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From Tesla to Twitter, Elon Musk has become the most influential businessman ever, but it required the masses to support his seemingly unreachable visions - the cult behind the man.
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00:00:13If you know the story of Tesla, nothing about Elon's acquisition of Twitter will surprise you.
00:00:19Elon Musk overhauls the company.
00:00:22Half of its employees were laid off.
00:00:24The list of companies reportedly suspending business with Twitter is still growing.
00:00:31Tesla's a company that Elon Musk willed into existence, and the way that he did it was by building this
00:00:37massive fan base on Twitter.
00:00:43I wake up every day just excited for the future, and this is due to Elon and his companies.
00:00:49I think it's incredible that we get to be alive the moment that Elon's alive.
00:00:53We're watching the best business be built in history that's going to change the course of humanity, and we get
00:00:57to watch it in real time.
00:00:58Among the Tesla fans and Tesla as a company, there are a lot of ways in which they feel the
00:01:04means justifies the ends.
00:01:06Tesla loses money in every single car that they make.
00:01:09Fatal flaw in Tesla's autopilot feature.
00:01:12Serious questions about workers' safety.
00:01:15Tesla has suffered a series of very public challenges.
00:01:20Around this time, there was a lot of noise outside of the company, a lot of news articles that, hey,
00:01:25Tesla's going to go bankrupt.
00:01:26Elon Musk is a crazy person.
00:01:28It drove us to work as hard as humanly possible to prove those people wrong.
00:01:32It was fear, uncertainty, doubt everywhere.
00:01:36We would sacrifice our own time, our own mental sanity, just to tell somebody on the internet that they're wrong.
00:01:43Elon is a genius.
00:01:44Tesla is skyrocketing.
00:01:47Elon Musk is now the richest person in the world.
00:01:50He is so powerful that he is creating his vision of the future, and these are the people that perpetuate
00:01:56his vision.
00:01:59Whether you like it or not, you are along for the ride.
00:02:20Cars are freedom.
00:02:22It's part of the American dream.
00:02:24It represents the ability to go wherever you want, to take road trips, to drive across the country.
00:02:30For a long time, people weren't sure what was going to come after gas cars.
00:02:35We might have fuel cell cars or natural gas cars.
00:02:39I don't think electric cars were seen as feasible.
00:02:42People were worried that they would be underpowered, that they could only drive for a few miles before you'd need
00:02:48to recharge the battery.
00:02:49All of the markets for electric vehicles in the U.S. and elsewhere, all sort of originate in government policy.
00:02:55The first of those government policies to really start fostering an electric vehicle market was California's zero emission vehicle program.
00:03:04The electric car is here.
00:03:10EV1 is the car to be seen in this winter.
00:03:13The guy behind me keeps pulling up on my bumper.
00:03:15I can see him saying to his wife, what is that?
00:03:18The EV1 was considered primarily the first modern electric car.
00:03:24The reason the EV1 is no longer on the road today is because the companies behind that one and the
00:03:30others of that generation didn't want to keep selling them.
00:03:33As soon as that law was relaxed, they pulled the cars and stopped making them for years.
00:03:38These are perfectly functional cars that are being taken off the road.
00:03:41I love it. I'm so sad. I'm not going to have it for the rest of my life.
00:03:44The community was incredibly disappointed at the demise of EV1.
00:03:50They did funky things like hold a funeral for a car.
00:03:57And do 24-7 vigils and press conferences.
00:04:01We are not going to just stand here. We're going to keep demanding that they build these cars again.
00:04:07All kinds of things, just trying to essentially bring attention to the story.
00:04:11The end of the EV1, the crushing of the cars, is probably the closest we got to very dark years.
00:04:18I don't think anyone looked at the crushing of EV1s and thought there was a near-term future for electric
00:04:24cars on the road.
00:04:25This was a really important moment, I think, in the build-up to Tesla's success.
00:04:29It really sort of started to foster this sense that this is all ready to happen.
00:04:34We can't trust the legacy automakers to do it.
00:04:37Something new has to happen. Someone else has to step into this gap.
00:04:42Elon Musk ended up being that person.
00:04:45Elon was born in South Africa.
00:04:48And you see from an early age this off-the-charts intelligence.
00:04:52You also see this pluck, this curiosity, this ability to dispense convention and just focus on a goal.
00:05:01And his goal quickly becomes to save the world.
00:05:04His interest as a child were reading sci-fi books and comic books.
00:05:08And one of the things that's interesting about that category of literature is that it has a common theme.
00:05:15An unlikely hero comes out of nowhere and saves the world.
00:05:19And that's the path that Elon found for himself.
00:05:24He had always been passionate about electric vehicles.
00:05:27Once he made the money from PayPal, he didn't want to just go to an island, is the way he
00:05:31sort of frames the other alternative.
00:05:34And so he plowed it into both SpaceX and Tesla, which at the time was very unusual.
00:05:38What we're doing is critical to the future of NASA.
00:05:42We want to serve as a catalyst for accelerating the electric car revolution.
00:05:45I first learned about Tesla during the EV1 vigil.
00:05:49A former EV1 driver came up to me on the sidewalk and told me that there were a couple guys
00:05:53in a garage in Northern California with a converted Lotus
00:05:56and that I had to go meet them basically today.
00:06:00Anyone that wants to start a car company is at a minimum radically ambitious, often fairly arrogant, and has to
00:06:08suspend disbelief for a little while, at least to see where it goes.
00:06:13The simplest way to explain why there haven't been startup car companies is that it's capital intensive, but low margin.
00:06:21It costs something on the order of a billion dollars to develop just a new car and then to tool
00:06:27up a factory for that.
00:06:29What you have is a product that enters a brutally competitive marketplace with brands that have been there for, you
00:06:34know, in some cases, a century.
00:06:36And then even if you do sell as many vehicles as you can produce, the margins, you know, simply aren't
00:06:40that good.
00:06:41It's really one of the most difficult businesses you can possibly get into.
00:06:45Often when Silicon Valley types go and sell their company for billions of dollars, they start a VC fund and
00:06:53start investing in other startups.
00:06:55All of these companies have sprouted up to make it easier to find things on the Internet or to connect
00:07:01people on social media or to get a taxi.
00:07:05Whereas Elon Musk is like, I'm going to colonize Mars and I'm going to stop climate change.
00:07:10And by supporting me, you can save the human race.
00:07:15Once Elon started making some money, particularly after PayPal, it's very clear that he wanted attention, adulation.
00:07:22I think he wanted to be a heroic figure.
00:07:24There's interviews of him, you know, as he's taking delivery of his McLaren F1 supercar.
00:07:30There are 62 McLarens in the world and I will earn one of them.
00:07:35There it is, gentlemen, the fastest car in the world.
00:07:37Very clearly, he talks about wanting to be on the cover of Rolling Stone.
00:07:40I'd like to be on the cover of Rolling Stone. That'd be cool.
00:07:45He says repeatedly that, you know, everyone told him he was crazy to start a car company when he did,
00:07:50which of course leads to the question of like, why was he doing it?
00:07:53He saw that if he could be the guy who could popularize electric vehicles, that that adulation that he clearly
00:07:59cared about so much, it was a good way to get that.
00:08:01It feels like the people who are in this are not in it for the money or the glory.
00:08:10Well, you know, there's a lot to be said for money and glory. I wouldn't say that those are unimportant.
00:08:16I think there's nothing wrong with wanting to make money or, you know, have a glorious outcome.
00:08:24Electric vehicles have always been driven by the bottom up, by the community of enthusiasts and happy warriors.
00:08:33Tesla did not realize the original passionate community and the asset that it had.
00:08:40Personally, I wake up every day just excited for the future and this is, for the most part, due to
00:08:48Elon and his companies.
