Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud • Hacker News Board

Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud

#471

Post by mbesto » Fri, Jul 30, 2021, 12:53 PM UTC

gamblor956 wrote: post #366

mbesto wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Groupon and LivingSocial said the same about their respective market, a decade ago. These are hilarious businesses to cherry pick because they explicitly used fuzzy accounting for the nature of their industry - which was selling coupons that may or may not be used. Their numbers were irregular because they accounted for coupons that may have never been actually used, but were allocated on their books as such. DuoLi…

You have no idea what you're talking about and clearly have never actually seen financials of a business like DuoLingo. :) My list of clients when I was still working at a firm include many tech companies ranging in size from vastly unprofitable startups to multi-billion dollar public companies, in industries including robotics, hardware, SaaS, PaaS/IaaS, biotech, media tech, aviation, and clean tech. A number of YC…

> History is littered with companies who claimed to have great "gross margins" but died because they overspent on "product development."

Please do tell.

> DuoLingo's hosting costs should be low. But content development costs should be included in COGS (being pedantic: COGS doesn't apply to non-inventory business activities, so we should be using the term COR instead). Content development and customer service aren't cheap.

I agree with you here, except for specifics. Do we know how much content costs? (ps, once you create content for a language it can scale infinitely - as opposed to having teachers in a classroom who can't). We don't know how much customer service costs / personnel they have, BUT it is part of COGS (as per their definition) so its impossible to qualify that hosting "should be lower" unless you know their specific hosting costs.

Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud

#472

Post by misiti3780 » Fri, Jul 30, 2021, 12:53 PM UTC

xwdv wrote: post #405

mmdoda wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much do you stand to make?

In the 6 figures

i would hold out, i think it's going to zero!

Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud

#473

Post by space_rock » Fri, Jul 30, 2021, 1:01 PM UTC

fastball wrote: post #55

bornelsewhere wrote: post #52

Nikola is one of Crystal lang largest sponsors[0]. I wonder if this is going to have repercussions. It's no fault of the Crystal community but might cast a shadow nevertheless. [0] https://crystal-lang.org/sponsors/

Using fraud to support interesting open source work – I'm kinda conflicted.

Oddly common. Many of the crypto ponzies that lead nowhere contributed a lot to some good open source projects. Well their employees did at least

Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud

#474

Post by space_rock » Fri, Jul 30, 2021, 1:17 PM UTC

yalogin wrote: post #225

They even named the company to evoke Tesla and form an impression that they competing with them. This is a pure scam but now they have enough money to legitimize themselves. This is actually a great outcome for their investors, the CEO takes the blame and the company becomes legit. Just sad that this is accepted as normal. I will not be surprised if the stock sky rockets tomorrow.

10 billion market cap sound like a good evaluation for a company founded on complete fraud. The car experts at GM will probably give them another billion

Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud

#475

Post by space_rock » Fri, Jul 30, 2021, 1:23 PM UTC

Pyramus wrote: post #80

rwmj wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you claiming that Tesla vehicles are fraudulent and only drive when rolling down hills?

No, parent is likely saying Elon could be indicted for fraud as well. He wasn't exactly exonerated by the SEC for 'funding secured', and there are a number of lawsuits outstanding, most notably the Solar City one. Just because you have an innovative and popular product doesn't mean you can't conduct fraud?

Sounds like you think this is a non ridiculous comparison? A market moving statement comparable to theranos vaporware

Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud

#476

Post by simonh » Fri, Jul 30, 2021, 1:43 PM UTC

makeitdouble wrote: post #400

jdminhbg wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure creating a multibillion dollar vaporware fraud shell company and being a dick on Twitter are comparable sins.

From my point of view as a peasant without any shares anywhere, multibillion dollar vaporware companies have very little impact. We could argue this investment could have gone into better companies who could have made the world a better place, but it's purely hypothetical (the money could have gone to a worse company, or political lobbying as well...). Basically, from afar, it's a "rich people lost some money" drama.

I don't think you can discount the fact this money could have been used more productively that easily. It could have funded a lot of jobs for ordinary working people and developed new technology. That's an awful lot of good that didn't get done. I can't point to the working people that lost out from this, but they do exist.

It's not like if without Nikola all of this money would have gone to one other thing. Sure some of it might have got wasted, but realistically most of it would have gone to productive uses.

Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud

#477

Post by misiti3780 » Fri, Jul 30, 2021, 1:44 PM UTC

millerm wrote: post #173

lvl100 wrote: post #104

How is this any different from what Elon Musk told his investors for the past decade?

I was wondering how soon someone would try to trash Tesla (or Elon) as it's completely off-topic and a false equivalence. I see a lot of Teslas on the road, as I also drive one. I see a lot of Superchargers around, and see (yup, I trust it) a lot of people around the world using them. I see a lot of Powerwalls getting sold and installed. I see huge Megapacks getting sold and installed. I see a lot of solar being sold…

It's not worth engaging with these idiots.

Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud

#478

Post by johnsimer » Fri, Jul 30, 2021, 2:17 PM UTC

cma wrote: post #112

ajross wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's very much a hindsight kind of thing. I mean, yes, Nikola was a scam. But in "the beginning" the only people willing to say that it was a scam were ones who sounded exactly like the much louder, better funded, and media-accessible people screaming that Tesla was a scam. This very site was filled with $TSLAQ nonsense. And it was all wrong, much of it deliberately so. The investment world is drowning in d…

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/03/musk-tesla-was-about-a-month... Tesla almost went bankrupt. They started shutting stores that were tied into commercial leases that hadn't expired and all kinds of stuff. At one point they said they would never need to capital raise again and then did one 3 days later or something. They made wild statements of autonomous taxis by the end of 2020 in a desperate bid to build hype before…

Best time to raise capital is when you don’t need it

Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud

#479

Post by lotsofpulp » Fri, Jul 30, 2021, 2:30 PM UTC

bagels wrote: post #455

nickik wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that the infrastructure of ICE and oil massively profits from scale, as this drops many of these assets will turn negative. Even if per mile the car would be competitive, the lost of value of the car itself would be incredibly. Who will still buy an ICE car in 2030. And that is before the new regulation that potentially makes these cars even less wanted.

This was my point. Gasoline will be banned for new cars at some point.

I would bet everything I own that gasoline for consumers cars (especially the pickup trucks so many love) is not going anywhere in the US by 2030. 2040 maybe, 2050 likelier.

Re: Grand jury indicts Trevor Milton, Nikola founder, on three counts of fraud

#480

Post by sixQuarks » Fri, Jul 30, 2021, 2:47 PM UTC

ren_engineer wrote: post #184

misiti3780 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The number of Tesla haters on HN is bizarre.

Musk is pretty much the dream of what every nerd wants to become. There's a lot of jaded people on HN who think they are just as smart/talented as Musk but don't have anywhere near the success. They deal with the cognitive dissonance by calling him a fraud/scammer or wanting to see him fail. Fanboys of Musk aren't much better, Musk just seems to attract extremists on either side of the aisle who either love him or ha…

I don’t understand why you say musk fans aren’t any better.

If you’re going to be a fan of someone, why not someone who is transitioning the world to sustainable energy and trying to make humanity a multi-planetary species?