I despise Oracle as much as the next guy but if I were in Elon’s shoes I’d want Ellison on my board. The car business is tough, really tough. At one point the database business was really tough. Ellison achieved a near monopoly. Despite our views on the quality his software. Tech people were not his customers, CIO’s were. He gave them exactly what they wanted.
Ellison is shrewd, not stupid. Churning out shit cars would be stupid. Helping Elon cut waste and increase sales would be shrewd. Perhaps Ellison, if anything, could temper Elon’s boundless optimism and pet projects.
The retort here might be that people who have a track record of being "good at business" are good at all business. I personally don't buy that. I think too much executive decision-making is guesswork based on pattern-matching to prior experience for that to hold; if you have no prior experiences with a matching pattern, you're no more or less qualified than the next smart person making it up as they go.
Well now we’re just tossing back and forth our own biases and hypothesis. I understand your point. It makes sense. Not sure I agree.
The only thing I would add is, cars are big purchases for people. Oracle was a big purchase for CIO’s. Don’t forget for a second that Oracle was sold to a person. Talk to some Oracle sales people about this. I think you’ll find it similar to car sales in many ways.
are you buying a battery-backed electric power storage substation?
didn't think so..
tesla isn't just about cars
which isn't to say i like musk or ellison
Meanwhile, Ellison adds nothing I can see in terms of manufacturing and and little in terms of adult leadership.
I would argue that the ideal director in terms of complementary skills would be somebody like Tim Cook (even though Tim himself would probably be too likely to have conflicts of interest to serve).
> The Oracle chief executive told shareholders at the company's annual meeting Friday that the technology is a fad that doesn't have a clear business model, despite the fact that Google , Microsoft and practically every other tech company is singing its praises.
> "I think it's ludicrous that cloud computing is taking over the world," Ellison told about 100 shareholders who attended the meeting at the software maker's headquarters. "We think it's very hard to make money in this thing."
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FacYAI6DY0 [2] https://www.forbes.com/2008/10/10/ellison-cloud-computing-te...
One of the BIGGEST things we need to do is STOP punishing honest companies and politicians.
In the 2008 financial crisis we BAILED OUT banks who basically gambled.
Banks who were honest didn't benefit by being honest. They should have been able to buy up the entire industry at a penny.
The political system has the same issue now. Trump lies and the GOP continues to support him. Honest politicians lose because people want to be told what they already "know" not hard truths.
Their position on coal is a good example.
There was no "gambling." The system was rigged, and the bailout proved that the rigging went all the way to the top.
Every time I consider closing out my Tesla short position something like this happens and I get more confident that something is awry.