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Comment by Slartie | Hacker News Reader

No one buys into Elon's firms because he's expecting dividends.

His investors are not investing because of his success rate in delivering on his promises. His investors are investing exclusively because they believe that stock they buy now will be worth more tomorrow. They all know that's most likely not because Elon delivers anything concrete (because he only does that in what, 20% of cases?), but because Elon rides the hype train harder tomorrow. But they don't care if it's hype or substance, as long as numbers go up.

Elon's investors are happy with his success rate only in terms of continuously generating hype. Which, I have to admit, he's been able to keep up longer now than I ever thought possible.

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Perhaps my marketing background is clouding my view, but have exceptional hyping skills seems quite useful when attracting investment.

And fact is Musk is building a lot of stuff of real substance. The hype to substance ratio isn't quite as important as some choose to beleive

Theranos were also hyping a lot and trying to build some stuff. There is some threshold (to be decided where) after which something is more of a fraud than a hype.

Also these days stock market doesn't have much relation to real state of economy - it's in many ways a casino.

Not sure who determines the threshold, he certainly goes to court more than your average person, but these are not start ups, they are large companies under a lot of scrutiny. I don't think the comparison is valid

>Not sure who determines the threshold

The SEC.

>he certainly goes to court more than your average person

Yes because he sues a lot of entities for silly things such as some advertisers declining to buy ads that display next to pro-hitler posts, or news outlets for posting unaltered screenshots of a social media site he acquired.

If Theranos promised ten amazing innovations or useful products, got 7 of them to market to great success while revolutionizing their industry I'd forgive them if their other 3 products turned out to be hype.

> The hype to substance ratio isn't quite as important as some choose to beleive

Musk's ratio is such that his utterances are completely free from actionable information. If he says something, it may or may not happen and even if it does happen the time frame (and cost) is unlikely to be correct.

I don't get why anyone would invest their money on this basis.

it's more to do with his track record at creating returns for investors?

But the returns are based on more hype rather than delivering. It's recursive.

Remember when people said that Starlink would never happen? What about when "experts" said that a private space company would never launch rockets. Or that no one would by an electric car made by an upstart company? Or when people said that the downsizing at Twitter would cause the company to collapse and that we could expect it to be defunct and dead within a year?

Some combination of the two, for sure. doesn't mean that Musk can't keep doing it. however you describe it or define it, it's a proven strategy at this point. I'm not sure Larry knew how Musk would make him good on Twitter, but he knew enough about Musk to be confident it would happen.

> but have exceptional hyping skills seems quite useful when attracting investment.

Elizabeth Holmes (Theranos) and a lot of ex-crypto-bros (fraudsters) would agree.

"Exceptional hyping skills" is (today) possibly a more derogatory term than you're expecting.

> And fact is Musk is building a lot of stuff of real substance.

I think the point others are making is this is a more accurate description of Musk ~10 years ago. In the past 5 years its been what, the cybertruck?

It's a derogatory comment among certain types of technical employee, I would agree. Not so much amongst those in leadership or softer roles.

I wouldn't put cybertruck in the win column personally

I think this is why he gets away with it. A "win" is a product delivered years late for 3x the promised MSRP with 1/10th the expected sales. With wins like these, what would count as a loss?

He gets away with it for one reason only, and because he consistently delivers good returns on capital.

Most of Tesla's revenue derives from Model Y and FSD subs. I agree that Cybertruck was a marketing ploy. Don't think it was ever intended to be materially revenue generating.

> He gets away with it for one reason only, and because he consistently delivers good returns on capital.

Didn't Tesla just have a terrible 2025, with European sales plunging due to the stigma of owning a swasticar?

Revenue has flatlined, but investors' confidence comes from Musk's track record for delivering good returns to investors. I think we can agree Musk succeeded in 2020 to 2025 in this regard. Whether you are confident he can do it again over next five years is the key question.

I'm personally more persuaded by the argument that Tesla is a meme-stock at this point - like much of crypto, it runs on "vibes", not solid fundamentals.

But even if share price is the metric for success, 33.6% over 5 years is like 6% compounded annually, which is okay I guess? [0]

[0] https://www.investopedia.com/magnificent-seven-stocks-840226...

It's increasingly something the general populace is not a fan of, at least that's been my experience.

so if the cybertruck is not a win, what in the last 5 years is?

Cynics are often right

Optimists are often rich

I feel that Cynics are often average.

Optimists are either rich, or destitute. And though you probably hear more about the richer parts, that doesn't mean they're more common.

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