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Comment by tejohnso | Hacker News Reader

Tesla wouldn't exist if Elon had shut down at the 2 month dire point. At least, I recall him saying they were at one point about 2 days away from bankruptcy.

Not surprising though, that Elon would be in the same camp as this Convoy CEO, not likely to shed too many tears over worker concerns.

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> At least, I recall him saying they were at one point about 2 days away from bankruptcy.

Elon has said several variations of this have happened on several occasions.

And yet this fragility never really made it into IR reports or SEC filings or annual reports.

So either he exaggerates (shocking concept from a man whose company has on multiple occasions had to follow him around and say "his claims of Tesla doing X, or doing it by Y date, are visionary, and not statements of fact"), or there's some hinky accounting going on.

I suspect this was pre-IPO.

I know of two companies with >$1B exits that were running on fumes when they turned it around. One had 3 days of runway remaining; one had 16 hours to get a wire in to make payroll. Today these companies employ thousands.

FedEx famously (allegedly) came down to a hand of blackjack in Vegas to make payroll & avoid bankruptcy.

And Elon hasn't been known to exaggerate greatly or lie, so this must be true.

Who knows if it was two days away from bankruptcy, but Tesla and SpaceX were very close to running out of money in 2008:

https://www.businesstoday.in/amp/technology/news/story/elon-...

Also where were you during 2017, 2018 period when the doomsayers (aka TESLAQ) predicted the same so often? So much so that this tweet became famous?

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/980566116614291456?s=46&t=yN2X...

I don't dispute that they were close to running out of money, but what does "2 days" even mean in that context? It probably means that soon they would have needed to decide when to start the bankrucpty procedues or something.

He said that before he said he had "funding secured" to sell the company at $420/share and after he laid out the planned 35 minute Hyperloop from LA to San Francisco, right?

(I'm just trying to nail down the timeline of full truths/no cap from Elon.)

Everyone at Tesla would be better without the manchild.

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