00:08:49I've always been fascinated with space. Ever since I was a young child, I can't remember a time in which
00:08:55I wasn't hopeful that humanity would live in space.
00:09:01When I first heard about what was going on there at Tesla, I was immediately excited for the future.
00:09:07I think it's incredible that we get to be alive the moment that Elon's alive.
00:09:11We're watching the best business be built in history that's going to change the course of humanity and we get
00:09:15to watch it in real time.
00:09:16Screw Marvel. Screw Netflix. The best content in the world right now is the Tesla show.
00:09:24There's so few things that rally humans together optimistically around a cause.
00:09:29And to me, that's what Tesla is. It's a positive cause about the future and making it brighter and more
00:09:34sustainable.
00:09:34We need more things like that in the world desperately.
00:09:44This is like the EV nerd heaven.
00:09:49Oh my goodness. I'm so excited about how many people here. The future is so bright.
00:09:54As long as it's got a plug, you're winning.
00:09:57Exactly. That's right.
00:09:59Whatever works.
00:10:00We see thousands of people come from across the country in the U.S. just to get together and sort
00:10:05of nerd out with fellow EV folks.
00:10:07Do you see over there they're doing retrofits, like conversions of old vehicles?
00:10:11They have a Cobra over there.
00:10:13A Cobra?
00:10:15It's also very deja vu to the early days of EVs where the gatherings were smaller, but the enthusiasm and
00:10:21the sensation was very similar.
00:10:27Because Tesla is perceived as having been so successful, Tesla proved that you can do it.
00:10:32You can start up an EV automaker and succeed.
00:10:35And I think this is why the history of the company is so important to understand, because if Tesla really
00:10:40at every point on its journey lived and died by, you know, the realities of its business, of the economics
00:10:48and the engineering and things like that, it wouldn't have made it.
00:10:50Time and time again, it required the faith that Elon Musk, you know, is constantly cultivating and leveraging to kind
00:10:57of keep things moving along when they could have fallen apart.
00:11:05For the first time since the 1930s, a true systemic financial crisis is underway.
00:11:11The Dow tumbled more than 500 points.
00:11:14America's auto industry is running on fumes.
00:11:17In 2008, Tesla was, by all accounts, about to die.
00:11:22Elon Musk didn't even have a house because he sold his and put the money into Tesla.
00:11:26He told the public that a government loan that Tesla had applied for had essentially been approved and was going
00:11:34to be dispersed soon.
00:11:35What Tesla's done is applied for funding to develop lower cost mass market vehicles.
00:11:41At the time he made that announcement, Tesla hadn't even submitted a complete application for that loan program.
00:11:47This is really one of the first examples of Musk doing something that he's now famous for, which is announcing
00:11:53that funding is secured when it isn't actually.
00:11:55When the chips are down, Musk has learned that he can meme, you know, things into existence.
00:12:02He can sort of say that something has happened, create the perception that something has happened, and the world will
00:12:10rearrange itself to make it have happened.
00:12:13How is it that the perception that Tesla's created is so powerful that the facts literally don't even matter?
00:12:20In the aftermath of 2008, people were really mad at the big banks.
00:12:24People stopped trusting traditional institutions, and I think they were looking for disruptors.
00:12:31And Tesla is sort of the ultimate disruptor of this really old industry.
00:12:37Tesla goes public on June 29th, 2010.
00:12:42Now is really an opportunity for people to buy in, to be a part of the story.
00:12:48It's very tied to Elon and who Elon is and how he does business.
00:12:54When the stock went public, we were just sort of coming out of the Great Recession.
00:12:59It was not at all obvious that Tesla was going to be a major, major investment opportunity.
00:13:04I think the community has helped keep Tesla going in darker financial times, both originally just trying to grow the
00:13:12movement itself and spreading the enthusiasm.
00:13:14And then once they could actually invest at a retail level, they would tout the stock and try to get
00:13:19other people to do the same.
00:13:22I first bought Tesla stock in 2011.
00:13:26I was in junior year of high school.
00:13:28I ran over to my friend Julian's house, who was my neighbor at the time.
00:13:31We were obsessed with Steve Jobs.
00:13:33And I said, Julian, Elon Musk is the next Steve Jobs.
00:13:35This is going to happen.
00:13:36Tesla's the next company.
00:13:37And I know it sounds crazy, but they're going to do it.
00:13:39And I'm going all in.
00:13:40And I was so stoked.
00:13:45I was out of college for about four years and I graduated with a lot of student debt.
00:13:50One of the things I was looking to do was generate more wealth for myself.
00:13:53When I started looking into investing in stocks, I came across Tesla at that point.
00:13:59They had a very vibrant investing community on this website called Tesla Motors Club.
00:14:05There seemed to be a lot of people on those forums that invested a lot of time in the company
00:14:10that I didn't find for any other company.
00:14:14I was trying to put my money behind something that would change the world in some way.
00:14:18While at the same time, you know, I'm able to benefit from that as well.
00:14:22That's part of the mission, too.
00:14:25Already, this investors forum was really distinct in that they only wanted good news about Tesla.
00:14:32They were completely focused on the perception of the company and making sure that that perception was completely positive.
00:14:40It was really interesting to see that sort of radicalization process.
00:14:45And it really was based on Tesla as an investment.
00:14:49So in the early days, people were buying Tesla stock because they wanted to bet on the electric vehicle revolution.
00:14:54And frankly, I didn't have a cause in the world that was optimistic, that was a community that I could
00:14:58rally around.
00:15:01It became frankly, to some degree, my religion because I believed in supporting the sustainable future more than anything else
00:15:08in my life.
00:15:08The ability to own Tesla stock is a new incremental outgrowth of the fundamentally co-creating the success of this
00:15:18technology together.
00:15:18These guys bought into being able to financially support their heroes and gain some success from it.
00:15:25And it becomes kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy after a while and inextricable to tease out all of the
00:15:32personal motivations that might be underneath that.
00:15:44Both SpaceX and Tesla sort of emerged at around the same time in the public consciousness.
00:15:50Elon was seen as this modern day rocket man.
00:15:53He's launching rockets into space and the roadster felt like a rocket on land.
00:16:00And Elon starts to become a celebrity.
00:16:02Mr. Musk.
00:16:04How are you?
00:16:05Congratulations on the promotion.
00:16:06Thank you very much.
00:16:07Elon.
00:16:08Those Merlin engines are fantastic.
00:16:09Oh, thank you.
00:16:10Good idea for an electric jet.
00:16:11You do.
00:16:12Then we'll make it work.
00:16:13Elon Musk has always had this difficult relationship with the media where he wants coverage, he wants attention, he wants
00:16:19to be a celebrity, but only on his terms.
00:16:21You know, I think that in turn led to him really embracing social media.
00:16:25This is a decade before Elon buys Twitter and he's amassed legions of followers and he's tweeting all the time.
00:16:32He is willing to throw away convention and to share exactly what he's thinking.
00:16:38It becomes a powerful PR tool because he can go right to the people who want to hear from him.
00:16:43You had on Twitter for the very first time, a very extensive and open social network.
00:16:51So people who were agitating with one another could convene on the same hashtags.
00:16:57For the Tesla brand though, it became something where people could communicate with Elon Musk.
00:17:05And that for some people felt like they hit the lottery.
00:17:12Today is just about getting the whole Tesla community together.
00:17:16You can come here and just completely geek out.
00:17:18I met some of these guys mainly through social media.
00:17:22We have a wonderful club of women here in the community.
00:17:25Elon, he's a visionary.
00:17:28It's just insane.
00:17:29Like there's so many people here.
00:17:31It's the largest Tesla meetup in the world.
00:17:34When you first get into a Tesla, it literally will just change the way you view the purpose of a
00:17:40car.
