Former Tesla Firmware Engineer Discusses the System

If they have a process proven to work, in a world where they are already doing things no one else has been able to do, changes to that process should be introduced very slowly.

Lots of mines start from little companies searching for a possible ore body (the idea or market fit), then raising money to perform a closer survey (seed funding). If the closer geological work is promising they often obtain a lease (patents or other IP).

At this point it goes one of two ways. Either they raise enough money to start and operate the mine themselves (series A, B etc, leading to an IPO) or they sell the prospect to a major company.

Then the newly-minted millionaires, who know a lot about mining, invest in the next crop of junior miners.

So as with tech there are conceptual, exploratory, growth and liquidity phases, followed by a process of reinvestment.

I remember realising this when living in Perth and being frustrated that, with quite literally billions of dollars sloshing around the city looking to invest, you'd be hard-pressed to pitch anything smarter than a brochureware website to the local investment class.

There were other structural problems. Stock options are not A Thing for various legal reasons. Failure in starting a high-risk business is a bit of a black mark. There are VCs but so much of their money came from governments trying to jump-start a market that they were about as risk-taking as a loans officer at a bank (what government wants "10 MILLION WASTED ON PHONE APPS" as a headline?).

Meanwhile the super funds are collectively sitting on trillions of dollars[0] and investing an absurdly dumb fraction of it in the ASX. Putting just 0.5% of their holdings into VC would unlock tens of billions of dollars of potential investments.

For which, hey, VCs who lurk here and want to raise a fund: go talk to the Australian superannuation industry. It is a massive pool of underperforming cash languishing in the same dozen public companies and, because Australian law forces all Australians to set aside at least 9.5% of income for retirement, the industry will never stop having incoming funds. There will always be new money to raise[1] and it will probably the 2nd largest pool of pension investments sometime in the next 10-15 years.

I will accept finder's fees and/or massively remunerative job offers as reward for this insight.

[0] https://www.superannuation.asn.au/ArticleDocuments/269/Super...

[1] https://www.willistowerswatson.com/-/media/WTW/Images/Press/...

Safety equipment must not fail, but essential equipment can fail as much as your customers will tolerate.

If you say so. As an embedded system engineer, I mentioned this twitter thread when I was shooting the breeze with my boss because it reminds me we hold ourselves to a high standard even though my brain sometimes turns into a perfectionist that can only see the problems with our product.

I don't know how to say this without going into full on humblebrag mode, so I'll give the condensed version. He touched on a handful of points that are common between our companies/products, and where I often worry about quality. In those cases I was reassured by the fact we don't have that severe of problems, and the way our processes are designed it would never be allowed out of the lab.