>Only time will tell if their battery R&D bets will pay
My comment was not about an omniscient oracle predicting the future of winners and losers. Yes, Tesla may ultimately fail. We don't know yet.
The article is bad quality because it misrepresents the statements by the VCs he's responding to. The three VCs Bill Gurley (Benchmark), Marc Andreessen (AH), Fred Wilson (Union Square Ventures) of all people would absolutely know that you have to spend money to make money. And yes, that would sometimes involve high burn rates.
The author sets up a straw man by implying those VCs are so financially inept that they only look at "burn rate" in a naked and isolated manner with zero context to what each company is doing with the money. Therefore, he's supposedly the lone voice of reason. He thinks he's doing us a favor by explaining to us that "high burn rate" can be good and we're now smarter than those VCs for being englightened with such knowledge. Really?! I think that's insulting the intelligence of HN readers.
Seriously, does anyone think that Marc Andreessen who lived through the zero-profit cash burning days of Netscape before & after the IPO has no clue about stupid-vs-smart high burn rates?
Tesla is burning a lot of cash, and they may fail. If so, they would have gone down in a blaze of glory by way of investing in their technology and betting wrong instead of spending stupid money on distractions such as Superbowl ads.
My comment was not about an omniscient oracle predicting the future of winners and losers. Yes, Tesla may ultimately fail. We don't know yet.
The article is bad quality because it misrepresents the statements by the VCs he's responding to. The three VCs Bill Gurley (Benchmark), Marc Andreessen (AH), Fred Wilson (Union Square Ventures) of all people would absolutely know that you have to spend money to make money. And yes, that would sometimes involve high burn rates.
The author sets up a straw man by implying those VCs are so financially inept that they only look at "burn rate" in a naked and isolated manner with zero context to what each company is doing with the money. Therefore, he's supposedly the lone voice of reason. He thinks he's doing us a favor by explaining to us that "high burn rate" can be good and we're now smarter than those VCs for being englightened with such knowledge. Really?! I think that's insulting the intelligence of HN readers.
Seriously, does anyone think that Marc Andreessen who lived through the zero-profit cash burning days of Netscape before & after the IPO has no clue about stupid-vs-smart high burn rates?
Tesla is burning a lot of cash, and they may fail. If so, they would have gone down in a blaze of glory by way of investing in their technology and betting wrong instead of spending stupid money on distractions such as Superbowl ads.