What is it about the Internet that seems to produce and/or attract flimflammers? Low barriers to entry? Something else? I have always thought that both Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk were flimflammers and recent news provides additional support for that view. Tremendously rich and successful flimflammers but flimflammers nonetheless.
It also says something about the global economy that two of the richest people in the world are flimflammers.
I don’t think they are flimflammers – or totally that. Amazon was an incredibly innovative company. Tesla and SpaceX are amazing companies that built capabilities established players were not able to.
IMO Bezos and Musk ought to focus on their core businesses and quit their forays into media.
There is a certain amount of huckster in every entrepreneur (and politician) that enables success.
That both of them have managed to get considerable government subsidy is something I’m afraid will taught to all business majors.
I think those two, and others, demonstrate something about sales that at a visceral level I dont think I really understand. While I think Musk is truly bright and an innovator I dont really see why his car company is worth more than Ford plus GM together. There is something about his sales pitch or how he hypes his company that just works with some people. It makes me want to run the other way. That SBF guy for FTX gave off the sleazy vibes I thought too. All of those successful, rich televangelists? They all give off those vibes, to me, that say dont trust that guy, yet millions of other people want to send them thousands of dollars. Guess its why I am not in sales.
Steve
If it’s anything to with the internet it’s the immediacy of the medium.
Get on board quick before the seats are all gone.
WRT Musk,
That Twitter gamble would make me nervous if I were him.
Complete the list:
Mail, phone, email, Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, Twitter.
What makes Twitter different over time?
Where’s the moat?
Dear Dave,
Happy Thanksgiving! And thank you for all the effort you put into this blog.
Yours,
Bob
I have cautiously admired Musk, with mixed feelings On one hand his business has thrived on government subsidies and financial help from the CCP, which is a cop-out IMO. OTOH, he thinks out of the box, is not afraid to go against the grain or consensus thinking, which attracts my interest in him.
Musk’s latest Twitter venture, while fascinating to watch, may not bode well for him financially. Even though he has supposedly acquired 15 million new subscribers, and let go of all but a meager staff his costs are, last noted, were 5 million a day, with his Tesla business’s worth being halved in the process. In the meantime, an autopsy of the old Twitter business model shows a bias to canceling conservative speech, lots of fake subscriptions and a dislike for any independent-minded free speech if it was at all contrary to the establishment’s rubber-stamped narrative. Very few people get away with opposing government-defined “truth†any more, which I find a virtue of Musk.
That’s very kind of you, Bob. And to you.
As for the blog, it’s therapy. 😉