Tesla Founder Debate
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A story about the controversy between Elon Musk and Tesla's original founders regarding who should get credit for founding the company.
"Tesla started about a year before Elon invested in it. Now he's seen as the CEO and founder, but you don't really hear about these other two guys who started it. There's a group of people that are anti-Elon, and they'll say things like 'Elon didn't create Tesla, he just invested in it and takes all the credit.'
Recently in an interview, Elon was asked about his biggest business regret. He said his worst business decision was not starting Tesla on his own with JB instead of buying the existing company. This was because now one of the original guys owns shares of what's now a trillion-dollar company, and that guy has made it his crusade to say 'F Elon Musk, I'm the founder of Tesla.'
Elon has responded saying Tesla was nothing when he invested - it was just a shell of a company, pre-launch, pre-everything. He invested $6.5 million in the first round, knowing he'd have to invest more after that. He took a chairman role, had SpaceX's logo designer create Tesla's branding. He's described it as basically a dormant company at the time."
Shaan Puri
Host of MFM
Shaan Puri is the Chairman and Co-Founder of The Milk Road. He previously worked at Twitch as a Senior Director of Product, Mobile Gaming, and Emerging Markets. He also attended Duke University.