this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2023
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nuff said

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[–] ICastFist@programming.dev 60 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I remember a fellow saying Elon is a very business savvy person, because of his 2 other successful companies, Tesla and SpaceX. I guess ruining communications with potential advertisers on a platform that depends entirely on advertisers wasn't a very intelligent move.

[–] IDatedSuccubi@lemmy.world 20 points 1 year ago (2 children)

If I recall correctly, Tesla was actually cash-negavite for like half a decade after Musk bought it, surviving off investors and SpaceX's success, I remember it was very big news when it finaly went cash-positive and subs like WSB were all over r/all

[–] vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

SpaceX became profitable not all at once as well.

I think we should all remember that company's success is also a function of investors' money AND public trust. SpaceX for some people was a symbol of all things modern. Tesla as well to some extent.

With such amount of trust no wonder these finally became profitable.

Ah, also companies engineering vehicles and spacecraft are rather different from a company the whole purpose of which is matching people (readers to posters, advertisers to customers, so on).

[–] UnknownQuantity@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Could you please point me to where I can find info on Spacex profitability? I've done a google search, but all I can find is revenue.

[–] Whirlybird@aussie.zone 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Almost all companies are "cash negative" in their first years.

[–] IDatedSuccubi@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

Of course, but many, many companies never leave that state in the age where the biggest investment strategy is dumping hella cash into a startup in hopes that it overtakes (monopolizes) the industry but may never be profitable. And many people thought that Tesla would never be profitable, it sure looked like it for a very long time.

[–] db2@lemmy.one 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The same people would say the same thing about Trump and everything he's ever touched has gone to shit. I think they're legitimately delusional.. all of them.

[–] Landrin201@lemmy.ml 21 points 1 year ago

I think they're just brainwashed by our capitalist system which says that if a person is wealthy it's because they worked for it and we're successful. We are indoctrinated from very young ages to believe that capitalism is a strict meritocracy where only the best, most intelligent, most deserving people become wealthy.

In reality most wealthy people inherited some or most of their wealth, and used that inherited wealth to create more wealth- because it turns out that once you are wealthy it's really easy to get more wealthy. They aren't wealthy because they are skillful or intelligent or good at business. Most of them are good at precisely one thing: giving some of their money to a professional who knows how to grow it so that they will never run out.

Then they throw money at whatever catches their eye, and when you have billions to throw around you can cast a very wide net that will almost certainly catch something.