“You have to be kidding me.” Those were the words uttered with obvious incredulity to Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, the original founders of Tesla Motors. They were at a bar in Woodside and they were discussing their hope of changing the very definition of the automobile.
As one might expect, the reaction of venture capitalists to their idea was similar to that of their friend in the bar. Funding would be tough. Thank goodness Elon Musk had long envisioned an electric vehicle future. In securing a meeting with Musk, Eberhard and Tarpenning soon had their largest shareholder and chairman.
Readers know the rest. While Tesla experienced some lean early years such that Musk nearly lost everything, eventually the proverbial ship was righted. By 2012 the Tesla Model S was Motor Trend’s unanimous choice for car of the year. This same car received the highest safety ratings in history. It was both faster and handled better than the competition, plus the cars were beautiful. In the words of Musk biographer Ashlee Vance, the remarkable Model S “slapped Detroit sober”.
“A bunch of engineers with no background in automobiles succeeded when it comes to – yes – changing the very definition of the automobile”
Nowadays, seemingly all carmakers around the world have electric vehicle lines or plan to. A bunch of engineers with no background in automobiles succeeded when it comes to – yes – changing the very definition of the automobile. While the automotive powers-that-be were focused on one another, they missed where the truly disruptive competition was coming from. And miss it they did. Figure that if they’d taken Musk and Tesla at all seriously, they would have either put it out of business, bought it or realistically done both.
Tesla and other disruptors much like it came to mind a great deal while watching Frontline’s rather slanted Amazon Empire: The Rise and Reign of Jeff Bezos. Business history suggests that much as established automakers took their eye off the ball somewhat in focusing on traditional competitors, so are Amazon’s critics, including the producers at Frontline, missing the point in fearing Amazon’s dominance in online retail.
Paraphrasing a self-serious Frontline interviewee close to the documentary’s opening, “Are we OK with one company winning capitalism?” The question says so little, which means it says so much. Implicit in the question’s smug sarcasm is that Amazon and the internet represent the frontier of commerce, and since Amazon is the face of what its slow-witted critics think is the frontier, it’s in a sense no surprise that they’re fearful of the Seattle giant’s alleged ‘market power’.
Of course, that’s why documentarians are best at documenting rather than analysing. That is so because as history makes plain, Amazon’s ‘reign’ is by its very descriptor, ephemeral. The company’s critics can’t see this truth for the same reason that they didn’t imagine a company like Amazon before there was Amazon, nor did they load up on Amazon shares once they had the opportunity to. To be clear about the previous sentence, it shouldn’t be construed as only an insult.
Extraordinarily rare is the person who can see an entirely different future from the present. Which is why it’s so difficult to imagine Amazon’s reign at the top ending. The internet is presently life and Amazon is expert at meeting our needs through the internet. Of course, entrepreneurs are just that because, unlike the other 99.99999% constrained by the known, entrepreneurs see a different future that we can’t imagine. Which explains why so few of us buy and hold on to shares of genius companies from the earliest of days. We don’t because during the earliest of days, what’s actually brilliant looks anything but.
