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SpaceX Is Now One of the World’s Most Valuable Privately Held Companies

nytimes.com

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Re: SpaceX Is Now One of the World’s Most Valuable Privately Held Companies

#151

Post by tasuki »

gpawl wrote: post #105
skinnymuch wrote: post #85

Forbes seems to have always been wrong about Musk's net worth unless I'm missing how it works. By my estimations, now he should be worth around $23B. $11B from Tesla. $11.5B from SpaceX. Obviously they haven't updated for this news yet, but they still won't be at $23B. Regardless, going from having invested all is PayPal money by 08 and in dire straits to being $20B+ 9 years later is awesome. And depending on what na…

Whence this myth that Musk doesn't love money, just because he makes his money making cool tech? http://variety.com/gallery/elon-musk-buys-fifth-bel-air-home... http://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-mclaren-f1-hypercar... wrecked-it-2015-6

How does wrecking expensive cars show that Musk loves money? To me it shows just the opposite!

Re: SpaceX Is Now One of the World’s Most Valuable Privately Held Companies

#152

Post by unityByFreedom »

ntelson1s wrote: post #126
unityByFreedom wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People feel practical businessmen are money-focused. They think folks who appear to "risk it all" are altruistic. Musk doesn't project the image of being practical. He claims to have almost gone broke when investing in Tesla/SpaceX, and now makes super-optimistic predictions: fully self driving cars in a year, and AGI in 2030-2040. To some, this sets him apart from the "money-focused" crowd. Yet, you can think of way…

Thanks, this was a really well-thought-out post.

Thanks. Did you know your account is banned and all your comments are flagged dead? Most people can't see them unless they've changed their settings to show dead comments.

Re: SpaceX Is Now One of the World’s Most Valuable Privately Held Companies

#153

Post by owens99 »

protomyth wrote: post #38

Shouldn’t the title include some qualifier like “tech company”, because there are private companies like Cargill out there that have yearly revenue above $20 billion.

Huawei is private and did about the same revenue as Google last year.

Re: SpaceX Is Now One of the World’s Most Valuable Privately Held Companies

#154

Post by DanBC »

unityByFreedom wrote: post #152
ntelson1s wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, this was a really well-thought-out post.

Thanks. Did you know your account is banned and all your comments are flagged dead? Most people can't see them unless they've changed their settings to show dead comments.

They were told in this comment that their account was banned: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13855630

Re: SpaceX Is Now One of the World’s Most Valuable Privately Held Companies

#155

Post by enceladean »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #111
ericd wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the most active secondary market for it?

> What is the most active secondary market for [SpaceX stock]? The secondary markets for private securities trade "over the counter" [1]. There is thus no singular "market" which could be said to be the most active. (If you're looking for a more-actionable response, feel free to pop up your email.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Over-the-counter_(finance)

Would you mind shooting me an email as well? My email is in my profile. Thanks!

https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=enceladean

Re: SpaceX Is Now One of the World’s Most Valuable Privately Held Companies

#156

Post by andygates »

Overtonwindow wrote: post #49

The best thing Mr. Musk can do, in my humble opinion, is to never, ever take SpaceX public.

His plan was "certainly not before we get to Mars", so don't worry about it happening any time soon. This big valuation will smooth the way to developing the BFR, though - and that's the big deal for SpaceX.

Re: SpaceX Is Now One of the World’s Most Valuable Privately Held Companies

#157

Post by amiga-workbench »

digi_owl wrote: post #129
Consultant32452 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Musk claims he won't take SpaceX public because public investors have short attention spans and would require profit/return too soon. Because he wants goals set out further than the next quarter, he has kept the company in the hands of like minded investors. That may just be bloviating on his part, but it does seem at least sensible on the surface.

Dell voiced something similar when he took his namesake company private after years of being publicly traded.

And it appears the quality of their consumer products rose dramatically afterwards.

Re: SpaceX Is Now One of the World’s Most Valuable Privately Held Companies

#158

Post by jimjimjim »

gpawl wrote: post #106
narrator wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon can fail a lot because money for private companies is a lot more expensive and harder to get than for public companies. Musk is playing on hard mode because he wants to retain control.

It what sense does Bezos lack control? Being public means that the company is transparent , not that it is out of control.

that is completely not actual reality.

it depends on who the investors/share holders are and the balance between lots of small investors and a few large investors.

as long as investors see a way to make money out of the ceo (dividends or rock-star growth pushing share price up) they are happy.

and all of that pushes thinking towards making targets for the quarter or year.

and if it get's bad enough -> not enough money being made -> people being put on the board to mind things -> eventual ousting.

do you want a visionary to spend their time thinking of the next great idea or how to keep the money people happy?

Re: SpaceX Is Now One of the World’s Most Valuable Privately Held Companies

#160

Post by DiThi »

tzm wrote: post #149
loeg wrote: post #4

> Mr. Musk faces competition from another billionaire. Blue Origin, a rocket company founded by Jeff Bezos, the chief executive of Amazon, aims to send tourists and supplies into space. Is that line even close to true? Last I heard Blue Origin was years away from revenue and far behind SpaceX in terms of capability and manufacturing.

These two images are telling: http://pop.h-cdn.co/assets/15/52/1600x800/landscape-14508878... http://pop.h-cdn.co/assets/15/52/1450888612-bevsx.jpg

T̶h̶e̶ ̶f̶i̶r̶s̶t̶ ̶p̶i̶c̶t̶u̶r̶e̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶k̶i̶n̶d̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶m̶i̶s̶l̶e̶a̶d̶i̶n̶g̶.̶ ̶F̶a̶l̶c̶o̶n̶'̶s̶ ̶b̶o̶o̶s̶t̶e̶r̶ ̶d̶o̶e̶s̶n̶'̶t̶ ̶u̶s̶u̶a̶l̶l̶y̶ ̶r̶e̶a̶c̶h̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶K̶á̶r̶m̶á̶n̶ ̶l̶i̶n̶e̶.̶ However, as it is apparent from the size in the second picture, Falcon needs much, much more thrust to help put things to orbit. Going to space is kind of easy, the hard part is staying there.
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