00:17:42For me, I love technology and community.
00:17:45Did all the requirements and I was able to start Tesla Owners of Silicon Valley.
00:17:50What's so important about Twitter and the Tesla community really is the flat playing ground that it is.
00:17:56You can have a hundred followers and Elon Musk, he's going to respond to you.
00:18:01My relationship with Elon started through Twitter.
00:18:05Just talking about how much I love my car.
00:18:07And then obviously starting this very prominent club into what it is today.
00:18:11I was able to score an interview with Elon by just engaging with him and his comments.
00:18:16So he was making a lot of comments on who the co-founders and the non-co-founders were.
00:18:21Who played a role in the early days of Tesla.
00:18:23Might as well shoot my shot.
00:18:24Said, hey, let's document this.
00:18:26Let's get it on record.
00:18:27He said, sure.
00:18:29Well, I just wanted to take a moment and kind of step back.
00:18:32So the reason we're here, right, is because of the early days of Tesla.
00:18:35Right.
00:18:35There's a lot of misinformation.
00:18:38Yeah.
00:18:38A lot of people just think that someone else started it.
00:18:41You joined later and whatever.
00:18:43But obviously that's not true.
00:18:45So that is not true.
00:18:46The reason people think that is because Everhard has engaged in a non-stop campaign to try to effectively gain
00:18:53sole credit for Tesla for himself.
00:18:55And he's the worst person I have ever worked with.
00:18:58And that is saying something.
00:18:59OK, I've worked with some real assholes.
00:19:01Elon cares about the origin story because founders are the ones that get the credit.
00:19:07And everyone wants to be the hero of their own story.
00:19:11People overestimate the psychology a little bit and try to read a little too hard into it when his contribution,
00:19:17even early on, was significant.
00:19:19And I think he wants to be recognized for that.
00:19:23It was just a life moment.
00:19:25I kind of had to pinch myself several times.
00:19:27But at the same time, it's not like I was seeing this guy as the richest person in the world.
00:19:31I had seen him as this person who was literally struggling and then finally he's made it.
00:19:35Probably the most important sort of signs of status in that world is if Elon mentions you on Twitter.
00:19:40You get mentioned by Elon once and you're in the club.
00:19:44If he mentions you multiple times, then you ascend to like this kind of elite.
00:19:49They're constantly competing with each other to identify not just the topics and the stories that are going to get
00:19:56Elon's attention,
00:19:57but then like the takes on them that he's going to want to either respond to or echo.
00:20:03Tesla spends zero money on advertising and marketing.
00:20:06All these other car companies are paying huge advertising budgets to media companies,
00:20:09so they're really incentivized not to trash them.
00:20:12Tesla has none of this like goodwill and free press.
00:20:15What's very unique about Tesla is the way that their community rallied around the internet to support the company in
00:20:21this grassroots way.
00:20:22Their products were so good that you built social capital by talking about the product.
00:20:26What we know from research on social media is that you might not trust the local news,
00:20:35you might not trust national media, but you might trust your uncle and you might trust your friend or you
00:20:41might trust your colleague.
00:20:43That parasocial relationship that you build with online audiences is crucial for products or other kinds of content to circulate.
00:20:57Twitter is a really powerful tool because it lets you have a voice and it lets you connect with people
00:21:02that you otherwise would have no connection with.
00:21:06And being able to be seen by people you look up to is incredibly powerful.
00:21:11The role that I've played has been to support the community, to make people smile, to give people encouragement when
00:21:18they're feeling down.
00:21:19I built a video game called Cybertruck Simulator and you can drive a Cybertruck around on Mars.
00:21:25Creating the world in which I want to live includes finding people with similar interests.
00:21:30It's creating the renewable earth that we all deserve and it's finding the people who will go with me to
00:21:38Mars.
00:21:39So much of the Tesla culture happens on Twitter that gives the person at home a lot of agency and
00:21:47a lot of connection and it builds up that demand.
00:21:52Tesla Motors today announced plans to ship its first all electric Model S sedan in June.
00:22:04When the Model S was released, we knew it was going to be an inflection point in the EV movement.
00:22:09It gets all these amazing reviews, but it's really expensive to make and it's really expensive to buy.
00:22:16And it's really difficult to scale in a way that will allow Elon to launch the Model 3, which is
00:22:23going to be this affordable mass market car that makes Tesla into this automotive giant.
00:22:28One, two, three, Tesla! Let him go!
00:22:32So in the meantime, Elon sort of starts the hype train.
00:22:35That was everything from superchargers talking about autopilot and Tesla's future in the driving automation technology space.
00:22:43Tesla starts doing like solar roofs.
00:22:47It starts selling home battery backup systems.
00:22:52It starts doing sort of all of these things in the interim to keep both the hype and the dream
00:22:59alive to get to the point where the Model 3 can be introduced.
00:23:04He will say things that push beyond the realm of aspiration into, you know, fantasy.
00:23:10We're probably only a month away from having autonomous driving, at least for highways.
00:23:15The Model S and Model X, at this point, can drive autonomously with greater safety than a person.
00:23:20Next year, for sure, we will have over a million robo-taxis on the road.
00:23:26Musk realized that once you have a little bit of momentum, if you pour hype onto that fire, it just
00:23:32burns hotter.
00:23:34That's essentially defined the history of the company ever since.
00:23:40We have an amazing product to show you tonight.
00:23:43I think you're going to be blown away.
00:23:45Do you want to see the car?
00:23:46Yeah!
00:23:48The Model 3 launch, specifically in the Silicon Valley, was a huge moment.
00:23:52It was kind of like the iPhone launch in a lot of ways.
00:23:54Folks started lining up yesterday outside the store.
00:23:57They are anxious to put their names on the list.
00:24:00Tesla took 325,000 pre-orders for the Model 3 immediately after it was announced.
00:24:06But it was a $1,000 refundable deposit, meaning it didn't actually have all that much money coming in.
00:24:15It was still in difficult financial straits, and it still actually had to figure out how to build the cars
00:24:20at a reasonable cost.
00:24:23They also had this incredibly compressed timeline to get it to market.
00:24:26We're talking about getting these, you know, really ambitious production figures.
00:24:29And journalists in the space sort of knew, you know, this is not very realistic.
00:24:34Tesla, the stock's sinking after reporting a wider-than-expected loss entering a bear market.
00:24:38This company has one thing it seems to know how to do very well, lose money.
00:24:42It just so happened that Tesla opened a new facility where I lived at the time.
00:24:46And I'm like, holy crap, I have to apply it.
00:24:48When I came into Tesla, the biggest challenge facing the company was the Model 3 ramp.
00:24:53Around this time, there was a lot of noise outside of the company, a lot of news articles
00:24:58and sort of this thing coming up that, hey, Tesla's going to go bankrupt.
00:25:01Do you have a price target in mind?
00:25:04Well, we think the equity's worthless, so how's zero?
00:25:09It drove us to work as hard as humanly possible to prove those people wrong.
00:25:14Wall Street had a lot of trouble understanding Tesla because they couldn't put it in a spreadsheet.
00:25:18And I think it comes back to Elon Musk really being Michael Jordan-esque,
00:25:21and everyone else, frankly, kind of being like kindergarteners when it comes to business.
00:25:25What's up, YouTube? Welcome to HyperChange.
00:25:27This is my new show about the economy, the financial system, and the stock market.
00:25:32I started my YouTube channel, started documenting what I was investing in.
00:25:36They're taking more market share. They're building on their mission.
00:25:38As a whole, the company is executing and building its brand and building sales and building revenue.
00:25:43It all seems like a good thing.
00:25:45Started this kind of movement of rallying together tiny retail investors to come behind a cause
00:25:49and support a company and build a community that wasn't Wall Street
00:25:52and that didn't have to go through that traditional system.
