Hacker News Reader

Comment by floppiplopp | Hacker News Reader

Anything Musk is now too many inferior products and broken promises for any sensible investor. Might as well just burn the money.

View on HN

Yet the money keeps coming, so I want to learn what I'm missing.

It’s not just Musk — as soon as you hit a certain level, it basically becomes impossible to fail. I’ve noticed that even if a senior leader is ousted from a company in disgrace, another company will invariably pick that person up fairly quickly.

Like Yahoo’s head of search before they shut down search?

At some point it's no longer a product and a company as much as a financial instrument.

> I want to learn what I'm missing.

The perverse thing is that betting on the irrational behavior of other investors seems paradoxically rational at this point. Just, don't get caught holding the bag.

If you take your assumptions as a given and end up at a contradiction, then there is a rather logical explanation.

investors are simply off-setting the losses to the next investor they sell to. Musk brand is still valuable and his bubble keeps growing. It is only the investors present when the bubble bursts that'll be at a loss.

You only need to grow your investment, sell it off to the next person, and exit before it happens

> so I want to learn what I'm missing.

Capitalism isn't meritocratic, and the market for obtaining finance isn't rational.

> Anything Musk is now too many inferior products

Tesla: "Tesla maintains an 87% brand retention rate, with Lexus (68%) and Toyota (54%) trailing, according to a new Bloomberg Intelligence survey. Moreover, 81% of prospective US Tesla drivers are new customers switching from competing EV brands." -- https://electrek.co/2024/04/09/87-percent-us-tesla-drivers-s...

I think you would be hard pressed to find any serious thinker exclaiming that SpaceX and Starling are inferior products.

SpaceX and/or Starlink going public has everyone on their knees begging for a peace of the action.

> Might as well just burn the money.

That's the A16Z bat-signal.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com