Tesla owner Elon Musk could be compared to William “Billy” Crapo Durant, the cofounder of General Motors, Chevrolet and Durant Motors who went bankrupt during the Great Depression and died penniless, wrote Peter Coy for The New York Times. Though it’s unlikely that Musk will die with an empty bank account, Coy sees both as “brilliant, restless builders of empires and defiers of convention who experienced the highest highs and the lowest lows of business.”
Coy spoke with tech entrepreneur Steve Blank, the author of 2018 Harvard Business Review article about the future of Tesla, who said that Musk may fall prey to the same issues that have plagued other company executives, namely, “When you’ve been right in the beginning, you think you’re right forever.” This leads to surrounding yourself with people who think you’re a genius and running a company by “whim rather than strategy,” Blank said.
Tesla last week announced a layoff of 10% of its staff due to a decline in first-quarter sales, and just days later, asked shareholders to again approve a 2018 pay package for Musk that a Delaware judge ruled illegally excessive in January.
“Musk is such a creative genius that Tesla’s board has indulged his idiosyncratic explorations,” Coy wrote. “That may be the right call, given that the company might be lost without him. But Tesla’s board, like G.M.’s, needs to keep in mind that it represents the shareholders—all of them.”
