Elon Musk has hit the tipping point I like to call "too big to succeed" (a riff on "too big to fail"). He has successfully failed upwards his entire career and bought into his own hype. This isn't new. He was ousted from Paypal for incompetence.
What fooled a lot of people (including me) was SpaceX but it's become clear that SpaceX has succeeded in spite of Elon, not because of him. Someone in the SpaceX leadership has done an exceptional job of insulating SpaceX from Elon's terrible and random micromanagement. Some might say Tesla. I think the jury is still out on Tesla. The business doesn't justify its market cap but irrational hype can last a very long time. Just look at Bitcoin.
Eventually these fail-sons make a bet so large it costs them everything. It's why wealth rarely lasts more than a few generations. It's why the wealthiest people in America aren't named Astor, Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, Morgan or Carnegie. Eventually some fail-son destroyed the fortune their forebears built.
Elon wants to turn Twitter into WeChat, basically. An all-encompassing destination and platform. Chat, banking, etc.
Elon has done the Mckinsey or Private Equity thing of just raising prices and cutting costs without regard for long-term consequences. His actions have caused a huge drop in advertiser revenue, one that won't be recouped at $8/month. He has to come up with the money to cover interest payments and the Tesla board and shareholders have limited patience for him selling Tesla stock to do it. Should Tesla crater, Elon could well go under.
To paraphrase something I saw on Twitter (sorry, "X"), Elon has thrown away a 15 year old household name for a delete button.
What fooled a lot of people (including me) was SpaceX but it's become clear that SpaceX has succeeded in spite of Elon, not because of him. Someone in the SpaceX leadership has done an exceptional job of insulating SpaceX from Elon's terrible and random micromanagement. Some might say Tesla. I think the jury is still out on Tesla. The business doesn't justify its market cap but irrational hype can last a very long time. Just look at Bitcoin.
Eventually these fail-sons make a bet so large it costs them everything. It's why wealth rarely lasts more than a few generations. It's why the wealthiest people in America aren't named Astor, Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, Morgan or Carnegie. Eventually some fail-son destroyed the fortune their forebears built.
Elon wants to turn Twitter into WeChat, basically. An all-encompassing destination and platform. Chat, banking, etc.
Elon has done the Mckinsey or Private Equity thing of just raising prices and cutting costs without regard for long-term consequences. His actions have caused a huge drop in advertiser revenue, one that won't be recouped at $8/month. He has to come up with the money to cover interest payments and the Tesla board and shareholders have limited patience for him selling Tesla stock to do it. Should Tesla crater, Elon could well go under.
To paraphrase something I saw on Twitter (sorry, "X"), Elon has thrown away a 15 year old household name for a delete button.