https://www.wsj.com/articles/elon-musks-uncontested-3-pointers-1519595032
I have a suspicion that Stephen Curry and Elon Musk are the same person. First, as was said of Michael Jackson and Diana Ross, you never see them in the same room together. More important, they both dislike crowded spaces.
Mr. Curry, a two-time NBA most valuable player with the Golden State Warriors, has mastered the art and science of shooting 3-pointers. But a closer look at his stats reveals that he really likes to shoot uncontested 3s. Who wouldn’t? Making uncontested baskets is a lot easier.
Mr. Curry often takes shots from several feet behind the 3-point line. Defenders, figuring no one would be stupid enough to shoot from that far away, leave him open. And he makes baskets with surprising accuracy. At one point in 2016, he made 35 out of 52 shots from between 28 and 50 feet. Uncontested indeed.
Elon Musk’s business strategy isn’t so different: Go far enough into the future that there are no other competitors. Mr. Musk’s first success was X.com, an email payment company. It merged with Peter Thiel’s Confinity to form PayPal —and avoid competition. They had the market to themselves for a long time because fraud, especially from Eastern Europe, was so rampant on early internet payment platforms. They solved the fraud problem and enjoyed an uncontested market, eventually selling for $1.5 billion to eBay.
Then Mr. Musk headed further into the future. He took the nine-figure payout from PayPal and pushed ahead with SpaceX, Tesla and Solar City. Literally his last $20 million went to Tesla in 2008. “I was tapped out. I had to borrow money for rent after that,” he later recalled. Private space launches, electric cars and rooftop-solar financing were all huge Muskian pushes into the future, where no one else dared play. Today, Tesla is worth around $60 billion. SpaceX raised money last summer at a $21 billion valuation. Mr. Musk is no longer borrowing to pay his rent.
Quite impressive, even though I find all the handouts offensive. When I see someone driving a Tesla I greet him with, “You’re welcome.” When he inevitably asks for what, I roll out the long list of subsidies: a $465 million Energy Department loan in 2009, a $7,500-a-car income-tax credit from the feds, $1.3 billion in incentives from Nevada for a factory, and more. Removing competition by racing to the future is one thing. Seeking special treatment to boost your advantage is cheating.
Mr. Musk still pushes the boundaries.
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