00:25:58Tesla's entire brand image, and particularly for the community,
00:26:02the sense of being an underdog is a very important one.
00:26:07Part of what makes that work is the perception that there are bad people
00:26:11who are out to stop them from making the world a better place.
00:26:23I believe Tesla first caught my eye sometime in 2015.
00:26:30I was, at the time, working in New York City in finance in a family office.
00:26:36And it struck me as an intriguing company because it seemed to me very overvalued
00:26:43in the financial statements and its filings.
00:26:46I had, in my youth, been a newspaper reporter, and I was itching to write again.
00:26:52So I started writing for an online publication called Seeking Alpha.
00:26:58It was an easy platform to get into.
00:27:01And I started writing articles about Tesla.
00:27:03I wrote the first article and I was overwhelmed with angry comments.
00:27:10People didn't say, I think you made a mistake in paragraph three,
00:27:14if you go check the numbers there.
00:27:15People said, Elon Musk is the savior of our time.
00:27:20He is the Tony Stark. He is the hero we've been looking for.
00:27:23The earth faces an environmental apocalypse and he will save us from it.
00:27:28And you are standing in the way. You are standing in the way of a visionary.
00:27:31You begin to realize this is not finance anymore.
00:27:35This is something different.
00:27:37This is a cult. This is religion.
00:27:41These are true believers.
00:27:44I have seen these people share their investment portfolios all in Tesla.
00:27:50And those people are really hinging all they have on the financial success of the organization.
00:27:58So they will do whatever it takes to get at whatever is making the stock go down.
00:28:05When I started researching Tesla, I found online a video of an event.
00:28:11And what he was doing was demonstrating to an audience in some auditorium battery swapping.
00:28:18You have the choice of a battery pack swap, which is faster than you can fill a gas tank.
00:28:24And he had a big SUV up there and he had a Tesla Model S.
00:28:28And you couldn't see it happening, but they were taking the battery out of the S and putting in a
00:28:32replacement battery.
00:28:33Meanwhile, pumping gas into the SUV.
00:28:36And this video made it appear that you could change the battery on the Model S faster than you could
00:28:44fill the car with gasoline.
00:28:46There was never any battery swapping that happened with Teslas.
00:28:50But it was all a ploy to get the California Air Resources Board, which at that point they were handing
00:28:56out what are called ZEV credits, zero emission vehicle credits.
00:29:00And Elon Musk got to capture more of those, more subsidies from California, by claiming that his cars were capable
00:29:06of battery swapping.
00:29:08And watching that video and seeing the reaction of the crowd to Elon Musk, they were orgasmic in their pleasure
00:29:14when he would make these claims.
00:29:15Hopefully this is what convinces people finally that electric cars are the future.
00:29:20It was like watching a religious revival.
00:29:23And for me, that was the moment I said, I don't trust anything this guy is saying.
00:29:29So, going into 2018, Tesla had begun manufacturing of the Model 3 the previous summer.
00:29:35And that was not going well.
00:29:37This was the infamous production hell that Musk has talked about quite a bit.
00:29:41I mean, frankly, we're going to be in production hell.
00:29:45Welcome, welcome.
00:29:47Welcome to production hell.
00:29:49Tesla was really struggling to make the Model 3, particularly at the rates and volumes that they've been telling investors
00:29:55that they would.
00:29:55Every single Model 3 target they put out, they've missed.
00:29:59Tesla is blowing through an insane amount of raw material and cash to make Model 3s and production is still
00:30:05a nightmare.
00:30:05All of us were concerned because this was the make or break product for Tesla.
00:30:09There was so much bet on that specific product to come to fruition.
00:30:14If the Model 3 doesn't ship enough units per week, you go, it's over.
00:30:19I can't tell you how many times I would come home and I would have a text from a, you
00:30:22know, family or friend that would say,
00:30:24I'm hearing Tesla's going to go bankrupt.
00:30:26I'm hearing this and that.
00:30:27You should sell your shares to get out of there when you can.
00:30:29It's hard not to have some doubt because if you have everyone coming at you from all angles, media, friends,
00:30:34family saying it's going to fail,
00:30:35and you're out there, you know, working 14, 15, 16 hour days as hard as you possibly can to make
00:30:41this thing reality, it's extremely, extremely difficult.
00:30:44This was why it was the most intense moment ever because you had so many people, so many huge short
00:30:48sellers attacking Tesla saying they weren't profitable, they weren't going to make it.
00:30:52Simply put, short selling is an investor saying, I think this company, for example, is overvalued and I'm going to
00:31:00act on my conviction.
00:31:02They are the people that take the garbage down to the curb.
00:31:06And if there's a garbage company, they, in effect, alert the market and information is what markets function on.
00:31:13When a company goes bankrupt, one of the things that happens is that their stock ticker, in Tesla's case, that's
00:31:20TSLA, gets a Q at the end of it.
00:31:23And so if Tesla were to go bankrupt, their stock would be listed not under TSLA, but TSLAQ.
00:31:29And so the short sellers and the, and the, and the Tesla critics started posting under this cash tag on,
00:31:36on Twitter of TSLAQ.
00:31:37And it kind of coalesced into a sort of a very loose decentralized community of, of people who just think
00:31:43Tesla is overvalued and that Tesla is likely to go bankrupt at some point.
00:31:49This is the period that Elon begins to think the world is against him.
00:31:54He says, you know, there's all these Wall Street guys who are betting against Tesla and it's becoming a self
00:32:02-fulfilling prophecy because they are going to drive Tesla's stock price down and cause the company to fail through their
00:32:09information campaign alone.
00:32:10A lot of short sellers really emerged, I think during the 2018 time because this company was losing a lot
00:32:16of money and they were trying to ramp production and literally building a car probably in the most expensive place
00:32:24on the planet.
00:32:24Short sellers realized that the valuation was based on narrative and was based on, you know, a lot of expectations
00:32:32that were not necessarily well rooted in a good understanding of what's even possible economically in the car business.
00:32:38People want to short Tesla because they think they're smarter than Elon Musk and can make money doing it.
00:32:43Betting against a company is basically having negative vibes as your full time job.
00:32:47Hope our future to go electric stops so that I can make a little profit with my bet short selling
00:32:52a company.
00:32:53We've been short Tesla a hell of a lot longer than I ever thought I'd have to be short Tesla.
00:32:59Musk released these Tesla satin short shorts online as a direct jab at short sellers of Tesla stock.
00:33:05People that are betting against a company like Tesla, they're against the world.
00:33:10They're not taking the care and consideration into the planet.
00:33:14People in finance who evaluating Tesla as a financial investment were stunned that it had become a cult.
00:33:25It had become so irrational and a lot of them expected it to fall to earth.
00:33:30I felt like if I'm going to write about Tesla and say that it's an overvalued company for whatever reason,
00:33:36I should at least have some skin in the game.
00:33:38That's when I first bought my first put. I always kept it a small part of my portfolio.
00:33:43What I failed adequately to appreciate at the time is that a cult is a powerful thing.
00:33:48A religious force is much more powerful than an accountant doing debits and credits.
00:33:55There's no consistency required, no critical thinking required, no intellectual integrity required.
00:34:01It's whatever Elon says.
00:34:03Because he is our God. He is our electric Jesus.
00:34:09You go back to 2018 and Elon has promised they're going to come out with 5,000 cars a week.
00:34:15Well, they're not even close to half of that.
00:34:17And he makes a joke.
00:34:18He posts a picture of himself with a sign that says bankrupt.
00:34:22And he thought it was hilarious.
00:34:25The investors did not find it as funny.
00:34:28Once you have a publicly traded company, what comes out of your mouth can affect stock price.
