6 failures of Elon Musk before Twitter
Elon Musk seemed all smiles until the Twitter takeover turned into an infernal spiral. But all is not always good for the billionaire.
At the beginning of 2022, Elon Musk is still the richest person in the world. Tesla knows a record capitalization, SpaceX managed to send rockets into space and return them whole… Suffice it to say that the billionaire is seen by many as a historical figure for his own honorable victory. But that was before he became one of the techno bros » the most hated in the world.
The failure of Twitter
As early as April 2022, Elon Musk was buying millions of Twitter shares before finally making a purchase offer. A real showdown took place in which the owner of Tesla tried to withdraw, to find reasons and found himself in court, forced to pay 44 billion dollars for ” for free“the blue bird.
This circus ended in October, giving way to a new infernal maelstrom for the company, its employees and its users. Most of the payroll was fired, many providers were let go, certification was paid, then disappeared, then returned to gold, and now it’s square for companies, journalists are banned and Elon Musk has become as tyrannical as he is. doubtful.
During this period, the businessman did not care much about his other businesses, which was criticized by many shareholders who saw the reduction of the share price significantly. Everything suggests that Elon Musk voluntarily makes the worst decisions every day, which leads him very far from the image ofman made(with the help of his father’s emeralds) turning everything he touches into gold.
But this picture is very flattering, because the one that some call “Space Karenhas experienced some failure in his life. Here is an anthology.
The day he was fired from his own company
We will go through the day when, as a child, he went to Netscape (a company that was then recruiting with a vengeance), his CV in hand and he waited in the lobby without daring to approach anyone. He left without submitting his CV and founded his own company, Zip2, which he sold to Compaq for several million dollars. Instead, let’s start the story from X.com, his online banking company that was founded soon.
At the time, he was known for his outbursts, capable of turning red when his colleagues left at 9 pm Also, when X.com merged with competitor Confinity (a merger that would later produce PayPal), not everyone cares about it. While Musk jetted off to Sydney for his honeymoon, X.com employees conspired to oust him by convincing the board to appoint Peter Thiel as the firm’s CEO.
YouTube LinkSubscribe to Fandroid
He still stayed with the company (then PayPal) by keeping his shares. He collected 180 million during the acquisition of eBay.
Tesla delay
Tesla isn’t always the booming business it is today (or it was at the beginning of the year). In its early days, the company was close to bankruptcy on several occasions due to its large investments and very modest profits. Until recently, Elon Musk himself explained that Covid had a serious blow to Tesla’s activity. The Chinese business lockouts cost its Gigafactory in Texas and Berlin thousands, if not millions, of dollars.
YouTube LinkSubscribe to Fandroid
But what ticked off buyers was the repeated delays. Not only has the American manufacturer suffered from many delivery and production delays, but its master has been announcing since 2014 the arrival of a 100% autonomous car. The one that will no longer need a driver and will serve as a robot taxi. Elon Musk predicts more than a million on our roads by 2020.
Since 2014, Elon Musk has repeated his promise every year: “100% autonomous driving in Tesla is coming next year“. In May 2022, he repeated it again. By the end of the year, however, he was no longer confident. So we can imagine that he will renew his commitment in 2023…
Cybertruck 100% bulletproof damaged on stage
This failure is funnier than anything else. In 2019, Elon Musk took the stage to unveil the Cybertruck, this electric pickup with a futuristic look. The effect “wowwas there, the room was in awe of this very special vehicle, unlike any other in circulation. We can say that it was a real success, until the moment when Tesla’s pole design director wanted to prove the stability of his new baby.
The first test was quite convincing: the great sledgehammer given to the pickup door did not scratch. The second test is a bocce ball that is thrown to the side of the window and must bounce. Just pretend.
Amazed by the results, he and Elon Musk restarted the operation… and broke the rear window. A huge moment of embarrassment for two men who wanted to achieve a tour de force.
YouTube LinkSubscribe to Fandroid
The next day, Elon Musk would explain that the sledgehammer on the door weakened the window… But that didn’t explain why the second one broke too. Well, anyway, the pickup has been postponed again and will not be released before 2023, enough to check this little problem.
The Hyperloop Tunnel
Creating autonomous vehicles, sending people to Mars… these are crazy projects where Elon Musk still advances the state of the art. He also set another challenge: breaking the corks. His idea? A Hyperloop! Initially, it was a new form of transportation, both ecological and faster than the plane, capable of reaching more than 1100 km / h. In theory.
In practice, the realization proved more difficult than expected, even by combining the efforts of several companies. The transportation of people is finally abandoned in 2022.
Elon Musk’s anti-traffic jam project has become an automated tunnel. A rather revolutionary paper project that became hell for claustrophobes causing… traffic jams.
The monkeys were killed “but without cruelty”
Another Elon Musk company doesn’t talk much about it: Neuralink. Its purpose is to allow transhumanism with chips implanted in the brain and connected to electronic devices to control them through thought.
Obviously, to carry out such a program, Neuralink did not directly open a person’s cranial box to install a Bluetooth chip, but began its study with macaques. However, the surveys seem to show that the tests are a bit too rushed,”causing unnecessary suffering and death“. In total, this is 1500 animals that the company would have killed.
Neuralink denied this, saying that all experiments were conducted within a framework “usually“, pursuant to American laws on the subject and “no cruelty“. A federal investigation is currently underway to determine the truth of these sentences.
His tweets are chaperoned by a legal team
As we know, Elon Musk tends to tweet quite a bit about what’s on his mind. A bit too much sometimes. The problem comes when he talks about his businesses and his millions of followers are interested in what he says to invest or not. If it participated in the rise of some cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin or Dogecoin, it also made Tesla’s share price very volatile.
This attitude ended up irritating some of them, and especially the SEC (theSecurities and Exchange Commission, which controls the stock market on Wall Street). Judging that the owner of Tesla is manipulating the market, the SEC obtained from Elon Musk that his activity on Twitter will first be verified by legal advisors. On the brink of putting parental controls on your phone…
What does this tell us about Elon Musk?
In other words, you can understand it, Elon Musk’s course is not a SpaceX rocket in the direction of Mars, but rather a very difficult roller coaster. And we just mentioned his professional life here, his personal life is just as chaotic.
However, he rose from a large number of his failures to come out of it brilliantly (and despotically). But what will happen to Twitter? Can his perseverance counterbalance his authoritarian and erratic character? Only the future will tell us.
To follow us, we invite you to download our Android and iOS application. You can read our articles, files, and watch our latest videos on YouTube.
