Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Twitter re-examines Elon Musk’s bid, may be more receptive to a deal

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 348 posts

Re: Twitter re-examines Elon Musk’s bid, may be more receptive to a deal

#21

Post by AlchemistCamp »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #8
greatpostman wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really hard to imagine the richest and most accomplished dude on the planet not being able to secure funding. Somehow people still think he’s just a showman. At some point in time, accomplishments can’t be explained away

He’s not just a showman, but he is a showman. And it’s not like you have to dig back into ancient history to find instances where he invented a bid like this, he basically made up a bid for Tesla a few years ago and lied about having secured financing.

> lied about having secured financing.

He says he did have funding secured. He elaborated on the details in the recent TED talk.

Do you have any privileged information about the incident or are you just casually calling someone a liar based on third-hand news you read online?

Re: Twitter re-examines Elon Musk’s bid, may be more receptive to a deal

#22

Post by capkutay »

SpikeDad wrote: post #18
greatpostman wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really hard to imagine the richest and most accomplished dude on the planet not being able to secure funding. Somehow people still think he’s just a showman. At some point in time, accomplishments can’t be explained away

Accomplished? He's got money and hired some smart people. And tech media is more than happy to ignore all the stupid shit he's done and tried.

I guess all people with money have bootstrapped companies that launched mankind into space?

Re: Twitter re-examines Elon Musk’s bid, may be more receptive to a deal

#23

Post by HillRat »

pxx wrote: post #9
systemvoltage wrote: post #4

I guess HN was wrong (top comments) that Musk couldn't possibly have a way to finance his deal. And here we are.

I don't know of people saying that he had "no possible way" to finance a deal. Quoting the excellent Matt Levine, the situation is more like the following: '''the answer to the question “might Elon Musk have made an offer to take a large public company private, at a cost of tens of billions of dollars, without giving any real thought to where the money would come from?” is “absolutely yes, and he’s done it before.”''…

When all is said and done, this is likely to be a Thoma Bravo deal, not a Musk deal — too much OPM (and too much of Musk’s Tesla equity) is at stake to let Musk go all rabid ferret on the company. I’d expect him to get some high-profile and low-impact personal wins out of this (whatever those might be, since it’s still not clear to me what he actually wants out of this), TB tears the dev organization down to the studs to get opex under control, they spin it back to the market within a few years for a tidy profit, and the company collapses shortly thereafter, with its assets sold off to Red Ventures for a fraction of a cent on the dollar to serve as a lead-generator for prepaid mobile operators.

Re: Twitter re-examines Elon Musk’s bid, may be more receptive to a deal

#24

Post by evthrowaway »

AlchemistCamp wrote: post #21
matthewdgreen wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He’s not just a showman, but he is a showman. And it’s not like you have to dig back into ancient history to find instances where he invented a bid like this, he basically made up a bid for Tesla a few years ago and lied about having secured financing.

> lied about having secured financing. He says he did have funding secured. He elaborated on the details in the recent TED talk. Do you have any privileged information about the incident or are you just casually calling someone a liar based on third-hand news you read online?

No post body was provided.

Re: Twitter re-examines Elon Musk’s bid, may be more receptive to a deal

#25

Post by samuelstros »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #8
greatpostman wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really hard to imagine the richest and most accomplished dude on the planet not being able to secure funding. Somehow people still think he’s just a showman. At some point in time, accomplishments can’t be explained away

He’s not just a showman, but he is a showman. And it’s not like you have to dig back into ancient history to find instances where he invented a bid like this, he basically made up a bid for Tesla a few years ago and lied about having secured financing.

Internal chat between Musk and the Saudi investors just popped up on my twitter feed https://twitter.com/TechEmails/status/1518353213283442688

Doesn't seem like the funding secured thing was an outright lie.

Re: Twitter re-examines Elon Musk’s bid, may be more receptive to a deal

#26

Post by chrischattin »

FFRefresh wrote: post #17
systemvoltage wrote: post #4

I guess HN was wrong (top comments) that Musk couldn't possibly have a way to finance his deal. And here we are.

I'm finding media coverage and opinions on trending news topics to be increasingly superficial and partisan. It has certainly always been the case to some degree, but as someone who does truly want to understand how things work and are, it's become more difficult to make sense of things. It seems like media entities feel they need to be entrenched on their side of the American culture war, and show no empathy/humilit…

Anyone who doesn't fall in line and support the "current thing" is labeled a far-right extremist these days. Ironically, they do this even to people with traditionally liberal views like free speech being a good thing, like Elon in this case.

Re: Twitter re-examines Elon Musk’s bid, may be more receptive to a deal

#27

Post by kiba »

SpikeDad wrote: post #18
greatpostman wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really hard to imagine the richest and most accomplished dude on the planet not being able to secure funding. Somehow people still think he’s just a showman. At some point in time, accomplishments can’t be explained away

Accomplished? He's got money and hired some smart people. And tech media is more than happy to ignore all the stupid shit he's done and tried.

He can be both accomplished and an asshole.

Re: Twitter re-examines Elon Musk’s bid, may be more receptive to a deal

#28

Post by mdoms »

panick21_ wrote: post #16
edmundsauto wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is also a simplification to highlight his achievements without also acknowledging that he doesn’t seem to be a very moral or stable person. Some of the criticism of his behavior is clearly sour grapes that he doesn’t act “properly” for a billionaire, but there are also many examples of him being a bad person a la Steve Jobs. We tolerate the characteristics because of the perceived value, but it would also be nice…

How is he 'unstable' exactly? He has been leading successful companies for 30 years and pretty much every company he has been involved in has been highly successful. He has never been unstable, just opinionated. And people don't like that so they call him psychologically unstable instead. What he has done that is bad and why people hate him: - Called somebody something bad on twitter once. - Twits dumb memes with dum…

> Called somebody something bad on twitter once

I assume you're talking about the time he called a diver (and actual hero) a pedophile. It went a bit further than that - he hired a private investigator who tried (and failed) to dig up dirt on the man.

Re: Twitter re-examines Elon Musk’s bid, may be more receptive to a deal

#29

Post by dijit »

SpikeDad wrote: post #18
greatpostman wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really hard to imagine the richest and most accomplished dude on the planet not being able to secure funding. Somehow people still think he’s just a showman. At some point in time, accomplishments can’t be explained away

Accomplished? He's got money and hired some smart people. And tech media is more than happy to ignore all the stupid shit he's done and tried.

> He's got money and hired some smart people.

Definitely not a fan of his but hiring smart people and enabling them is an accomplishment.

As wealthy as he is, he didn’t inherit all of what he has today. He’s definitely done more than many people who come from wealth.

Re: Twitter re-examines Elon Musk’s bid, may be more receptive to a deal

#30

Post by [deleted] »

FFRefresh wrote: post #17
systemvoltage wrote: post #4

I guess HN was wrong (top comments) that Musk couldn't possibly have a way to finance his deal. And here we are.

I'm finding media coverage and opinions on trending news topics to be increasingly superficial and partisan. It has certainly always been the case to some degree, but as someone who does truly want to understand how things work and are, it's become more difficult to make sense of things. It seems like media entities feel they need to be entrenched on their side of the American culture war, and show no empathy/humilit…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN