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Lucky-Carrot t1_iwur7qu wrote

yeah this is called presenting an opinion as data

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Lucky-Carrot t1_iwurgj8 wrote

and also twitter is such a crap fest clown car that he’s locked all the doors in a epic act of rage that he can’t dictate working conditions to a pack of engineers who have no fear of losing their jobs

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born_in_cyberspace OP t1_iwusaes wrote

The diagram is for the period before the twitter drama, as the fate of twitter is not settled yet.

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Lucky-Carrot t1_iwuuokj wrote

That’s called only sampling data that proves your thesis

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[deleted] t1_iwvjjfb wrote

We literally don't know how Twitter will end up. Even if it failed this would still be an insanely good track record.

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born_in_cyberspace OP t1_iwus6hd wrote

The OP here. How can I improve the diagram?

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Lucky-Carrot t1_iwuuk39 wrote

What do any of your numbers actually mean, what defines space d being a leader for instance.

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jubilant-barter t1_iwww6yx wrote

Could you make a distinction between what was truly co-founded and what was retconned?

Elon is infamous for having appended his name to the founders list of Tesla as part of the conditions of his purchase of the company.

There's... truth to him joining in early on some ventures, and we should give him credit where that's true. But this is the moment where we all are looking to cut through the hype, the big promises, and even the counter-misinformation.

So the fact that this graph propagates one or two of the known lies of the Musk Mythos makes us doubt the rest of it.

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magnesiumb t1_iwuzxp8 wrote

I am not sure where to begin. "Almost failed" is vague with no well-accepted understanding. It's not the same as, say, "rejected" (since we see Sankey graphs here for job searches and budgets primarily) which has a clear meaning. Same with "global leader" - is this top 15 automakers? Top 100? Just sells cars around the world? Is it disingenuous to call SpaceX a global leader when very few countries really have space agencies (77 total, 16 that actually go to space)? With OpenAI as well - what is the qualification on "global leader"? Who competes with it? It's like calling the NFL champions this year "global leaders in American football".

What the hell is "made it a unicorn"???

Is the "bought a start-up" and "acquired by his company" the same thing? Which did he "help to create", "cofound" and "bought as a start up" -- SpaceX, SolarCity, or Tesla? This flow is unclear to me, but it could be me. It feels like this information is lost. I think you should have had the end output be the current statuses, not the companies themselves and the companies themselves should have been in the flow since several have the same end.

"Sold for $$$" is a redundant label. What else would he have sold it for? Peanuts? I suggest changing it to 'profit' if you mean he sold it for a profit. Otherwise, see below with * about changing the graph's title to reflect what you're trying to show here.

You have cofounded on here twice as well as global leader. As someone corrected me before, there should only be one of each category and these categories then flow to the correct end-point, even if they have to cross each other. Also why wouldn't Neuralink be up with Tesla and SpaceX in the final output when they have similar paths except for the commercial and research lab aspect? This is confusing.

By having a "still operates it", it implies that he doesn't operate the others that are not under this final output. Is this the case?

This is hard to follow and this type of graph isn't the best way to display this data. This feels more like opinion telling us the track record as there's no actual data here. The choice to leave off Twitter is pretty telling to me that there is some kind of agenda here. It would likely, if you were trying to be objective, have been categorized near the "the Boring Company" as not having generated profit, but you included that weird "made it a unicorn" label. You could still have created another label but you did not. *Calling this the business track record is not accurate -- this chart, at the very least, just shows companies Elon Musk is involved in, how he got involved, and his current role in them (e.g., still operates it, sold it, acquired it, left it). It says nothing about the business status or the strength or health of these companies.

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Your_Trash_Daddy t1_iwv1yz5 wrote

This is a fanboy post. They aren't interested in facts or actually improving it. Everything you said is correct, and this is nothing but opinion dressed up with graphics. None of the terms mean anything, nor could they really, scientifically.

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Bagdemagus1 t1_iwwx1f6 wrote

Unicorn means it has a billion dollar valuation.

