Comment by dubeye
5 hours ago
Perhaps my marketing background is clouding my view, but have exceptional hyping skills seems quite useful when attracting investment.
And fact is Musk is building a lot of stuff of real substance. The hype to substance ratio isn't quite as important as some choose to beleive
Theranos were also hyping a lot and trying to build some stuff. There is some threshold (to be decided where) after which something is more of a fraud than a hype.
Also these days stock market doesn't have much relation to real state of economy - it's in many ways a casino.
Not sure who determines the threshold, he certainly goes to court more than your average person, but these are not start ups, they are large companies under a lot of scrutiny. I don't think the comparison is valid
> The hype to substance ratio isn't quite as important as some choose to beleive
Musk's ratio is such that his utterances are completely free from actionable information. If he says something, it may or may not happen and even if it does happen the time frame (and cost) is unlikely to be correct.
I don't get why anyone would invest their money on this basis.
it's more to do with his track record at creating returns for investors?
But the returns are based on more hype rather than delivering. It's recursive.
> but have exceptional hyping skills seems quite useful when attracting investment.
Elizabeth Holmes (Theranos) and a lot of ex-crypto-bros (fraudsters) would agree.
"Exceptional hyping skills" is (today) possibly a more derogatory term than you're expecting.
> And fact is Musk is building a lot of stuff of real substance.
I think the point others are making is this is a more accurate description of Musk ~10 years ago. In the past 5 years its been what, the cybertruck?
It's a derogatory comment among certain types of technical employee, I would agree. Not so much amongst those in leadership or softer roles.
I wouldn't put cybertruck in the win column personally
I think this is why he gets away with it. A "win" is a product delivered years late for 3x the promised MSRP with 1/10th the expected sales. With wins like these, what would count as a loss?
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