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4realz @lemmy.world

1y ago

Five People Founded Tesla, But Only Elon Musk Became Extremely Rich

open.substack.com

Five People Founded Tesla, But Only Elon Musk Became Extremely Rich

106 comments

Mush didn't found Tesla. He bought it later and put in the contract that he was able to call himself a founder
- Or it could be said that he found Tesla in the "finders keepers" sense.
  
  My brain now can't unsee how stupid the word Founded looks next to found.
  
  He didn't found it, he found it.
  👍 the English language is great
- Exactly, but "technically" he is credited as a founder. He's a really good business man.
  
  He isn't a "really good business man", everything he's made is built on a foundation of lies. Eventually, it'll collapse or be saved by socialised systems for being too big to fail. Musk is a con man, not a businessman. He's just made a living out of conning investors and the public alike.
  
  I think the whole Twitter debacle has disproven that he's a good businessman. Rather, it highlights how far one can get by having heritable wealth and being in the right place at the right time.
  
  He's successful in spite of himself. He makes terrible decisions constantly.
  
  Being credited as something doesn't mean you are that something. My ex credited me for having a big penis.
  Elon is not a founder of Tesla, no matter what any documents say. Calling him such when you know he isn't makes you a liar, a fool or a co-conspirator.

And this isn't even right, 2 people founded Tesla the other 3 are investors....
- Careful, Musk might send the internet goon squad after you for saying that. He gets very upset if you call him an investor in Tesla.
  
  Starlink is trash too, come at me Elon
  
  The internet has ruined me, because I read goon squad and thought of the other 'gooning'.
- Excuse me, but one of the conditions of Elon's investment was that they pretend he was a founder and refer to him as such!
  
  It wasn't a condition of his initial investment, but rather of a lawsuit settlement five years later, in 2009 (six years after Eberhard and Tarpenning actually founded it).

Tesla only had two founders, Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning. They even write that in the first paragraph. Especially Elon Musk pretty much bought himself the title co-founder despite joining much later. This is just Elon fanboyism.
- That's business... Martin and Marc didn't take Tesla to $600 billion, Elon did.
  
  Jobs, Wozniak, and Wayne never took apple to $3 trillion or even $1 trillion.
  Gates and Allen never took Microsoft to $2.8 trillion or even $1 trillion.
  They're all still founders. Musk isn't.
  
  My dude, wake up. Elon is mediocre, he was just born rich, heir to precious stone mines with questionable work ethics. You can say he is good at buying things but that's it. Read more about him from people who aren't fans and you will understand.
  
  That's great, it's still not what founding means.
  
  He did nothing. The engineers did design and built the cars. He was just standing on stages, telling lies to investors. It's very rare that c-level actually had something to do with the success of a company.

Yes. That is what happens when you sell the majority of your business.

the world’s most valuable automotive company.
Lol no.
- I don't like ~~Tesla~~ Elon.
  But they are literally the most valuable automotive company.
  As of right now, their market cap is $794.33 billion.
  
  Yeah I was a bit surprised. Seems quite clearly over-valued.
  
  By Revenue Tesla is 11th, and by Earnings Tesla is 8th. Market cap is fictional number.
- According to the stock market, yes. If you know otherwise, go make some money of them.
  
  The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.
  
  hhahah cuz we know the stock market is all real numbers
  
  Weird that people argue about this. If the value of a company is being talked about, then stocks is what people generally refer to. Now, if you'd specify and talk about some other value, then sure, but if only "value" is being mentioned I see no reason to think it would mean something else than stocks.

"Unlucky cofounders" - the lowest net worth of any of them is 7 million. Ian's not doing half bad considering most people will work their entire lives and not get a net worth even half of his.
The next one up has a net worth of 200 million.

This seems extremely poorly researched.
- Howso?

I was never interested in following up claims that Musk was not a founder, but to the extent this article is fair, I’d say he earned the title of founder as well as being the wealthiest. Maybe he was the only one who could afford to go all in on Tesla, but the fact is he went all in on Tesla and put arguably the most into building it into a car manufacturer
And they all look extremely rich to me. Even the “poorest” of the group made $7M for one year
- 7 million is "retiring doctor" or "retiring Google engineer" rich.
  It's generally considered safe to withdraw 4% of your nest egg the first year, and adjust that for inflation moving forwards. $7 million can sustain a $280k/year retirement. That's certainly rich, but there's a world of difference between that and a billionaire. A billionaire can safely spend $40 million a year.

“I made this!”

106 comments