SpaceX and Tesla are global industry leaders, even if that criteria is a bit vague I don’t really see a way you can argue that. OpenAI I’m a lot less familiar with, not sure what their deal is.

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magnesiumb t1_iwx6r3a wrote

Then OP needs to use common language. You don't use undefined jargon in data presentations, unless your audience is thought to know it as well.

No, you cannot say that with a vague definition. What's to stop me from saying "I'm a global leader in pharmacy, even if that criteria is a bit vague I don’t really see a way you can argue that"? If you make a claim, you need to back it up.

I am a fan of OpenAI for fun with their text generator. It's machine learning or something, people can use it for a variety of things. I am not sure it's real-world utility, honestly, but others might.

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Purplekeyboard t1_iwyk5r3 wrote

The real world utility in text generation is still to come. If it can continue to get better, at some point there will be endless numbers of uses for them. Personal assistant for every person on the planet, replacing millions of phone jobs as text can be turned into voice using text to speech, and so on.

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magnesiumb t1_iwz3gd8 wrote

I played around with their Marv the sarcastic robot thing and I think they have a lot of work to do before they put this into the real world. I'd prefer to talk to a real human over a machine any day until we reach uncanny levels.

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Lucky-Carrot t1_iwx301n wrote

in what way is tesla an industry leader in anything? no one is following their dangerous design of reducing safety controls to the bare minimum required for the car to be road-legal. there were electric cars before tesla and there will be electric cars after the stock scam that it is runs out

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born_in_cyberspace OP t1_iwyhu5p wrote

You're right, I've to trade some clarity for brevity. But I think most people understand that I mean.

> Is it disingenuous to call SpaceX a global leader when very few countries really have space agencies

They have the biggest market share in the world in its niche (commercial launches). So, there is no ambiguity here.

> With OpenAI as well - what is the qualification on "global leader"

In the AI community, they're regarded as one of the top labs. Almost no one else, aside from DeepMind, have contributed so much to the AI research.

> The choice to leave off Twitter is pretty telling to me that there is some kind of agenda here

It's quite simple: the fate of Twitter is not settled yet. It could go either way in the coming weeks.

> What the hell is "made it a unicorn"???

"Unicorn startup" is a common term in the business field: a startup that has a valuation of at least $1 bln

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magnesiumb t1_iwz5ieb wrote

Based on the comments, no. And I am looking at this chart and wondering how? The flow removes a layer of information. Look, if you like Elon, that's fine, but if you don't care about actually creating a nice chart then why are you here? It doesn't help your point and it's just bizarre. You can reply to this comment if you wish, but I don't know what a back and forth is gonna do at this point if you're resistant to any commentary that isn't agreement with what I will now just say is a flawed chart that tells people nothing except that you like Elon Musk a lot.

>They have the biggest market share in the world in its niche (commercial launches). So, there is no ambiguity here.

Being a world leader implies some level of position and power. If you're in a niche field, you really aren't a world leader. You're just the only one doing it. I don't think there are a lot of SpaceX type companies that will pop up in the near future. This is the issue with using vague terms because we can go back and forth on this.

>In the AI community, they're regarded as one of the top labs. Almost no one else, aside from DeepMind, have contributed so much to the AI research.

OpenAi was founded in 2015. So my mind immediately said this is likely not a true statement. And a Google search says it's not really true - they, along with DeepMind and FAIR, just get a lot more press. 1,2

"DeepMind, OpenAI and FAIR were probably the top three pure AI research labs in terms of known funding, while IBM pushes out more patents.” (3)

I just clicked the first three links when Googling "leading AI researching labs." I don't doubt they are good at what they do, but there have been people with their towel in the race for a decade, so your claim seemed dubious enough to investigate. Again, the issue is the term "world leader." There are also Chinese tech companies mentioned in the same article as the quote and these lists are very Western-centric from my POV. This is a niche field, so all you would need to do is expand "global leader" to top thirty. You will not only capture all of them, but OpenAI would likely rank then and the statement has some merit as a technicality. But just because it's one of the only two you know, doesn't mean it's the world leader.