00:34:36Ever since production started for the Model 3, the tenor of the quarterly call started to get a little bit
00:34:42more tense.
00:34:43Well, there were challenges associated with the Model 3 ramp.
00:34:46We were in a deeper level of hell than we expected.
00:34:49Still a few levels deeper than we'd like to be.
00:34:52Shockingly, I want to follow up on the production of the Model 3.
00:34:55So it seems like that's going to remain the hot topic here.
00:34:58What's the path to recovery from here?
00:35:00Tesla financial situation was not great.
00:35:03The manufacturing was not going well.
00:35:05And so he was getting more and more tough questions on these quarterly calls.
00:35:09So I've been covering Tesla's earnings since 2016.
00:35:12We'll make a video after every Tesla earnings call talking about all the analyst questions, what I thought of the
00:35:16results.
00:35:17And this became my most popular video.
00:35:19What up, guys? Welcome to another episode of HyperChange.
00:35:22Today, I want to do a recap and analysis of Tesla's earnings call that happened this Wednesday.
00:35:26And eventually one of my viewers was like, Gally, why don't you go on the conference call and ask Elon
00:35:30a question?
00:35:31Represent us, the retail shareholder.
00:35:33That would be so incredible.
00:35:34And so then I created a tweet and I was like,
00:35:37Yo, Elon, 180 people and like $20 million are vouching for me to ask a question crowdsourced by retail investors
00:35:44on the Tesla conference call.
00:35:45And Elon replies, OK.
00:35:48I totally lose my shit.
00:35:50I slide into my roommate's room, Leo.
00:35:51I'm like, oh, my God, Elon reply.
00:35:53Like, this is crazy.
00:35:54Welcome to Tesla's first quarter 2018 Q&A webcast.
00:35:57Wall Street investors start asking Elon all these difficult questions like, where's the Model 3?
00:36:03Why aren't you shipping more cars?
00:36:04Are you the right person to be leading Tesla?
00:36:07And this really pisses Elon off.
00:36:10Elon, so you repeatedly said that you do not need to issue equity capital at Tesla.
00:36:15And I think many investors on this call would say it's better to raise capital when you don't need to.
00:36:20So I guess the first question is, yeah, you may not need to, but do you want to?
00:36:25No.
00:36:27So I'm listening to the call.
00:36:28I'm in my room.
00:36:29I have my questions ready, like sweating.
00:36:31So I'm so nervous.
00:36:32And then I hear Elon getting more and more pissed.
00:36:34What, if anything, are you taking out in terms of your lowered CapEx projection for this year?
00:36:42Where specifically will you be in terms of your capital requirements?
00:36:47Next.
00:36:47Next.
00:36:48And then he goes, all right, like screw these boneheaded questions.
00:36:51Boring bonehead questions are not cool.
00:36:54Next.
00:36:55Our next question comes from Joseph back with RBC Capital Market.
00:36:59We're going to go to YouTube.
00:37:02Sorry.
00:37:03Let's go to YouTube.
00:37:04In my head, I'm like, oh my God, that's me.
00:37:05These questions are so dry.
00:37:08They're killing me.
00:37:09And then they like tap me in.
00:37:12Our next question is from Galileo Russell with HyperChange.
00:37:15And I just start asking questions and Elon starts having fun.
00:37:18Hey, great quarter.
00:37:19Thanks for having me on the call to represent retail investors.
00:37:22If you could give us an update on the Tesla network and any details surrounding the launch date or geographic
00:37:27rollout.
00:37:28Thanks.
00:37:29Sure.
00:37:29So, I mean, that's thank you.
00:37:31Thank you for an interesting question.
00:37:32Where things are obviously evolving towards is a shared electric autonomy model.
00:37:37And I'm not an expert in battery pack technology, but it seems that a lot of people are speculating that
00:37:44the specs for the semi truck, even I believe the CEO of Daimler said it breaks the laws of physics.
00:37:50So I'm wondering, is this just a linear.
00:37:52There's not much about physics.
00:37:53I know him.
00:37:55I'm pretty happy to engage in a physics discussion with them.
00:37:59We had this incredible conversation and it really started to open the door to wait.
00:38:03There's a whole nother group of Tesla investors who don't care about this quarter tiny number.
00:38:07We care about all these very important strategic long term questions that weren't getting asked.
00:38:12And finally, they were getting some light of day.
00:38:14The old Wall Street analysts don't get it.
00:38:16From his perspective, I think he just thought that retail investors are very forward thinking.
00:38:20They're going to step out of the box and see like what's the reality.
00:38:23This earnings call made people think of Enron, which was this commodities trader infamous for perpetuating the biggest financial fraud
00:38:30in American history, particularly this point where the CEO called an investor an asshole for asking tough questions.
00:38:39You're the only financial institution that can't produce a balance sheet or a cash flow statement with their earnings.
00:38:48Well, thank you very much.
00:38:50We appreciate it.
00:38:51Appreciate it.
00:38:52Asshole.
00:38:54The analyst wasn't an asshole.
00:38:56Jeff Skilling was a crook and he ended up in prison.
00:38:59And for this moment where Elon Musk says, you analysts are boring and boneheaded.
00:39:04I mean, it certainly rhymes if it's not identical with what happened at Enron.
00:39:10I was super happy because it validated my work that it actually mattered that someone like Elon Musk would take
00:39:15it seriously.
00:39:15She says it to Galileo, not to Copernicus, not to Einstein, but a guy actually named Galileo.
00:39:20Joining us now is our friend Galileo Russell.
00:39:22Galileo Russell.
00:39:23I said, this is my moment.
00:39:24I'm going to work my ass off.
00:39:25I'm going to make videos nonstop.
00:39:27And that was kind of like the rocket fuel to take my channel to the next level and essentially make
00:39:31it so I could make enough money to, you know, live and do all that stuff.
00:39:35Literally every single dollar in profit for my YouTube channel went into Tesla stock.
00:39:39Tesla's hype machine sort of become franchised at this point.
00:39:43It was no longer just Musk himself doing the hype.
00:39:47It wasn't even just one or two blogs.
00:39:49It had become this sort of decentralized thing.
00:39:52Elon is always coming up with new ideas, new ways to do things.
00:39:57The process is often messy and he doesn't hide it.
00:40:00And so people often say that he's nuts.
00:40:03He's crazy.
00:40:04And they often bet against him, whether it's with their words or with their money.
00:40:08And a lot of times they're wrong.
00:40:13So in 2018, Elon is running SpaceX, Tesla, Neuralink, which is a company that's trying to create a computer interface
00:40:24between human intelligence and super computer intelligence.
00:40:29He also has the boring company, which is trying to revolutionize transportation on the planet.
00:40:36And there is just this media attention swirling around everything he does.
00:40:442018 is really when Elon became a household name.
00:40:47And this all really happened when he slid into the DMs of Grimes, the pop star, and they started dating.
00:40:53And they showed up together at the Met Gala and the tabloids absolutely lost it.
00:40:59Elon went from being like this Tony Stark, Iron Man type engineering superstar nerd to like a regular celebrity who
00:41:09picks fights with people, is in all the tabloids, shit talking as haters, generally like causing chaos online.
00:41:182018 was really when he started to become kind of a high volume, you know, poster.
00:41:24He was getting involved in things that were sort of less obviously things that made sense for him to get
00:41:30involved with.
00:41:30Because he's online, because he's, you know, really using that platform to kind of keep attention on him and to
00:41:36build up his own celebrity, it was a natural thing.
00:41:39Elon's presence was felt quite largely, especially through social media.
00:41:44He goes to Twitter to make announcements and that's just for everybody.
00:41:47It's for the people at the company, it's for people outside the company.
00:41:51When Elon tweeted, it became news.
