

Want a better pitch? Watch Elon Musk’s presentation for the Tesla Powerwall  - scardine
https://medium.com/firm-narrative/want-a-better-pitch-watch-this-328b95c2fd0b

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Fede_V
This is a bit of a pet-peeve of mine, but I really dislike it when people
focus on the aesthetic or the presentation style of Musk or Jobs.

Musk gives great presentations, but the reason he is widely respected is
because he was actually able to deliver what he presented. In the most recent
Musk biography, they discuss how he spent time at parties reading obscure
russian textbooks on rocket physics while everyone else was having fun. He
stresses the importance of estimating things from first principles, instead of
relying on existing market estimates. However - these things are hard, take a
lot of work, and are not as glamorous as making a fancy presentation.

Being able to communicate your ideas clearly and in a compelling way is a very
important skill, especially for a leader. But I think it's very important to
stress that it's a very small part of the reason certain people are highly
successful - it just happens to be very glamourous, and kinda fun, so people
like to focus on that.

Zuckerberg, Page, etc are all incredibly successful, yet they were not known
(at least initially!) for their brilliant public speaking skills.

~~~
Osmium
I don't think it's glamour though, is it? I mean, Musk is not the best public
speaker, and yet his presentations are amazing _in spite_ of this. And they're
amazing because they're real: backed by logical thinking, real engineering,
and an appeal to first principles. Anyone can make a flashy presentation, but
I don't think that's what we're celebrating here.

~~~
thret
I think he's just bad enough at public speaking that it adds to his charm - he
comes off as sincere and eager rather than polished and professional.

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zxcvvcxz
This article completely misses the point.

Musk is _not_ a great presenter. He stutters, mumbles, goes off topic, etc as
others have pointed out.

Do you know what makes his presentations more worthwhile than pretty much
anyone else in the Valley?

The substance. He works on hard problems, and he fucking delivers. Who's got
time for style when you're revolutionizing multiple industries? We see that it
doesn't matter, people will watch his presentations, buy his products, and
back his companies regardless.

The real problem is that most people don't have anything worth pitching.

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madeofpalk
I've always been incredibly confused as to why everyone clamours over Elon
Musk's presentations. IMO, he's actually pretty terrible at presenting.

But he delivers great products in a very straightforward kind of way, and he
seems to have such a forward-thinking ambition. That's why people idolise him
so much.

~~~
sanjeetsuhag
People are not enamored by his presentation skills; they are drawn in by the
sincerity and the ingenuity in his manner/style.

------
Hermel
While the presentation succeeds at conveying an appealing vision, it
dramatically lacks substance. What is "one pixel" supposed to mean? I'm not a
child. Give me square kilometers. Or how does the price compare to
competitors? Maybe I'm different than most, but I actually care more about the
numbers and cold facts than nicely prepared hot air.

~~~
Jugurtha
I understand, but here's why you can't do that..

Let's look at about a 30 seconds excerpt from his intervention in Norway[0].
From 8m7 to 8m38.

Now, he starts explaining the numbers at 8m7s. At 8m38, he's made his point
and at that stage, _you_ would be 'convinced'. The interviewer said "Uhuh"
(you can hear the audience laugh when she says that). She didn't understand
that he has already made his point. (1 kilometre² ==> 1GW).

She says "With you so far" and I smiled because she was completely lost and
didn't even know it.

This is similar to Apple's "1,000 songs in your pocket". First time I heard
that I thought "How many gigs?" and it frustrated me.

The point of these oversimplifications is to convey a point to the _masses_.
Technical people can find out and understand this and make sense of KWh and
what-not.. But you need to simplify to reach a large number of people so that
at the very least, the idea of full solar power generation _floats_ in the
collective mind.

You tell a lambda citizen that the iPod has 2GB of storage capcity, it doesn't
"speak" to him. You tell him "1,000 songs in your pocket" and _everyone_ can
understand that. From child to grand-mother.

You're not the target audience. Yes, it's frustrating, but you're an outlier
because you can work out the numbers.

He's trying to make it mainstream. Or else the audience would've been as
clueless as the journalist in Norway.

By the way, he goes into more details in that intervention. It's not "power-
pointy" and the audience isn't the cheering and laughing for no reason type
(they're in the Oil & Gas industry).

