[bloodyplonker22]

It's good to hear a CEO say "we don't know the answer, but we're making a bet" rather than the typical Elizabeth Holmes style "We are absolutely correct and first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you get convicted of three counts of wire fraud and go to prison".

[gooseus]

"This is a solved problem.", "We're light-years ahead of the competition", or "We expect everyone with existing hardware to be able to monetize their cars as robo-taxis by the end of next year" are other great examples.

[walrus01]

to be fair, this is because Elizabeth Holmes is probably a sociopath, so you'd expect to hear something overly confident like that from such. Not that we knew it at the time.

[andy_ppp]

I've met quite a few people like her and I really don't believe they are sociopaths - they say things that sound real and even convince themselves of it but as soon as you start peeling back details they don't exist. It's like you are talking to a Turing machine and it's you failing the test. People on these forums never really speak to these people because we are already largely scientists and love empirical evidence and work with and hang around similar people. There's a whole class of people who have learned to pattern match talking like us without anything to back it up. See the industry "Comms" for many many examples.

[ramesh31]

>There's a whole class of people who have learned to pattern match talking like us without anything to back it up. See the industry "Comms" for many many examples.

Have noticed this through my career as well. There is a whole class of people who go through life never actually doing anything. They just talk about people doing things. And get paid to talk about people doing things. And by the time people realize that they are just full of shit, they move on to the next place where they get paid to talk about people doing things. And they never actually did anything in the first place, so it's not like you can even say they were a bad worker.

[walrus01]

I see you've discovered the people who work in "enterprise sales" for any niche software or technical product.

[saiya-jin]

Roughly 1 in 20 folks on average out there is a sociopath (some quote from Jordan Peterson). It doesn't have to be full 110% on scheming world domination, but detectable (and obvious in daily life). I am not an expert on her or whole saga, but from my perspective many famous people show this trait. In business its almost mandatory to get/stay on top, it certainly gives one advantages compared to nice fair honest people.

[kranke155]

Sociopaths are not uncommon as people think. They think sociopaths are “mad killers” but they’re just people who don’t feel remorse when ie lying and have little to no empathy. I’ve met mild sociopaths who were just bankers who would never even think about second order and third order effects of what they were doing. It’s not some kind of rare condition.

I heard the figure was 1 in 30 but 1 in 20 is close enough.

[ladon86]

Yes, but all of those quotes are by Elon Musk…

[walrus01]

True. I actually replied to the entirely wrong comment, should have been one up... I have a great deal more confidence in truly revolutionary things that have been factually delivered by SpaceX (such as 100+ re-uses of a rocket first stage now), and I question how much of that is really due to Musk at all. Maybe Musk as a figurehead. I wonder if all of the Elon fanboys know that much of what's been accomplished at SpaceX is thanks to Gwynne Shotwell, or even know who she is.

Things like promising "full self driving" for 6+ years now and charging people $12500 for it leave a really bad taste in my mouth and I find it difficult to square with my overall very positive impression of spacex.

[virgilp]

I'll bite. Say I'm a Musk fanboy... I can assure you that all Elon fanboys I know are fully aware who Gwynne Shotwell is. Now, your turn: please explain how the following SpaceX accomplishments are thanks to Gwynne Shotwell (other that the hand-wavy "well if she didn't get the contracts none of this would be possible"):

- Merlin engine

- Vertical landing

- Raptor engine

... or, what exactly is the "much of what's been accomplished" that you talk about? Look, I'm not trying to minimize her role, she was clearly a great COO for SpaceX, but it seems weird to me that you try to minimize Musk's importance while at the same time picking one other singular person to highlight. I could understand the argument that "it's a team effort, no one person did this alone"; but if we're picking only one person to assign credits, then surely, _surely_ Musk is that one person, right? I understand the skepticism that he really does engineering & design, so here is supporting evidence: https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/k1e0ta/eviden...

[divbzero]

The anonymous “Interviewer” in the last part of that Reddit post was Sam Altman, excerpted from a 20-minute conversation with Elon Musk in 2016 [1] that I found to be interesting even as a non-fanboy.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnBQmEqBCY0

[brtkdotse]

Bracing myself for the downvotes, but I suspect any wins coming out of Tesla/SpaceX these days is despite Musk, not thanks to.

[ricardobayes]

I think we'll see major players leaving this industry soon. Self-driving will be a war of attrition and thus cannot be won by US companies with their insane burnrate. Europe has just as competent engineers making a tenth of their US counterparts. If I was a VC I would be head over heels investing in EU self-driving tech. They are the 'cockroaches' of this tech who will survive. I can't imagine e.g. Waymo bankrolling tens of millions of dollars in payroll for years to come.

[alex_sf]

Does it really matter? If there's no Elon, there's no SpaceX. And I say this as someone that doesn't buy into the founder cult.

[hgomersall]

I'll be more impressed when he solves climate change.

[ryandrake]

> If there's no Elon, there's no SpaceX.

Why not?

What mystical gift does this one person have that 7 billion other people don't, that permits him and only him to run the company? This is a really unpopular opinion on a web site that exalts founders, but I don't think it really takes much special skill to run a company. Most (but admittedly not all) CEOs are in their position not because of their know-how, but because 1. They founded the company, and happened to be the one that flipped a coin heads 20 times in a row; or 2. They were born into that Ivy League class that closely gatekeeps CxO and SVP positions for themselves; or 3. Were descendants of one of the above.

