I am not very familiar with this founder and his company, but how does a guy like this make it past any level of due diligence on the part of his investors?
You clearly haven’t raised money from investors with that question. /j
Investors are sheep and follow their peers. There are only a handful of mavericks in investment circles, and they generate the best and the worst returns.
Consider that they all invested without seeing the engine or looking under the hood of the demo vehicle. It’s in the investor lawsuit — they even poke fun at themselves about it.
Bingo. You see this in public shareholder calls all the time. Today, you can't find a tech company that doesn't say something like "We are integrating AI with LLM into our technology to blah". They don't say that because it's a meaningful or good product, they say that because investors give you a 10% stock bump just for saying "LLM".
The same thing happened with crypto, machine learning, web 2.0, etc. Investors love a good buzzword and will reward a company handsomely for using them.
Hell, that's like 90% of the reason FTX became as big as it was.
They did a SPAC in 2020 so his 'investors' were mostly the general public. Actual investors were pretty skeptical of them, e.g. Hindenburg shorted them extensively and called them a fraud.
Early investors aren't trying to find valuable, profitable, or innovative companies that will make a lot of money. Their goal is to sell to someone else at a higher price sometime down the line. Therefore the actual reality of the business is not useful, and often purposely ignored if the story seems like it can pull in enough bag holders.
Do you think he would have gotten that far in today's interest rate environment? I mean, are investors paying more attention now, or does the bigger idiot theory still work?
A theory I've read on here is that VC returns come from a handful of hyper-successful firms, and the challenge is getting in on the deals in those firms at all, and the way you do that is by building a reputation as a visionary and generous investor by investing in ludicrous bullshit on founder-friendly terms. From this point of view, money given to Nikola isn't a bad investment, it's a marketing expense.
I am not a Musk fan at all, in fact I despise Musk 4.0, but what he accomplished prior to losing his mind is undeniable. He founded SpaceX, which absolutely accelerated our access to space by 20-40 years. Half of the satellites in orbit belong to SpaceX. SpaceX put more mass into orbit last year than all other countries combined.
He accelerated the adoption of electric vehicles by at least ten years. If the worst of climate change predictions turn out to be true, this could make him one of the most beneficial humans of our time... that's assuming that his naive geopolitical angling doesn't kill us all, and that his brain implants don't turn us into corporate zombies.
My point is, there is much about him to criticize, but he has delivered a lot in the past.
Billy Mitchell is a liar and a cheater, but he actually is really good at Donkey Kong. He has a publicly verified (in front of a crowd) score over 900,000. Much like how Lance Armstrong is both an excellent cyclist and a doped up cheater.
Billy is definitely an awful human being in other regards than just his cheating though, at least from what I've been able to tell.
Honestly, it doesn't - I can't imagine ChatGPT producing this density of blatant bullshit, not without a specialized prompt forcing it to. Bad as it is, ChatGPT by default still has some statistically average dignity.
This is sort of unfair because I’m sure this must’ve been part of the training set. But hilarious nonetheless. https://chat.openai.com/share/6a1fdfb4-9228-480f-961e-fa2c4b...
I like how it adds in a positive environmental impact completely out of its ass, just like a real Marketer!
Might be because the prompt is about an electric vehicle, buyers of which would be interested in environmental impact.
ChatGPT is all about replies that are believable. If there is real data,cool. But if not, also cool.
Just like people!
This is substantially worse than anything ChatGPT would come up with.
Edit: never mind: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38686399
It’s like a math proof lol.
Validated peak tech. We have created an unlimited bullshit generator.
I am not very familiar with this founder and his company, but how does a guy like this make it past any level of due diligence on the part of his investors?
You clearly haven’t raised money from investors with that question. /j
Investors are sheep and follow their peers. There are only a handful of mavericks in investment circles, and they generate the best and the worst returns.
Consider that they all invested without seeing the engine or looking under the hood of the demo vehicle. It’s in the investor lawsuit — they even poke fun at themselves about it.
Bingo. You see this in public shareholder calls all the time. Today, you can't find a tech company that doesn't say something like "We are integrating AI with LLM into our technology to blah". They don't say that because it's a meaningful or good product, they say that because investors give you a 10% stock bump just for saying "LLM".
The same thing happened with crypto, machine learning, web 2.0, etc. Investors love a good buzzword and will reward a company handsomely for using them.
Hell, that's like 90% of the reason FTX became as big as it was.
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They did a SPAC in 2020 so his 'investors' were mostly the general public. Actual investors were pretty skeptical of them, e.g. Hindenburg shorted them extensively and called them a fraud.
With a smile on their face and a billion dollar check in their pocket. Investors don't mind the bullshit if they're on the profiting side of it.
Man, I am a one-time failed founder and apparently I put way too much thought into it, as one of multiple failings.
Meanwhile Adam Neumann gets a next go.
Early investors aren't trying to find valuable, profitable, or innovative companies that will make a lot of money. Their goal is to sell to someone else at a higher price sometime down the line. Therefore the actual reality of the business is not useful, and often purposely ignored if the story seems like it can pull in enough bag holders.
Do you think he would have gotten that far in today's interest rate environment? I mean, are investors paying more attention now, or does the bigger idiot theory still work?
1 reply →
A theory I've read on here is that VC returns come from a handful of hyper-successful firms, and the challenge is getting in on the deals in those firms at all, and the way you do that is by building a reputation as a visionary and generous investor by investing in ludicrous bullshit on founder-friendly terms. From this point of view, money given to Nikola isn't a bad investment, it's a marketing expense.
Another one you may not have heard is Elon Musk.. he's been delivering self driving cars since 2015
I am not a Musk fan at all, in fact I despise Musk 4.0, but what he accomplished prior to losing his mind is undeniable. He founded SpaceX, which absolutely accelerated our access to space by 20-40 years. Half of the satellites in orbit belong to SpaceX. SpaceX put more mass into orbit last year than all other countries combined.
He accelerated the adoption of electric vehicles by at least ten years. If the worst of climate change predictions turn out to be true, this could make him one of the most beneficial humans of our time... that's assuming that his naive geopolitical angling doesn't kill us all, and that his brain implants don't turn us into corporate zombies.
My point is, there is much about him to criticize, but he has delivered a lot in the past.
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My car drove itself to work this morning, were you trying to be sarcastic?
Yet more proof that we could replace CEOs with ChatGPT and lose nothing.
Trevor Milton is to CEOs what Billy Mitchell is to pro gamers
Billy Mitchell is a liar and a cheater, but he actually is really good at Donkey Kong. He has a publicly verified (in front of a crowd) score over 900,000. Much like how Lance Armstrong is both an excellent cyclist and a doped up cheater.
Billy is definitely an awful human being in other regards than just his cheating though, at least from what I've been able to tell.
Honestly, it doesn't - I can't imagine ChatGPT producing this density of blatant bullshit, not without a specialized prompt forcing it to. Bad as it is, ChatGPT by default still has some statistically average dignity.
maybe this is why ChatGPT outputs some of the things it outputs
garbage in, garbage out