00:41:56Rescue divers in Thailand are searching for a group of children believed to have been trapped in a flooded cave
00:42:01network in Northern Thailand.
00:42:0312 young football players and their coach.
00:42:06In the summer of 2018, this boys soccer team in Thailand went hiking in a cave.
00:42:13The cave got flooded and they got stuck.
00:42:15And it became this international media frenzy.
00:42:19It was all anyone was talking about.
00:42:21How are these boys going to get saved?
00:42:23Elon Musk is always sort of looking for opportunities to market himself.
00:42:28And he proposed that his SpaceX team would be able to develop some kind of submarine that would allow the
00:42:35rescuers to bring these kids out of the cave.
00:42:37After Elon tweets about the submarine, this rescue diver rebuffs Elon's idea.
00:42:43Elon Musk was deeply wounded by this and essentially called him a pedophile on Twitter.
00:42:49Shares of the electric car company Tesla fell sharply Monday after the company's CEO, Elon Musk, accused an organizer of
00:42:56the Thai cave rescue of being a pedophile.
00:42:58And wrote, sorry, pedo guy, you really did ask for it.
00:43:02One thing that people don't quite understand about the history of the Internet is how different communities have formed around
00:43:12this idea that there's a pedophile lurking around every corner online.
00:43:18So when Musk decided to accuse the man of being a pedophile, many people were shocked and horrified.
00:43:31But that kind of insult is so common on the Internet.
00:43:36For some folks at the company, it probably swayed their opinion.
00:43:40For a few days, I think folks were probably, you know, kind of questioned, like, what's going on with this?
00:43:45He's kind of like, maybe he's losing it a little bit.
00:43:47Particularly with the pedo guy incident, there was an initial reaction of just, like, shock.
00:43:53For me, the shock really came, like, within 24 hours when all of a sudden the fans got over their
00:43:59shock and were sort of like, this is actually not so bad.
00:44:03And it kind of made me realize that, like, wow, these people will forgive anything.
00:44:09I saw Elon trying to be the hero.
00:44:12I saw him doing what he could with the resources that he had to save lives.
00:44:18It was something that didn't need his attention, but that was an important issue.
00:44:24Elon cares for all of humanity and he definitely showed it.
00:44:27I think the reason why he has so much support is that he is very visibly imperfect.
00:44:33I think there's a lot of people that appreciate that.
00:44:35They see somebody who is not polished, but they view him as very capable of big successes.
00:44:44Unfortunately, that is going to be part of what comes with following Elon Musk, is he's going to say some
00:44:49stuff like that that is just potentially going to rub you the wrong way.
00:44:52But I think when you step back and realize this is probably the greatest inventor of our time, if not
00:44:58ever, you kind of weigh the pros and cons.
00:45:01As a sociologist, we're inundated with thinking about cults.
00:45:05Sociology 101 is like, what is the basis of social solidarity?
00:45:09The basis of social solidarity is some belief in something bigger than oneself.
00:45:14Are people that are invested in Tesla that fanatical that they are expressing cult-like behavior?
00:45:22Probably.
00:45:24Probably.
00:45:24But when we think about this, there is a kind of religiosity in innovation itself.
00:45:33A belief in something to come, some kind of redemption story, a future with limitless possibility that enhances our lives.
00:45:49The summer of 2018 in particular was a really, I think, a really chaotic time for Elon Musk.
00:45:55Elon tweets, quote, funding secured, that he was going to take Tesla private at $420 a share.
00:46:02Who was providing the financing?
00:46:04He's going to get some flack for that.
00:46:06Billions of dollars have been made and lost, set in motion by this tweet.
00:46:10And then around that time, he also went on Joe Rogan's massive podcast and smokes weed on the show.
00:46:17You probably can't because of stockholders, right?
00:46:21I mean, it's legal, right?
00:46:22Totally legal.
00:46:23Okay.
00:46:24There's tobacco and marijuana in there.
00:46:26That's all it is.
00:46:28The public reaction to all of this is like, what is Elon doing?
00:46:33I think Elon was really kind of pushed against a wall.
00:46:36He was trying to ramp Model 3 production.
00:46:38People said it was impossible.
00:46:39And he was literally doing the impossible and trying to get this car out.
00:46:43And I think that that was weighing on him.
00:46:46Elon's behavior in 2018 was, I think, a little bit concerning if you were a shareholder.
00:46:51I don't really care what he tweets.
00:46:52I just care how he runs his company.
00:46:54But to be fair, at the time, I put out a video that said, dear Elon, like, you need to
00:46:58get your shit together.
00:46:59Elon Musk, in my opinion, you have become Tesla's biggest existential threat.
00:47:04But the short sellers cannot stop you from building cars, from succeeding with Tesla, from building amazing products, from changing
00:47:10the world.
00:47:10But they can remove you as CEO if you keep tweeting.
00:47:13And I just think you're one tweet away from really ruining Tesla.
00:47:18We were all trying to really fight the traditional media because traditional media was just putting out whatever clickbait that
00:47:26they could throw out there.
00:47:27It was kind of like us against the world.
00:47:31During those days where he had probably very late nights, very dark moments, we were there supporting him and backing
00:47:38him up.
00:47:40Unfortunately, there's certain heights of fandom that can get really out of hand really fast.
00:47:46Yes, there's an aspect of the fandom that was all about the stock, but then a lot of it is
00:47:51just kind of celebrity fantasies.
00:47:53They want to be the most, like, Elon fanatic.
00:47:56But then that becomes who they are.
00:47:58It becomes their identity.
00:47:59The people that have those interactions are going to become people that are part of the problem.
00:48:05A common criticism that one hears if, like me, you write critically about Tesla is that you are spreading what's
00:48:13called FUD, fear, uncertainty, and doubt.
00:48:17To me, fear, uncertainty, and doubt are important elements of being a good investor.
00:48:22When somebody is spreading the FUD, they would often reference the community as a cult, which is nothing more than
00:48:31trying to lower our standard of confidence within the community.
00:48:37But ultimately, it's a cult of kindness in a sense.
00:48:41It's a cult of sustainable energy.
00:48:43It doesn't have a negative connotation.
00:48:46The community really mobilized in a grassroots way to say, I'm going to make YouTube videos.
00:48:50You're going to make tweets.
00:48:51I'm going to make this kind of YouTube video.
00:48:52I'm going to do this sort of event.
00:48:54And we just rallied around trying to spread the good word about Tesla in a grassroots way.
00:48:59I actually had a neighbor who actually was showing a video of the car autopilot taking it into a wall.
00:49:04But I was like, I know that exit.
00:49:06It's Saratoga Avenue.
00:49:07So I went there and I reenacted and I was like, there is no way that autopilot is going to
00:49:11take you into a wall.
00:49:13Perfect.
00:49:14See, it was seamless.
00:49:16It was fear, uncertainty, doubt everywhere.
00:49:20And what we did back in those days was fight hard.
00:49:24We disproved, like, all of the myths.
00:49:28And we would go and kind of sacrifice our own time, our own mental sanity, just to tell somebody on
00:49:36the internet that they're wrong.
00:49:38At this time, Elon becomes maybe the most accessible businessman on the internet.
00:49:43And it's sort of this, like, self-feeding ecosystem where Elon is talking to people on Twitter all the time
00:49:51and people on Twitter are talking about Elon all the time.
00:49:54And he becomes just this huge topic of conversation.
00:49:58All the people that did believe in them and said, we're going to keep giving you capital.
00:50:01I'm going to buy public shares in the market to keep the equity price up so you can keep doing
00:50:04secondary offerings so we can keep this going.
00:50:06Because we believe in you, Elon.
00:50:07We shouldn't allow them to go bankrupt.
