Elon has long said that the goal of SpaceX is to colonize Mars, and that he did not want to go public because shareholders would happily drop the idea of colonizing Mars in favor of a more profitable one.

Why would this be different with private share owners who don't work for the company? In the end, all investors want to make profit, no?

Generally you can then pick and choose who holds shares and ensure they are of like mind, or possibly even stipulate it as a condition.

SpaceX and a lot of space industry, kinda like IT, seems to capitalize on the like mindedness/idealization and enthusiasm of many that want to work in aerospace.

And I have heard the churn and burnout is real as a result.

I personally have avoided startups and other types of jobs that would require more....time investment and dedication. I know thats not how everone sees it, but for me, my job is a means to an end and that end is family and fun/recreation, not colonizing mars or being a part of the next great innovation, tech or otherwise. As a result its clear I'm not cut out for a place like Spacex or even Amazon (and thats assuming I am even quick enough to hold such a gig). I like my nights and weekends and work/like separation too much.

People who want to go into "passion" careers are easily exploited. They'll put up with more shit because of their idealism/passion and there's usually more of them than there are jobs, so when they burn out they can be easily replaced.

I have no first hand knowledge of this, but my understanding is video game development is a good example of this: the pay and working conditions are far worse than similar software engineering roles in other industries, because so many video game enthusiasts want to grow up to make games.

Game development, pilots, and non-profits. The majority of people who enter those industries are self-selected and are passionate enough about their jobs that they will put up with a lot of abuse.

Unless you are an executive on a nonprofit, then it is of paramount importance that you are paid handsomely because otherwise your irreplaceable leadership skills won't be retained.

Executives at non-profits tend to be pretty underpaid compared to similar executives at similarly sized for-profits. It just sounds outrageous because executive pay is just that high.

Is it exploitation when those people choice themselves where to go AND the same people know they had other options. Its not like SpaceX couldn't get job anywhere else.

Numerous high fives to you. Too few people willing to say that they aren’t interested in riding rockets and changing the world and instead just want to make money to support their families and enjoy life.

There are plenty of people like that; most of the world actually. You’re just hanging out on a site basically target at people that want to ride rockets.

It is not enough to "just" earn some positive return, since all that says is that the shares have a non-zero price.

The value of the shares is the capitalization of all the future profits. The estimation of all of that goes into the stock price -- if investors think the profit will be higher, the share price is bid up in expectations of those future profits, so that for the next investor, they will not get any more risk adjusted profit than if they bought any other stock. Similarly if the expectation of profits declines, then the shares are repriced lower as well so that the for the next investor they are indifferent between SpaceX and any other stock.

This means there is big money to be had by unlocking value -- e.g. buying up the shares, changing the focus of the company to something even more profitable, and then selling the shares at the higher level. This is essentially the price of going public.

Yes, on the one hand you can convert future profits into present cash and make the investors absorb all the risk. But on the other hand, you just sold your company to the market and so have to cede control. Shareholders can elect a new board, replace you, make changes to the corporate bylaws, etc. Shareholders now own the company.

Musk could have issued just a small number of shares and kept the rest himself, to maintain control, but still you are opening the door to a lot of public scrutiny, the need to have shareholder agreements and to not intentionally take steps that would mislead shareholders or violate the agreement, lest you face shareholder lawsuits. Bottom line, if you want to sell your future profits to the market, you can do that, but then you lose control. If keeping control is more important, then it's better to stay private.

Because you can choose who you sell shares to as a private company and even more, you can restrict those people from selling shares to others that you do not approve of.

The "private shares" don't have anywhere near the voting rights that people would typically expect from an IPO.

>Elon Musk’s trust holds 54% of the outstanding shares of SpaceX and has 78% voting control of the outstanding stock.

https://www.rankred.com/buy-spacex-stock-worth/

And the reality is: what does he have to gain by going public? He's found no shortage of private investment. I see a ton of negatives to being public and almost no downside.

> The "private shares" don't have anywhere near the voting rights that people would typically expect from an IPO.

I mean, no one can outvote Zuck in FB, or Page/Brin in Google, Setting up public shares with (effectively) no voting power (unless Brin and Page disagree) turns out to be trivial

How did short sellers actually impact the company's operation? Or was the damage entirely to his ego and his desire to reach milestones so he could vest.

Chanos, the lead short seller here, manufactured a crisis of confidence that made a crucial capital raise difficult. This proved fatal to SolarCity — and also impacted SpaceX, as holder of SolarCity bonds. In 2018, the same playbook from Chanos nearly cratered Tesla.

Here’s a timeline and analysis from a trader:

https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/elon-musk-vs-short-s...

... The concept of a car company purchasing a flailing solar company that happened to be owned by the same individual is probably worth of some eyebrow raising. So, I am not sure "manufactured" is the right term here, regardless of the motivation of the people involved.

(I have no vested interest here)

Agreed on that point. A failure mode we're all familiar with -- more dependency arrows, more problems!

But why did Vivint and Sunrun succeed when SolarCity failed? Sunrun apparently had a similar business model and economics. The linked analysis raises this question, although I don't know enough about the solar industry to say whether this is reasonable to ask, or fundamentally an apples-to-oranges comparison.

Elon had roughly the same % of both companies both separately and together, so it's not clear to me how its a big advantage financially for him.

From a strategy standpoint - a no brainer to purchase what is now energy - he knew all the people there, was already working there, had a big stake there, and they may play an important role in his green energy plan.

For everyone saying he should have bought some chinese solar co - he's focused ons speed, and getting up to speed on a new solar company - why?

Secondarily, how are those solarcity or tesla shareholders doing? How is tesla energy doing? You got to be able to take some risks as the boss, that's why he is there. And no question he takes risks.

Tesla is a battery company with a vertically integrated product line.

SolarCity is still alive and well as Tesla Energy.

Yeah, I haven’t pulled the trigger, but they’re by far the best $/watt I’ve seen.

Short sellers have a vested interest in seeing a company fail. So spreading FUD absolutely happens whether it is Tesla or any company being shorted.

It can definitely have an impact on the viability of a company

Has nothing to do with ego.

Short sellers make it harder to raise capital and force CEOs to show more short term progress.

Short sellers have an enormous incentive for the company they short to fail and they will do anything (legal or sometimes otherwise) in order to negatively affect stock price.

It turns out when a company has multiple entities with significant resources trying to make it fail, it sometimes negatively affects the shorted company.

There were people in Palo Alto and Fremont literally harassing employees trying to get them to confess that Elon is lying. Multiple Tesla test vehicles were run off the road. Tesla filed multiple restraining orders against people dedicated to unveiling the company's "fraud".

There was very much a human cost to all of the FUD the short sellers were spreading.

They don’t unless they fabricate news that drives their cost of capital up in a significant way (they were never successful in doing so). “Fighting” short-sellers is something generally only seen with CEOs committing serious fraud so the wall st careerists were all but certain Tesla was a fraud by behavioral pattern recognition that had been working for entire careers. They were wrong, of course, but Elon’s focus on “shorts” was a hugely massive waste of his attention and completely unnecessary. The way you “fight” shorts is by executing and ignoring them.

Short sellers can also lobby the government for policy changes and enforcement actions that harm the company they've shorted.

I understand that so-called "activist" shorts will send private investigators and paparazzi after CEOs, manufacture sexual harassment charges, and all kinds of really dirty stuff.