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Comment by dabeeeenster | Hacker News Reader

Not sure why this is being upvoted. They are launching mass into space at between 1 and 2 orders of magnitude lower cost than anyone else. The R+D costs on that is insane. And they are almost profitable.

I 100% agree that du-jour saas companies raising 300MM on limited revenue is one thing, but this is not the same.

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There is a lot of hate on anything Elon does. The market is valuing his companies based on exactly what you stated. If people read the mission statements of these companies and listen to what Elon says, it is pretty clear on what his goals are. And contrary to what most believe, it is not to make himself tons of money.

These companies are going to make money as a means to accomplish their goals. The control could shift away from him in the future and then at that point the goals could change to shareholder profits but that is not the case currently.

TDS has evolved into MDS.

By TDS do you mean people disgusted by the 4x indicted rapist ex us president? And that that disgust has somehow morphed into a dislike for a south african immigrant who became the wealthiest man in America?

> > read the mission statements

Musk has been making mission statements ever since the days of Paypal. It's been 30 long years.

And he has never delivered tangible quality of life improvement for the avarage American

You can hate on Gates and Bezos and Zuck, tell you what, I will be joining you in that fight. But the products and services that they signed off are everywhere in society and if you disappeared them you'd have chaos if not outright civil war by the end of the month. (Note that I said 'signed off' not 'built')

Disappear Tesla and SpaceX and you'd have the manbun and big latte crowd throw a tantrum on ExTwitter and not much else. Life will go on as usual, for all practical purposes it's like you disappeared Tiffany&CO

> And he has never delivered tangible quality of life improvement for the avarage American

Neither has Ferrari or Rolex but that doesn't make them failures. Most of Musk's companies deliver good value to customer, just not cash flow profits from revenue to the companies themselves. They do somehow still deliver profit to shareholders via stock price movements though. It's not clear if Tesla will ever achieve long-term cash flow solvency but for now most customers are happy, and most shareholders are happy.

SpaceX seems like it won't be super difficult to achieve long-term positive cash flow. They're dumping tons of cash into Starship R&D but the expected returns are great. There really isn't any competition knocking on their door so they'll have at least a decade of uncontested pricing/margin dominance.

> > Neither has Ferrari or Rolex but that doesn't make them failures

In fact Rolex, Ferrari, Fender etc. aren't valued at 680 billions. They are valued like status symbol companies . Again like Tiffany & CO.

As they should be, Musk convinced people that Tesla will deliver 'Standard Oil-esque type quality of life jump in the life of the avg. citizen.

Instead it's just a Ferrari made in Silicon Valley. When people will wake up it's gonna hurt many people who believed in this dream, which was more a mirage tbh.

I don’t know what you want us all to agree on here. It sounds like GP disputed you setting the bar at “should have improved the lives of most Americans”. That did seem like an unreasonable bar to judge companies by.

It’s not super controversial that Tesla is likely overvalued, but shareholders generally still have a reasonable expectation of upside on new shares purchased so they continue to buy. I’d hope most of the qualified shareholders understand those returns are coming from speculation rather than valuation.

“Silicon Valley” seems inaccurate, most Tesla employees are in Nevada, Texas and China.

Also you talked about “Elons companies”, not just Tesla. The only company I can think of that maybe hadn’t been delivering value to both customers and shareholders is SolarCity. It’s acquisition was super sketchy but it no longer exists in any case.

> > I just disputed you setting the bar at “should have improved the lives of most Americans”. That seemed like an unreasonable bar to judge companies by, to me.

No, for a company that has reached the status of top 5 most valuable it isn't unreasonable to ask for concrete quality of life improvement for most people.

Moderna and BioNtech aren't even in the top500 and yet delivered quality of life on a global scale by de-facto ending the Covid pandemic

> Disappear Tesla and SpaceX and you'd have the manbun and big latte crowd throw a tantrum on ExTwitter and not much else. Life will go on as usual, for all practical purposes it's like you disappeared Tiffany&CO

Tell that to the people who depend on StarLink for rural internet access.

Really? If Microsoft disappeared we would see a massive jump in Linux and Mac usage. If Facebook/Instagram people would jump on the next social fad. If Amazon disappears people would buy there stuff from some BigBox store. If AWS disappears that would be really painful for a while before people adopt.

On the other hand. If Tesla disappears all the competitors will keep milking their ICE cars, since none of there EV make any profit. If Starlink disappears Ukraine is fucked, yes even if Elon has secretly given Putin access to all the satellites or whatever is the rumor of the day.

He makes a lot of false claims, but Starlink, and maybe Tesla essentially creating the market for electric cars?

> listen to what Elon says, it is pretty clear on what his goals are. And contrary to what most believe, it is not to make himself tons of money.

If you believe that, I have a social network to sell you...

Come on, the guy who keeps cozying up to the political party that denies global warming and loathes environmental protections is just looking out for the planet? The guy who spends hours on twitter trolling people, and refuses to honor contracts and severance payments is actually a misunderstood good guy?

Elon is great at attracting talented people and investors to his companies, and a big part of that is his ability to spin a compelling yarn about saving the planet or living on mars bases. That doesn't mean he's actually trying to save humanity. We're already seeing him pivot to a totally different persona, or maybe just not bothering to hide his true self as much.

1 to 2 orders of magnitude? ... Falcon Heavy launches nowadays run at approximately $40-70 million each. So you are implying that others cost minimum $400 to $4 billion per launch! I mean that is still 1/100th the Saturn V but SpaceX hasn't improved the overall costs that much. An improvement, yes, but no where near what they claim.

This is really my only complaint about Space X. I wish they would stop trying to be this somewhat unrealistic hype machine. What they are doing nowadays is amazing - that should be enough!

Falcon Heavy launches are not sold that cheap, though Delta IV Heavy, on the expensive end of commercial launch, did in fact sell around $400m.

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