>The choice to leave off Twitter is pretty telling to me that there is some kind of agenda here

This circles back to what this chart is trying to say. You can include footnotes in charts. Also SolarCity doesn't have a "fate" associated with it -- why does "fate" matter? Why not say he "acquired it" - a neutral, factual statement? Or that it hasn't generated a profit - also a factual statement? You could have presented it.

>"Unicorn startup" is a common term in the business field: a startup that has a valuation of at least $1 bln

Your assumed audience is not business people though and even if it were, it sounds like English-speaking slang rather than professional business language that doesn't belong in a presentation. Use Plain Language and avoid jargon.

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MarkVarga t1_iwup5ef wrote

Correction: Elon Musk is not the co-founder of Tesla.

> In a last minute twist [during the first fundraising period], he legally attacked the company and sued Eberhard, Tarpenning [the two actual Founders] and Tesla Motors Inc. Demanding that he be allowed to call himself a Founder.

Source

Edit: just realized that you probably visualized the same thing (Tesla being in the bought a start-up part and SpaceX being in the co-founded part). In that case, ignore what I said above.

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notger t1_iwuuvmp wrote

Ha, he did a similar stunt with Paypal, which he acquired and then forced ppl to call him a founder.

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born_in_cyberspace OP t1_iwupv77 wrote

As I understand, according to the court decision, he is indeed allowed to call himself a founder. He also has the moral right to do so, as this early in the startup founding, everyone who made major contributions is a de facto co-founder, not only the first few guys who started it.

To be on the safe side, and avoid this controversy altogether, I listed Tesla in the "bought a startup" flow.

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MarkVarga t1_iwuqexp wrote

Fun fact, these are Elon's thoughts about who should call themselves a co-founder:

> I believe that the title of founder is critically important and morally requires that you are physically engaged in doing the really hard founding work involved in the very important early founding months/years of the company. I wasn’t there and I didn’t do that hard work at/for Solar City, so it’s not ethical that I refer to myself as a Solar City Founder or co-Founder”.

Assuming the same applies to Tesla, Musk shouldn't call himself any kind of founder. Especially not without a physics degree.

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born_in_cyberspace OP t1_iwusodz wrote

As I understand, the consensus is that Musk indeed played a major role in the early founding years of Tesla. Otherwise, the court decision would be against him.

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MarkVarga t1_iwutk7z wrote

I suppose Eberhard didn't have that much leverage after getting kicked out of the company that he founded.

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bladow5990 t1_iwuxb71 wrote

Someone has alot of faith in the US's judicial system.

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Lucky-Carrot t1_iwur9s5 wrote

yeah but words have actual meanings and he’s in no way actually a founder

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born_in_cyberspace OP t1_iwurteg wrote

It seems that he is indeed a founder, at least as per the aforementioned court decision.

But it doesn't matter much. In the diagram, I haven't listed him as a co-founder of Tesla to be on the safe side

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Lucky-Carrot t1_iwus1xb wrote

again founder = someone who founded a company. he’s a founder like he’s a person with a physics degree (only in his own head)

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born_in_cyberspace OP t1_iwutmqp wrote

I have the experience of founding a company, and see no problem with calling someone a founder if he is contributing so much in the yearly years of the company.

But again, who cares? It doesn't change much either way.

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Lucky-Carrot t1_iwuue2g wrote

It matters because it shows what a petty nozzle he is and how his entire “resume” is mostly spin, lies and half truth (and that he’s mostly just a proped up fantasy by uncritical supporters, Peter thiel and other shadowy figures )

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Your_Trash_Daddy t1_iwv1niz wrote

Wow, someone did a thing so they're an expert on it throughout the entire business world, the legal system, language. All you do is keep repeating the same thing, which suggest you actually don't understand this, but are repeating talking points. Which would be pretty typical for an Elon stan.

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Your_Trash_Daddy t1_iwv1hfc wrote

So you're being intentionally obtuse? Repeating what you said above is in no way an answer to the fact that words have meaning, and per those meaning, he's not a founder.

