tanteThis explains basically everything about Elon Musk's actions. Some of his companies work in spite of him. Twitter just has no immune system against his thing.
https://www.tumblr.com/numberonecatwinner/701567544684855296/elon-wyd
Nafnlaus 🇮🇸 🇺🇦@tante His formula for success has been very simple:
* Find something that has stagnated but is backed by a promising convergence of technologies, something which is "difficult but not impossible", that people really want to happen which has stagnated because companies don't want to risk the difficulty.
* Start a company. Inspire ideologues who want to make it happen. Attract them, get your pick of the best, work them long hours - which they, will because they want to make it happen.
Sebastian Moser@nafnlaus @tante This is true - but I think it’s important to acknowledge that he’s done that in industries where everybody else has failed. I think there was some method to his madness, early on. (And then he got overconfident.)
Brian Hogg@brianhogg @nafnlaus If he just took advantage of the groundwork that's been laid - why didn't anybody else take advantage of that? Lots of rocket people genuinely thought landing rockets was a pipe dream - and even after SpaceX proved it's possible, nobody is replicating their success, despite incredible amounts of capital investments. (Tesla is similar, but less extreme. Startups have failed despite billions invested, but the incumbents are (luckily) catching up.)
@seb @nafnlaus the thing that was initially interesting — maybe even inspiring — about Musk was his willingness to risk his money on things that rich people wouldn’t tend to. The rockets, affordable electric cars. He took different risks with his money, but if he’d done it five years earlier it might not have worked out.
This post by describes what I mean very nicely: https://doctorow.medium.com/the-true-genius-of-tech-leaders-46d6e3439989
@brianhogg @nafnlaus Totally agree - obviously, timing was crucial (as it is with anything tbh). And it also shows him being somewhat normal - after all, he invested a lot of his own money into ideas that are _way_ out there, instead of going the easy route and starting an internet startup. But then he had to get himself a Twitter account...
@seb @brianhogg I think #Musk is a historically-good example of the harmful effect of Twitter's toxicity. Because his downslide, IMHO, can be directly related to him being unable to cope with the constant abuse that Twitter exposed him to. He has the sort of personality that needs to be loved and appreciated, and he had many fans that did, but #Twitter made sure he was exposed to as many people who hated him as possible. And you can watch him steadily turn more cynical and angry in response.