[0] [https://youtu.be/0ZsVxSDB7NY?t=8m7s](https://youtu.be/0ZsVxSDB7NY?t=8m7s)

~~~
Osmium
> You tell a lambda citizen that the iPod has 2GB of storage capcity, it
> doesn't "speak" to him.

I don't really agree with this 'us vs. them' thinking. I'm a technical person,
but 2GB doesn't really mean much to me. What bitrate are my songs encoded at
on average? Do I use VBR? What bitrates can I get away with? etc. I'd have to
do a rough sum in my head, and the only answer I'd get is 'in the 1000s'
anyway, so it doesn't give me any extra information. The fact is, even for
technical people, approximations and hand waving are great as starting points.
They set expectations.

I feel like anything more complicated than that (hard numbers) only have the
potential to be misleading anyway, because they let us think we have more
information than we actually do. It's only when you actually start working
things out that those numbers (so how many GW does a city need? a typical
house? what's the variance in these numbers?) become more relevant, but that's
not the sort of thing you can do in your head anyway.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I don't know, 2GB seems much clearer than "1000 songs" to me. All the
questions you ask are even more applicable to the "1000 songs" figure, but on
top of that you also suspect that this amount was computed by marketing for
some average-lenght low-quality music.

But then again, I'm a technical person, I have an overall feel of how much
space my data takes, so I can do a quick estimate in my head.

Also, I believe that all this marketing for "technically clueless" tend to
make them _even more_ clueless. In this case, it promotes understanding of
"mp3 player" as "a box to play music" instead of what it really is - a
portable storage device that can also play music files. Yes, the less clueless
people actually used their mp3 players to move files around, at least before
pendrives were as disposable as ballpens.

~~~
Osmium
> Also, I believe that all this marketing for "technically clueless" tend to
> make them _even more_ clueless. In this case, it promotes understanding of
> "mp3 player" as "a box to play music" instead of what it really is

I think that's a really interesting point. What is an MP3 player _really_?
There are probably good arguments to be made for more abstraction ("box to
play music") or less abstraction ("portable storage device"). I'd err towards
more abstraction in the long run, because that's the only way technology can
progress to the truly magical stuff (eventually no one will be able to
understand a piece of technology in its entirety, we're already almost there,
so why run from abstraction?).

> I don't know, 2GB seems much clearer than "1000 songs" to me.

This is what I meant by "[hard numbers] let us think we have more information
than we actually do." Perhaps in this particular instance that's not the case,
but I think that stating a precise number might make us _feel_ more
knowledgable (or comfortable), without actually adding much actual
information, e.g. see people who are focused on what GHz their phone has, or
whatever. I agree that these numbers should be available though, but I don't
think marketers (or presenters) are being dishonest or misleading for leaving
them out; I think they're often actually helping.

------
brianstorms
It was a mediocre presentation, thanks to Musk's Muskifying it to the max.
Stammering, mumbling, nervous, rushing here and there, not connected with the
pace of the audience, assuming the audience understands certain terminology...
oh, and having the audience wait like 45 minutes, 50 minutes (or was it over
an hour, I forget) for the event to start, and not apologizing at all for
making the audience wait so long.

The media often like to say Musk is the next Steve Jobs. It's just the
opposite. Musk is the anti-Jobs. He doesn't give a damn about his
presentations, he doesn't rehearse for them, doesn't care whether the message
gets through or not. If you are bright, and you grok what he's saying, fine.
If you are new to EVs, or solar, or stationary storage, or battery technology,
too bad.

It's part of a company-wide problem at Tesla: communications. It's really bad.
Internal, and external. I believe it's because Musk doesn't value it. It could
wind up hurting Tesla and I would argue it already is hurting the company.

~~~
jczhang
Wait you think Musk doesn't value communications? I think it doesn't make
sense to jump to that conclusion simply because he doesn't rehearse for PR
events. I think any company that doesn't value communication as a top priority
could not have made it as far as spacex or tesla. It's the reason he puts
machines next to designers and programmers at both tesla and spacex. It's the
reason he'll push people to work 80+ hours, because it's more efficient to
have one person work 80 hours than two people at 40 due to
communication/knowledge transfer efficiencies. It's the reason he has banned
most acronyms at spacex. I mean I feel I could keep going on because you have
to have to prioritize communications internally if any company, especially a
startup, is to do well.

~~~
brianstorms
Tesla's communications are so screwed up and have been for so long that, yeah,
I blame the CEO. The not-rehearsing-for-events is just a sideshow compared to
the trainwreck of communications at Tesla. I've been a customer for two years,
and a shareholder longer than that, and at Tesla the right thumb doesn't know
what the right index finger is doing, let alone right hand not knowing what
left hand is doing. Across the board, from the CEO to PR to IR to service
centers to stores... nobody has information and it leads to a really inferior
customer experience. Individuals here and there do herculean jobs trying to
make up for the organizational weaknesses, but the problem is pervasive and
widespread, and I blame Musk, however much he deserves credit for leading his
companies to the great success they've achieved. It comes at a cost and I'd
argue it's going to be a real nightmare over next two years as Tesla tries to
cross the chasm from early adopters to early mainstream with the Model X and
then the Model 3 vehicles.

------
aw3c2
To be honest, the two minutes I could stomach felt like a generic TEDx talk.
Cringeworthy dramaticly colored photos, "lol so spontaneous" outbursts from
the audience. Hmpf... Don't try to manipulate my emotions, or if you must, do
it so well that I don't notice.

