>And to be clear, the only thing he has ever founded is SpaceX.
I was waiting for someone to bring up this comment. I knew it would come, sooner or later.
The fact of the matter is that he took those pre-existing tiny companies and build them into huge corporations. He also didn't build roads, stoplights, sewer systems and everything else needed to run a multibillion dollar company.
And, Twitter is not a startup either. If he could build the companies he either started from scratch or took over and built them up to multi-billion dollar companies, that take a shitload of skill.
>He is nothing more than a rich kid, who made some good investments, and then claimed the work of his employees as his own
If it is so easy, you do it. Get some investors together and create a bunch of huge companies, if it is so easy. Everyone says what you're saying but if it is so easy, why are there not dozens of other real smart people out there doing this? Your statement defeats itself.
I am NOT saying that Twitter won't implode. But time will tell. Shit, people have been predicting the doom of Tesla since Musk bought it in 2004. I remember the doom predictors all along and each step of the way. Yet 20 years later, it's still here. Can Tesla fail? Can SpaceX fail? Can all his other ventures fail? Of course. But companies, big and small, fail all the time, with "super experiened adults" who run it.
But as far as corporations go, a bloated staff is the prime reason why companies fail. That has always been my opinion.
And to sit there and say that Musk doesn't know about tech is supremely ignorant. The guy has top talent in Tesla, SpaceX and other companies. Shoot, he had to hire loads of talent for SpaceX and got the rocket to land on a platform to reuse it. He had his engineers design the lock to dock with ISS. He had engineers program all the trajectories to get it exactl to the ISS. He has satellites, which require a lot of expertise. That's only SpaceX.
For Tesla, despite him not starting it, he massively expanded it and had to hire tech people galore. He purchased the NUMMI auto plant in Fremont California, already set up to make cars, in 2010. Brilliant. He didn't have to build an auto manufacturing plant from the ground up. Probably a half a billion dollars he saved.
He saved billions in landing his rockets for SpaceX.
Musk is the one that brought in the talent for SpaceX and Tesla. I'm sure he has a lot of brilliant people helping him run Tesla and it is not just him. I'm 100% positive he brought in his own tech staff who he knows and trusts, and who know his management style of squeezing every drop of productivity out of people, which is not a bad thing. It's a good thing. And there are people who love it. The employees that hate it are the ones who want to play pingpong at work, who want free food, who want free massages daily and so on.
He's a heck of a lot more than a rich kid. If this is so, everyone would do better than him. Or at least there should be 5 or 10 super talented individuals in the USA that could, out of 330 million people. But nobody has done what he has done before he did it, and none now that he is and showed others what he has done, and personally I doubt if anyone will do it in the future.
He didn't just buy the stock and sit back and drink pina coladas on a Spanish seashore for the last 20 years. The guy sleeps in his companies to show the example of what he will do. It's like Bill Gates used to take only commercial flights, and not business or first class, but the regular cattle economy class, even when he was worth $30 billion. Why? To set the example of what he expects. What high-level executive would dare take business class when the CEO doesn't? None, that's how many. It is imperative that the CEO set the tone of what the company is about. The days of pingpong playing at Twitter are over.
Do I agree with the things he's done at Twitter? No. I always think bringing up politics is stupid. You can lose 1/2 your business with one sentence, be it liberal or conservative comments, especially in our politically polarized times. Just look at the Dixie Chicks for an example.
But all those other things that you and other people are saying are, in my view, just plain wrong. It's all about the politics, and that's it.