Assuming a successful CEO is uniquely skilled is like assuming a lottery winner is uniquely skilled at winning the lottery.

I think many people, if given Elon’s financial war chest and basic knowledge of and an interest in rocketry, could have made SpaceX.

[chasd00]

To me, Musk's real gift is finding the right people and convincing them to work for him at the right time.

[lisper]

Elon is probably a sociopath too. Not all sociopaths are as dysfunctional as Elizabeth.

[ksec]

Indeed. It is very rare ( if not the only few I remember ) to see Silicon Valley or any VC funded Tech companies that is unsure of his / her tech or themselves. Their absolute optimistic nature ( If you could call it that ). People who are unsure of things, especially with leading edge tech, unproven tech and extreme difficulties tends to get my vote. I will now be keeping an eye on Cruise. Although I still think driverless cars in mainstream use is at least another 5 - 10 years away. There are just too many edge cases, but I hope people continue to work on it, as it will be part of the solution to solve housing and property market issues.

[drzaiusapelord]

Game theory and personality dynamics strategy applies to C-levels too! For some industries, companies, etc you want to be a Holmes type of total confidence. It depends who your market is, and by that I mean the VC's you want to attract. If they go for the "arrogant boy/girl genius" schtick then that's what you do. If they want a humble intellectual, then that's what you do instead. Conversely, you may alternate between the two depending on your audience. Maybe you're humble in HN comments, but maybe a monster in VC meetings. Look at Elon's larger than life "boy genius" PR persona. It works really well. He may not be a total fraud like Holmes, but his shoddy car AI has killed at least a couple people in cases where if the car had a lidar-like system, that truck or whatever would have been identified instead of seen as part of the sky.

Also Cruise wants to license to automakers, not make their own car, so they have to act like trustworthy partners in their PR. Elon has his own car company and instead is antagonistic and belittling to automakers because he thinks there's a competitive advantage to it. Any positive sentiment towards his competitors is potentially lost sales for Tesla. Capitalism encourages zero-sum thinking and rewards zero-sum strategies.

CEOs are marketers and salespeople primarily and as such know how to play different roles for different situations. They code switch just like everyone else. The role isn't for everyone in tech because a lot of tech people don't have the people, political, and acting skills for it.

tldr; capitalism doesn't work well with honesty, in fact it works best with dishonesty. You don't have a personal relationship with a CEO or company, you're just absorbing marketing delivered via executive personalities. Personalities are perfectly valid marketing tools in capitalism. Take that as you will.

[astrange]

Theranos didn't use the normal set of VCs because they all thought it was a scam; they raised from some random rich people who weren't professional tech VCs instead. It's unfortunate the only thing she was convicted for was defrauding them, since being accredited investors they should be able to live with that.

As for Elon, he's currently doing a bad boy anti-government bit in an attempt to make Tesla "electric cars you can buy even if you're a Republican". Since we want those people buying EVs instead of coal rolling, that's a good thing.

[toss1]

>> It's unfortunate the only thing she was convicted for was defrauding them, since being accredited investors they should be able to live with that.

NO.

Investors are supposed to be able to live with all the usual risks of technology, execution, marketplace dynamics, etc.

They are NOT supposed to be OK with deliberate fraud.

If you invest at Early_Round when the tech looks promising, but then it fails to develop, CEO truthfully tells everyone what failed, the plan to overcome the failures, and you invest in Later_Round, or don't, and it ultimately fails and you lose your investment, fine.

BUT, if you invested in Early_Round and then the tech fails to develop, but the CEO straight-up lies to you and says they are "light years ahead of everyone else", shows phony endorsements from major industry players, and more so that you invest again in Later_Round, and then lose your shirt - that's fraud, and all involved in the fraud should be prosecuted, convicted, and jailed.

Anything less will create an environment where blatant lying for 100s-of-$millions is okay, and that is doomed to systemically fail.

[jhbadger]

But I think the point is that she wasn't convicted of endangering people's lives, which many would consider a far greater crime than just a con defrauding some gullible marks. People depended on those tests. They made choices (such as whether or not to have surgeries) based on the results.

[toss1]

I agree with your point, and I definitely wonder what was the failure in prosecution that produced those not-guilty verdicts. Not only was people's health involved with the fraudulent testing service, but the healthcare consumers did not in any way sign up for that.

The specific comment that I was responding to seemed to say it should be okay to defraud Accredited Investors should be "able to live with that".

[astrange]

If you're selling a pump and dump like crypto or Uber, you want the CEO to lie to you because it shows he's good at lying! Then you all go out and lie with him, then Softbank gives you a billion dollars for no reason.

[CPLX]

Tim Draper wasn’t random.

[anamax]

How many other SV VCs joined Draper? FWIW, I heard that Ellison also put in some early money. If that was it, then will you agree that "mostly outside of the usual SV crowd." is accurate

How many rounds did Draper participate in? If Draper stopped after the first round or two, then it "got some early money from SV but everything else came from outsiders."

[dannylandau]

Good one!