Court documents don't change the definition of words, and courts don't change what actually happened. Courts have opinions, and you have yours, but words have meaning all on their own, quite independent of your opinion.

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Beaverdogg t1_iwuqe28 wrote

This isn't beautiful, accurate, or a good way to present this information.

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born_in_cyberspace OP t1_iwusfbk wrote

The OP here. How can I improve it?

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bladow5990 t1_iwuy212 wrote

Replace the label "Elon Musk" with "Any generic white dude with a spare apartide built emerald mine"

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2old4thisshyte t1_iwwg1by wrote

*Apartheid

If you need to be political, at least use correct spelling.

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Grelymolycremp t1_iwvddzb wrote

The Boring Company? As a unicorn??? Lmao, what the fuck.

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Lucky-Carrot t1_iwx35wz wrote

hey they built literally the stupidest tunnel in las vegas and now las vegas is stuck expanding it

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born_in_cyberspace OP t1_iwyhbqp wrote

They got a multi-billion valuation, which is the definition of a unicorn startup

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Your_Trash_Daddy t1_iwv17qs wrote

Of course the implication is that he personally did everything necessary for all of those outcomes. We are now seeing pretty conclusive evidence that his one skill has been hiring people far more competent than he is, because when he manages hands-on...

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Bot-yMcBotface t1_iwv45xp wrote

The biggest problem with this (of many) is its really hard selection bias. He did invest/funded way more than 8 Companies. This makes it seem, that 100% of his business ventures worked and he's a mistunderstood genius or whatever

Probably 90% of his investments never got into black numbers (as is probably true for most startups)

​

I hope that the last 10 people that work at twitter found an union, just out of spite

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Dmytro_North t1_iwv51pa wrote

Took me awhile to understand this. Even what the numbers mean. I’d flip the chart horizontally, to start with startups, and add a legend, or in the title, that the numbers indicate the number of projects. Or found a way to separate each project by color and not use numbers at all.

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born_in_cyberspace OP t1_iwuldhc wrote

Tools: sankeymatic.com , GIMP

Data source: the companies' articles on Wikipedia

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Query_Prone t1_iwvei7x wrote

“Almost failed three” have you started your own start ups? Have you taken failures of your own? How do you know where to grow if you don’t fail when you’re at the frontier of the world.

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Lucky-Carrot t1_iwx38x1 wrote

now subtract the fact that it literally only ‘works’ at all because he’s abusing government subdies and carbon credits

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abhishekjacob21 t1_iwyr4qo wrote

There’s no way these people have any conception of what it takes to operate a business. Operating more than 5 unicorns is not successful enough for them. Completely fucking delusional. Zero nuance with any of these people man..

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KaleidoscopeOk3217 t1_iwyb37a wrote

Forgot to include all the privilege he had growing up

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fuckmeuntilicecream t1_iwutgfa wrote

I love these kinds of graphs.

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Your_Trash_Daddy t1_iwv1u6f wrote

You mean opinion presented falsely as fact?

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QuirkyAd2001 t1_iww498n wrote

Are you out of your mind??? You can't come on to a social media platform with any data of any type that remotely indicates the richest business man in the world is in any way the slightest bit successful at business?!?!? Clearly he is a moron that through pure luck stumbled into his wealth in the most least deserving way and everything he has ever touched is a lie and façade that will all collapse at any moment and then everyone will know the truth that he is witless con artist!

Take Elon's acquisition of Twitter for instance. Surely everyone remembers in 2020 when Professor Scott Galloway of NYU Stern School of Business wrote an article saying "Twitter has massive potential and would register a 20% increase in value upon moving to a subscription model. After cleansing its platform of rage-generating bots."

And now that Elon has taken over Twitter and vowed to cleanse it of bots and introduce an $8 a month subscription, 2 days ago Professor Scott Galloway said “I think this is an individual who has demonstrated a total lack of grace, has no guardrails around him, and is going to see his wealth probably cut in half.”