------
XJOKOLAT
The only bit that really stood to me was when he started talking high level
vision.

"This is actually within the power of humanity to do, we have done things like
this before".

 _goosebumps_

The rest was standard, average, decent fluff.

------
zhte415
Present problem, measurable impact of problem.

Present solution, and measurable impact of solution.

Have done enough initially to show that is feasible.

Fantastic.

~~~
ak39
Not necessarily. I'm not being contrarian for the sake of it. This approach
that takes the first third of the time presenting the problem to an audience
that arrived to hear the solution to a known problem can sometimes be
annoying. It could just as well be done this way:

1\. State the problem in a short less than 1 minute summary. 2\. Present the
solution and sustainability etc (bulk of the presentation) 3\. Then, lastly,
present the problem that most already know - only this time in detail.

~~~
zhte415
No time or break down was mentioned. That is your imagination.

> For the sake of it.

------
donaldmcintyre
The part that impacted me in terms of presentation was the data:

\- With 160 million packs the US transitions to renewable energy.

\- With 900 million packs the world transitions to renewable energy.

\- With 2 billion packs everything in the world, including transport and
heating, may transition to renewable energy.

The general pitch is a classic fear mongering strategy used in sales for
decades:

1\. Beware, something very bad will happen to you.

2\. But there is a solution.

3\. I have that solution so you need to buy it from me.

In finance it is used to sell insurance, retirement, and trust products.

------
27182818284
Mad Men's Kodak presentation in season one is one of the best pitches I've
seen. If you haven't seen it, and even if you haven't watched the show, you
should.

[https://youtu.be/suRDUFpsHus](https://youtu.be/suRDUFpsHus)

------
mashmac2
Want to really dive into this? Read Duarte's Resonate (available free from the
author here: [http://resonate.duarte.com/](http://resonate.duarte.com/) )

Same concepts, just much more in depth, with great examples.

~~~
vtsrh
I was genuinely interested in the topic and clicked on the link. I was met
with an interface that was alien to me, as if someone went out of their way to
make it unusable and semi-broken. Browsers have an established UI with a
scroll bar, yet people constantly find new ways to break it.

Check this page out:
[http://resonate.duarte.com/#!page226](http://resonate.duarte.com/#!page226)

Using a scroll bar to fix the decision to not use the scroll bar as the main
navigation tool. ( And the page is torn unless the window has the correct
width. )

~~~
IkmoIkmo
Totally agreed and oh so ironic that a guide to presenting had me leave 15
seconds in due to the way the information was presented.

------
twlng
I think Steve Jobs 'one more thing' is an excellent counterpoint to point 3
-'Show the promised land before explaining how you’ll get there.'

------
madengr
I don't get the "power wall". Unlike a car, a house has space for lead acid
batteries. They are cheap at Costco and recyclable.

~~~
IkmoIkmo
Well don't forget to a large extent it's probably about economies of scale.
Lead acid may be more economical when density/weight isn't as big a concern
(such as in a home), but Tesla wants to produce cheap car batteries which
can't be lead acid for the goals they set for their cars, and if they have a
large extra market for the car batteries they produce, they can produce them
cheaper, more efficiently, at larger scales.

If Tesla wasn't producing cars and somehow found itself wanting to build
batteries for homes, still, it may not have gone lithium-ion.

Beyond that though there are still (some) issues with the amount of
cycles/lifespan, charging speed, disposal and efficiency of lead acid, even if
they're cheap and recyclable.

And even in houses, space is still a concern with lead acid being a few times
more voluminous as lithium-ion, and it's not like the power wall is a tiny
unit. Don't forget the standard version has a capacity of 7 kWh, while using a
clothes washer and a clothes dryer just once uses up about 5 kwh+ according to
Tesla itself. And the Tesla car batteries typically have 75 to 85 kwh of
capacity or so, so you'd need 10 units fully charged to charge your car once.
They've made it clear that you can buy and link multiple power walls, and I
wouldn't be surprised if people ended up having more than 1 in their home. So
space is definitely not completely irrelevant unless you're not in a very
urban environment (which is a big use case for sure, but not always the case).

~~~
ZeroGravitas
Two potential other things that Tesla might have up their sleeve:

Creating a product that gives car batteries a second life (and therefore a
resale value when no longer suitable for use in cars). I don't think Tesla has
officially commented on this but some of their competitors are explicit about
this use case.

The battery in your car(s) acting like a powerwall when plugged in, so sharing
software for demand management.

~~~
IkmoIkmo
Yeah I've heard these things mentioned around.

Musk also explicitly said that 1/3rd of the new gigafactory's capacity will be
dedicated to producing batteries for storage (e.g. the powerwall).

