Elon Musk had many doubters when he founded
Tesla Motors IncTSLA but maybe none were as critical as he was himself.
Musk said during Tesla's annual shareholder's meeting on Tuesday that he thought the company had just a 10 percent chance of succeeding and he had "no idea what we are doing."
According to
Fortune, Musk acknowledged that he was "completely clueless" and wanted to personally fund 99 percent of the Series A funding because he didn't want his friends and investors to lose money. He also added that many mistakes were made because the idea or theory behind it was "foolish or stupid" in the first place.
Afterall, the creation of Tesla was based on a principle that "turned out to be staggeringly dumb." In addition, one of the first people to receive a test drive in a Tesla Roadster was Google's co-founders Larry Page and Sergei Brin. The problem was the working model was barely working and couldn't drive above 10 miles per hour.
"I was like I swear guys it goes way faster than this," Musk said at the time. The Google founders "were kind enough to put a little money in the company despite the world's worst demo."
Tesla has certainly come a long way from his initial start and wowed consumers along the way. So what is the point of reminiscing on the early day struggles? Fortune suggested that Musk wanted to "air some of Tesla's missteps" so that entrepreneurs understand "they can make mistakes and start companies in areas in which they don't have a history."Loading...
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TSLATesla Inc
$343.680.77%
Edge Rankings
Momentum
92.93
Growth
91.95
Quality
86.30
Value
8.76
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