00:50:09And I'm buying shares hand over fist and investing in this company.
00:50:12You have all these people out there just saying all these negative things.
00:50:15Tesla's going to get crushed.
00:50:16He hasn't got a network.
00:50:17He can't service the cars.
00:50:19Tesla shares fell 12% overnight.
00:50:21But then you have a sub-segment of the population now utilizing social media with, you know, Twitter in this
00:50:27case, spreading positivity.
00:50:29For somebody that's working there, it's gigantic.
00:50:31The internet is designed so that ideas from the fringes or from the bottom up or these decentralized nodes can
00:50:41have an effect on the greater conversation.
00:50:45Especially social media.
00:50:47When a large group of people are creating their own memes and are part of some campaign that is bigger
00:50:55than themselves,
00:50:56it can have these lasting influences on all of the other networks that they're plugged into and sharing with.
00:51:05Elon, these companies, and his Twitter fan base have evolved together.
00:51:10Where you really see the impact is when he's having a hard time.
00:51:15And you see these fans rally around him and telling him how important his mission is.
00:51:22The negative is that some of those fans attack people who disagree.
00:51:28So it's kind of this double-edged sword.
00:51:30There came a point when certain Tesla fans started to believe that if you didn't think they should get credit
00:51:35for everything and could do no wrong, you're a hater.
00:51:38The quickest way to get nasty notes in your inbox is to say anything about Tesla that was short of
00:51:43100% glowing.
00:51:46In July 2018, I had just returned to work.
00:51:49One day, one of my colleagues came into my office and said,
00:51:52Hey, our boss just got a phone call from Elon Musk.
00:51:57And Elon Musk says that you are saying terrible things about Tesla.
00:52:01He's going to stop you.
00:52:02He's going to sue you.
00:52:03And unfortunately, that means that our boss is going to be sued too.
00:52:06So I told my colleague,
00:52:08Okay, I don't want our boss dragged into a lawsuit.
00:52:12I will stop writing about Tesla.
00:52:14And a Montana skeptic will exit stage right from Twitter.
00:52:18What kind of human being, you know, at that point, one of the richest people in the world wants to
00:52:23not only shut down somebody that's writing critically about him, but to do it in a vindictive way to cost
00:52:29them their livelihood.
00:52:31Among the Tesla fans and Tesla as a company, there are a lot of ways in which they feel the
00:52:37means justifies the ends.
00:52:40Elon's saving the world.
00:52:41Tesla's saving the world.
00:52:42Therefore, whatever happens, whether it's treating your employees badly or calling someone a pedophile online, it's all fine.
00:52:49It's all excusable.
00:52:51This tumult of 2018, it was sort of a stress test for his fandom.
00:52:56And his fandom, by and large, stuck with him.
00:52:59Once you're on the other side of that, and that was the reality, all of a sudden, Musk looks more
00:53:04powerful than ever.
00:53:05Because what could possibly stop him now?
00:53:07At the end of 2018, Tesla announces that has finally turned a profit.
00:53:13It started to ship the Model 3.
00:53:17It's finally out.
00:53:18And the narrative around Tesla changes.
00:53:21And the narrative around Elon changes.
00:53:24Is the magic of Elon Musk back?
00:53:26Tesla.
00:53:27It reported a surprise profit.
00:53:29Maybe he's a little crazy, but Tesla's finally making money.
00:53:34The dream is really happening.
00:53:35One of the most important lessons from Tesla is that however you do it, if you are able to build
00:53:41a cult, it can be an incredibly powerful tool.
00:53:45If you can rally more people and you can create enough financial and other kinds of incentives to get more
00:53:52people on your side, you can really kind of drown anything out.
00:54:00Growing global concerns over the coronavirus, health officials sounding the alarm about how fast it is spreading.
00:54:07There is some fear creeping into the markets now.
00:54:10The Dow closed down by more than 3% again.
00:54:15When the pandemic hit, there was sort of this initial very brief bear market where sort of everything went down.
00:54:20But then very quickly after that, we sort of entered this very weird period where sort of everyone's at home,
00:54:26everyone's in lockdown, and everyone is trading stocks online.
00:54:31What's with GameStop?
00:54:33AMC's stocks wild ride.
00:54:35What are people doing buying the stock?
00:54:37What's infinity stock when it goes up that much?
00:54:41It's infinity money.
00:54:42If it weren't for COVID to put people in front of screens, it might not have ever happened this way.
00:54:47All of a sudden, we get this roaring bull market, and Tesla is like the poster boy.
00:54:51Stock market for Tesla is skyrocketing.
00:54:54Tesla will be added to the S&P 500.
00:54:57Electric car maker shares have already surged over 500% in the past year.
00:55:01It makes me sad that so many people shorted Tesla and that they tried to tear down the company.
00:55:06But in some ways, damn, it made the victory sweeter.
00:55:09This is the time where the whole concept of a meme stock sort of comes into being.
00:55:14You're going to be so happy you stayed with Bob Sugar because I am the fucking Terminator.
00:55:18A meme stock is a kind of stock that a group of people get behind not because they think they're
00:55:23going to make money,
00:55:24but because they think that there is some kind of social or political message they can send by purchasing it.
00:55:31I bought it 40 bucks.
00:55:32GameStop to the moon.
00:55:36The way that Elon seems to have fun is through these moments that expose the corruption or the fissures in
00:55:46some of our most important institutions.
00:55:50So as the phenomenon started to gain steam, Elon Musk encouraged people to go with this and use GameStop in
00:55:59order to expose a bunch of these short sellers and have this really big impact on the economy.
00:56:07Social media became a tremendous and effective vehicle for retail investors who did not know each other to coalesce and
00:56:14take joint action so they could jointly run up the price of a stock without knowing anything about the company.
00:56:20And none of them had the first inkling about the fundamentals of these companies.
00:56:27So when Tesla started to really succeed and I was like, OK, I'm up triple, I'm up quadruple, I'm up
00:56:32quintuple.
00:56:33It was really exciting and felt good and sort of changed my financial situation for my own life.
00:56:38My big thing is like Tesla's fucking succeeding.
00:56:41I drive down the road and I see Tesla's everywhere and every single one gives me a smile.
00:56:45That's the part to me that I'm like, fuck, yeah, we won and like really makes me happy.
00:56:50Tesla and its surging stock price have made Elon Musk the new richest person in the world.
00:56:55He's worth more than a hundred and eighty five billion dollars.
00:56:58In 2018, 2019, through those really dark days, we had no idea I was going to go 10x, 15x.
00:57:05Like that, that's just a joke.
00:57:07To be able to watch the stock literally almost go 10x was kind of a pat on the back.
00:57:11But really, we already knew that.
00:57:13That's why we were all doing this.
00:57:14When the stock price exploded in 2020, for me it was like, well, I knew this was going to happen.
00:57:20It was a very proud time for the community to be recognized globally.
00:57:25And so you started to see like young people retire on their Tesla stock and like tweet about it.
00:57:31The fact that there's a term like Teslaners says lots about how the growth of their stock changed the lives
00:57:39of certain people that would never have seen that kind of wealth.
00:57:42It really felt like we won.
00:57:44And now it was just a matter of seeing how far we could take this thing.
00:57:47So how much money did you make?
00:57:49I'm not going to tell you.
00:57:51A decent amount. Yeah. But I'm not going to tell you. Yeah.
00:57:53I went from living the corporate rat race and like pretty much just being broke to like being a mogul,
00:57:59seven figure net worth.
00:58:00Like, who knows what's next? I'm going to start a crazy company. My career is a rocket ship.
00:58:06When I decided to work at Tesla, I took a pay cut. My hours basically doubled. It was a huge
00:58:12risk that I took at that time. And it felt like the risk paid off.
