Comment by zelias
2 years ago
In what context does a "smart guy" truly not realize that growing industrial manufacturing companies ("cars and rockets") from scratch is a fundamentally different challenge than running a mature web-only social media company?
Is he simply blinded by success?
You can be smart and impulsive at the same time. Remember, he tried to get out of the purchase probably after thinking about it.
He had plenty of time to think about it before deciding to fire all the people he fired in the cruelest way possible.
It may have been satisfying to him because he has a caricature in his head of who they are and what they did and it made his fans happy. But impulsive? No, there was plenty of time for smart to override impulsive here. This is something -- arbitrary, chaotic, intentionally cruel -- but it isn't impulsive.
This is fair, but you would think that once he realized what kind of bag he was holding, he would also possess the clarity of mind to realize a need to step back and learn something about the internal workings of the industry, let alone the company he had just acquired without any due diligence.
If Elon had simply sat back and done "almost nothing" after the purchase, instead taking the time to really learn about something he had just bought, he would not be in this PR firestorm, let alone getting forced to sell off billions in TSLA stock.