Likewise in 2021 every tech news outlet reported how Twitter's $677,000 of revenue per employee was less than half that of their competition Facebook, Alphabet and Apple and cited the fact Twitter had twice the staff they should in regards to the revenue they brought in as the main reason for the stagnate stock price while their competitors were booming. And the general consensus from professor Galloway and many others was that Jack Dorsey needed to be fired as CEO so someone could come in an literally layoff half the staff.

Now that Elon has laid off half the staff, like every business person in the world said Twitter should have done 1 year ago, the media cries "Twitter staffing at critically low levels as chaos ensues..."

Look, Twitter may not be a viable profitable business in the long run. Even Elon said that before he bought it. It may go bankrupt. And his "style" is abrasive. But before he took Twitter over, every one who is anyone in tech business media said the things he has done are the things that needed to be done from a business perspective. And now those same people are all screaming foul! Not because what he is doing doesn't make good business sense. But because it is him doing it and they do not approve of how he has done it.

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[deleted] t1_iwvjup8 wrote

It's funny how everyone here us attacking this objectively amazing track record just because they don't like the guy. Reddit is just pathetic.

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myersjw t1_iwvzmnk wrote

Probably because it’s presenting opinions as fact. Try not to trip over yourself jumping to conclusions though

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[deleted] t1_iwvzt6m wrote

What about this isn't true?

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myersjw t1_iww0vmp wrote

Just for starters: Musk didn’t found Tesla, there is no statistical metric or table that explains what “almost failed” “made it a unicorn” “global leader” etc are supposed to mean beyond what OP thinks, not to mention it’s missing multiple business ventures during that time to paint an image that is inaccurate.

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[deleted] t1_iww190f wrote

  1. Tesla is the company he bought in this chart.
  2. A company being a "unicorn" means it has a Billion dollar valvaluation.
  3. "Global leader" is subjective, but it's hard to argue it wouldn't apply to SpaceX or Tesla.
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myersjw t1_iww2kzi wrote

So again, multiple nebulous terms and several ventures not listed (conveniently excluding the giant one he’s currently tanking.) This is a data visualization subreddit and this is messy and misleading

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DuxAvalonia t1_iwwy5eo wrote

The survivorship bias of the sample is ridiculous. This track record is only amazing because it is only tracking the relative successes and it’s leaving out a number of ventures he put his money into…

…it’s observational selection.

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[deleted] t1_iwwyawj wrote

If you fail 10 times and the 11th you found a billion dollar company you're still a success..

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DuxAvalonia t1_iwx09t2 wrote

You can still call him successful if you want. However, you called this an objectively amazing track record. I am pointing out (as are many others) that this is not the complete track record. This is a sample put together with clear bias. If I made a chart of all of quarterback’s performance in the last two minutes of football games but I only included games when he led game-winning drives, then I am not fairly presenting data.

This is not even a principle of data science. This is basic informal logic at a middle-school level.

People aren’t attacking it because it’s about Musk. People are attacking it because it’s an unethical and inaccurate presentation of Musk and a few Musk fanboys don’t have the logical or critical thinking chops to make the distinction.

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[deleted] t1_iwx0hrh wrote

You're delusional if you don't think this is about Musk specifically.

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DuxAvalonia t1_iwx390z wrote

The part that is about Musk specifically is that as he reveals his total lack of competence in managing Twitter, a fan of his presented inaccurate and skewed data to try to prop him up. Then, as the obvious errors are called out, people who are part of his cult are using phrases like “objectively amazing” to describe things that are neither objective nor amazing.

Even your own response to my initial comment didn’t acknowledge the error in the graph, it just moved the goalposts. Do you really not see that?

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abhishekjacob21 t1_iwyqesm wrote

How pathetic are these people… so desperate to hate the dude. The most popular comment so far is someone finding the stupidest reasons to be butt hurt about this. Such a biased opinionated post that tries to illustrate basic fact about the businesses he has operated.

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[deleted] t1_iwyqox2 wrote

Guarantee you nobody here has started a company even remotely close to successful. What's really sad is how these same people worshiped the ground he walked on a few years ago. I've been an Elon hater since way before it was cool, but you can't deny these companies are successful. People are just being delusional.

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