00:58:17Welcome, everybody. The last few days have been extremely eventful in the Tesla world, as I'm sure you know.
00:58:22Being invested in that company allowed me to purchase my first house. It allowed me to purchase our investment properties.
00:58:28It's allowed us to build sort of a framework where my wife and I can do sort of whatever we
00:58:34want.
00:58:34I feel like I'm the luckiest person in the world because who am I that got a chance to have
00:58:40this sort of freedom because of this investment in the most like weird company that's ever existed.
00:58:48My only regret was like, well, I should have bought more, right? But it is okay. It is what it
00:58:54is.
00:58:55There's been a huge influx in people that are only interested in the company for the money, for the potential
00:59:00gains, for the day trading.
00:59:03That to me, that's not why I'm there.
00:59:06Tesla has matured into a real car company. It's selling way more cars than ever. It's still profitable.
00:59:14But Tesla's high stock price is more tied to the futuristic dream of Tesla, where it's not just a car
00:59:20company.
00:59:21It's a self-driving car company. It sells solar energy, battery storage, and it really redefines the energy paradigm in
00:59:30the entire world.
00:59:31By 2020, I was no longer expecting Tesla's stock to be based on anything related to actual EVs or sales
00:59:38or any other business fundamentals.
00:59:40So I was pretty properly indoctrinated to how wild that ride had become by then.
00:59:46Tesla is just the ultimate meme stock. But it's nonsense. It's an automobile manufacturer. It's in an industry that is
00:59:54capital intensive, that is low margin, that is highly competitive. And all those things will remain true about it.
01:00:02So how much money did you lose?
01:00:04I haven't toted it up exactly. I would guess it's somewhere between $200,000 and $300,000.
01:00:12The people propping up Tesla, they fall into two camps, the very cynical and the very deluded.
01:00:17I say they're deluded. I say this is not a new paradigm. Time will tell.
01:00:26Elon Musk has been obsessed with Twitter for a decade. He used Twitter to build this huge following of superfans
01:00:35who do his bidding. And now he owns the whole thing.
01:00:41It's a Twitter bloodbath. Nearly 4,000 fired in one fell swoop.
01:00:46Many Twitter staff woke up locked out of their work laptops.
01:00:49Finding out by email that they no longer have a job.
01:00:53Twitter is where he creates his perceptions. It's his most powerful tool in his most important work.
01:01:00And so it makes sense that he wants to sort of vertically integrate his operations into that.
01:01:04When I first heard Elon wanted to buy Twitter, I was surprised.
01:01:07But the more I thought about it, it made me extremely excited as a Twitter user because Elon Musk is
01:01:12like the biggest Twitter user.
01:01:13He knows firsthand the problem with the platform.
01:01:16We've been trained to think that people with a lot of money have intentions that are not necessarily for the
01:01:21people.
01:01:22They're trying to achieve something for themselves.
01:01:24From the perspective of an Elon Musk, I believe that he has a track record that shows that he is
01:01:31doing things because he feels like they're right for people and for humanity.
01:01:35He wants to ensure there's free speech, a platform where people can share ideas freely.
01:01:39Immediately after Musk took over, hate-filled tweets increased substantially.
01:01:44Elon Musk is the very opposite of a First Amendment or free speech hero.
01:01:50He professes to believe in it in the abstract.
01:01:54But when he is criticized, his opponents must be shouted down, shut down, and punished.
01:02:01What's so abnormal about this stack versus every other large-scale system on the planet, buddy?
01:02:09Come on.
01:02:09Great.
01:02:10So first off.
01:02:11Amazing.
01:02:12Wow.
01:02:12You're a jackass.
01:02:15So there's this old saying, politics is downstream from culture.
01:02:19And to that I would add that culture is downstream from infrastructure.
01:02:25The way that we are able to communicate with each other is very important for the kinds of issues that
01:02:32we take up as a public and decide to solve.
01:02:35I think he originally wanted to buy Twitter because of the social and political impact that he could have if
01:02:41he owned this platform.
01:02:43If he owned it, he could shape culture wars to come.
01:02:47He could shape public conversation.
01:02:49And he could have an influence on political agendas.
01:02:54And so Elon is at a distinct advantage being at the helm of that rather than being on the sidelines
01:03:03and watching someone else have that kind of power.
01:03:06Elon Musk has signed up for his biggest challenge yet and that's because Twitter is this marketplace of ideas and
01:03:14it's this place that makes almost all of its money through advertising.
01:03:20Advertisers don't want to put their products up for sale next to Nazis and hate speech.
01:03:26I think what it shows really is that he has become so isolated and so wealthy and just so convinced
01:03:34of his own ability to turn anything into a success that he was incredibly sort of thoughtless and impulsive about
01:03:41how he went about this thing.
01:03:42And it's fascinating now because he's stuck and as a result people are starting to realize he's not actually a
01:03:50genius.
01:03:50He's not actually right about everything.
01:03:53And I think that that's one of the reasons why perception is really starting to shift around the guy.
01:04:02Oh, it's going to fly away like a snail.
01:04:04Not.
01:04:05Yeah.
01:04:08Woo!
01:04:10Cheers to Gali.
01:04:13Cheers to you guys.
01:04:14Thank you guys for coming.
01:04:16All right.
01:04:17What up, everybody?
01:04:18Welcome to Why Tesla Matters.
01:04:20Thank you all for coming through today and tuning in on YouTube.
01:04:24The real good thing about the Tesla is that it's expanding.
01:04:26I think it's one of the fastest growing cults, you could call it, or people believe something in the world.
01:04:31And it's all these people who are just on board with the why.
01:04:34Like, we need to go sustainable.
01:04:36We need to electrify the world.
01:04:37Tesla's just a piece of that.
01:04:38So I hope it inspires more of these movements.
01:04:45I think that entire community should feel validated because they have scraped and pulled and nudged and prodded and brought
01:04:53this into being in a way that would not necessarily
01:04:56have happened otherwise.
01:05:01When you have something that's grand, it's going to attract all kinds of people.
01:05:04And when it's really being driven by somebody who appears to be passionate and behind a very, very large mission,
01:05:11a sub-segment of those people will act in ways that could incite people to think of that company or
01:05:18mission as a cult.
01:05:19First, I want to say, I love you.
01:05:24Love you too.
01:05:25You're awesome.
01:05:27I think it misses a lot of nuance.
01:05:29What gets lost is the fact that it's a very strange, unique, weird company that operates like no other company
01:05:38in a time that's like no other time in the world.
01:05:43When you believe in nothing, you'll believe in anything.
01:05:46Elon Musk is an illustration of that.
01:05:48He is a secular religion for a lot of people because so many currents converge with him.
01:05:55The idea that we need to save the earth.
01:05:58He is turning his back on Wall Street's stolid boringness.
01:06:03I suppose we need something to believe in.
01:06:06But when it causes you to suspend critical thinking, when it causes you to embrace dangerous fantasies, it's not a
01:06:14good thing.
01:06:14I think when you look at Elon's fan base and Elon's success, there is this bit of caution that's important.
01:06:23Because when you're surrounded by people who agree with you, want to impress you, fear you, sometimes you get too
01:06:32far removed from the truth as it needs to be told.
01:06:36I think the examples of Tesla and of SpaceX has served a really aspirational role.
01:06:43Some of the polarization that we're seeing generally in our society is led by not just Elon, but people like
01:06:51that, that sort of go out there and behave in a way that also make people look at it and
01:06:54go, oh, that's the way to succeed.
01:06:56I got to do more of that.
01:06:56I would like to think it's possible to have Tesla style success without some of the Elon style tactics.
01:07:04It doesn't say much for all of us if that's the only way to succeed.
01:07:27Have a great day.
01:07:31Have a great day.