[WorldMaker]

It's possibly not that foolish depending on how hard you believe the Peter Principle applies to billionaires. Musk didn't start Tesla, he swooped in and meddled exactly like Twitter, because he had extra money and wanted to swing it around. Is picking a good bet, one that survives your meddling, a skill or just luck? It's possible to believe the Peter Principle applies and it was entirely luck.

[woooooo]

He came in years before the first car was shipped and, like, 15? years before they got to sustained profitability with their third-gen cars.

I'm not trying to dickride the guy, obviously a lot of people contributed, but this literally just happened and we all saw it. How are people rewriting it successfully?

[WorldMaker]

Most of Tesla's current profitability is still in carbon credits trading with other manufacturers. Their own manufacturing is still not stably profitable. Where it is profitable it in part relies on continuing sales of a feature that has yet to be delivered (and may not be ever delivered).

Tesla has done a great job to shake up a complacent status quo of car manufacturers, and to especially lead the curve of EV adoption in the US. That's not nothing, yes, and is absolutely a team effort. It's also not the best run business model and there's a lot of questions still about the long-term sustainability in their cost cutting and their over-reliance on credits and promised but not delivered features. If we want to credit Elon as the sole "business guru" and the company is relying on business models that are less than stellar, it's fair to criticize Elon's role in Tesla with respect to their ongoing business model issues.

There have been times where Tesla's stock, to generate additional liquidity, has had SEC violations alleged against it and most of those were directly "great business man" Elon Musk posting SEC violations directly to social media and pretending they were honest mistakes (and having enough reasonable doubt to not get the "Martha Stewart treatment").

I don't think there's "rewriting". There's 15 years of questionable business practices that was criticized at the time, yet seem easy to sweep under the rug now that Tesla looks popular and is a darling of certain investors.

[tptacek]

I don't care how instrumental he was to Tesla, because it doesn't have anything to do with how successful he'll be with his stated plans for Twitter, a company he desperately tried to avoid acquiring but was forced by his own mistakes.