Eventually the growth will slow and it will be time to exit. Its a car company after all, margins are on the low side, and all car companies rely on government subsidizing to operate.
I don’t own Tesla, nor do I own a Tesla.
However, I drive a Toyota, a Honda and a Chevy. What I have realized is that these companies can build great cars. But that they are completly clueless about software.
Even the best software available, Apple Car Play, is poor in comparison to the slick look and feel of Amazon.
When the CEO of Nutanex talks about velocity and paranoia, he is exactly right.
An example.
I drive a company truck. The current is a Chevy 2500 work truck. It is a a nicely equipped truck with Apple Car play, cruise control and it has been up graded with Mobile Eye.
When I put gas in the truck, I have to scan my company fuel card, enter my id, the the odometer. For 20 years now, every worker with a company truck has had to get out, get the pump halfway started the put the key back into the ignition, turn the truck on and get the odometer to come back on. Ever since the mechanical odometer was replaced with an electronic one, this or some work around had been the lot of every person driving a company truck.
Finally after 20 years, Chevrolet said “hey, that is inconvenient, lets make it to where when they open the door, the odometer lights up!”
20
Freaking
Years!
I can give you other examples. The most glaring is the auto play feature of all of my bluetooth enabled cars. The operating result of this feature is such that everyone involved in the implementation should be crucified. Has there been an update?
No!
A Tesla on the other hand gets software iterations and over the air updates regularly.
This is the difference between Tesla and everyone else. The waterfall method verses the agile method*.
Tesla is not a car company! It is an agile company that applies the agile method to all aspects of the business.
In a way, I expect that this is what Amazon does and why they have done so well with the non-core AWS.
In fact, what we are seeing is not a new car company, as in Tesla, or a new retailer, as in Amazon, rather a new type of company, an agile programming company that applies Agile to every aspect of the business, not just the software.
We can see some of these same attributes in NTNX and in Pure Storage. The companies mutated from one type of business model into another.
This development makes investing even more difficult as value will tend to be more hidden than it even is today.
*10 minute video on running an agile project
Cheers
Qazulight