
Why the Future of Tesla May Depend on Knowing What Happened to Billy Durant - TheAuditor
https://steveblank.com/2018/04/23/why-the-future-of-tesla-may-depend-on-knowing-what-happened-to-billy-durant/
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amarant
it's often said that if a headline is posited as a question, the answer to
that question is "no".

if that question begins with "how" or "why" however, the answer is better
phrased as "it doesn't".

/rant

not very inspired analysis of Tesla's challenges, with a comparison to a just
barely similar historical case.

~~~
noxToken
This first portion is known as Betteridge's law of headlines[0]. I don't have
a source for the corollary.

[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%)

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JKCalhoun
> One of the common traits of a visionary founder is that once you have proven
> the naysayers wrong, you convince yourself that all your pronouncements have
> the same prescience.

That line rings true.

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thisisit
This was discussed earlier on HN:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16891651](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16891651)

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talltimtom
A good read, but I really wish the author would stop the constant equation of
visionary and founder and remove the couple of factually wrong insinuations
that Musk was the founder of Tesla. Elon Musk did not found the company he did
definitely help it survive its infancy and grew it to what it is today (which
either market leading or nearly bancrupt depending of who you ask), but he
didn’t found it.

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stephengillie
This line of thought might be a "natural inception[0]" from Tesla using the
very same auto plant[1] where Toyota taught GM some of their trade secrets.
After hearing this and knowing both are American automakers, many humans would
continue the comparison, and some would find similar events somewhere in GM's
long history. Because of the length of GM's history, it's probable that you'll
find a similar event - somewhat reminiscent of "Bible codes" showing encoded
prophecy, except long works such as Moby Dick accidentally have the same
encodings. [2]

Though it would be "symmetrical" if Toyota formed a similar partnership with
Tesla for a similar purpose.

[0]
[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1375666/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1375666/)
(Inception (2010))

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NUMMI](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NUMMI)

[2]
[http://www.awitness.org/essays/bibcode.html](http://www.awitness.org/essays/bibcode.html)

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josefresco
TL;DR: "Yet, as Durant’s story typifies, one of the challenges for visionary
founders is that they often have a hard time staying focused on the present
when the company needs to transition into relentless execution and scale."

