rich and powerful enough that you can impose your mistakes on others

The article is pretty clear that the other rich people are also non-geniuses. The economy is designed to concentrate capital. Once you get a good chunk of money in one place, it's more about managing the money than having good product ideas.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com