Late this week, Twitter CEO Elon Musk slammed four-time failed leftist presidential candidate Ralph Nader on the platform over claims made by Nader about some of Musk’s businesses.
“Musk (@elonmusk) started Tesla with a huge U.S. government welfare grant,” Nader tweeted. “He has taken taxpayers to the cleaners for his factories and for Starlink. He is a gigantic corporate welfare king masquerading as a capitalist businessman. -R”
Musk fired back, “Ralph Nader, you are lying – shame on you! I personally provided almost all Tesla funding, based on my proceeds from PayPal, from Series A in 2004 until Series C in 2007.”
“In late 2008, I gave Tesla the last money I had. It was that or the company would have died,” Musk continued. “We closed that funding round at 6 pm on Christmas Eve. If we had not closed that round, Tesla would have gone bankrupt 2 days after Christmas.”
“I gave my last money thinking Tesla would probably still die, not thinking that it would be lucrative,” he added. “The first meaningful government funding Tesla received was in Q2 2010 from a loan under the vehicle efficiency lending program. Tesla paid back that loan early with interest. Taxpayers actually made a profit.”
Ralph Nader, you are lying – shame on you! I personally provided almost all Tesla funding, based on my proceeds from PayPal, from Series A in 2004 until Series C in 2007.
In late 2008, I gave Tesla the last money I had. It was that or the company would have died. We closed that…
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 24, 2023
Tesla was not founded by Musk; rather, it was founded in 2003 by entrepreneurs Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.
Musk is the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, as well as the founder of a number of side projects, including Neuralink and The Boring Company.
“You know, my workload has recently increased quite a lot,” Musk said after purchasing Twitter. “I mean, I have too much work on my plate, that is for sure. No doubt about it.”
When asked about business leaders aspiring to be the “Elon Musk of the East,” the world’s richest man stated that his lifestyle is not always desirable. “I’d be cautious about what you wish for. “I’m not sure how many people would want to be me,” he admitted. “They want to be what they imagine myself to be, which is not the same as actually being me. To be honest, the amount of torture I subject myself to is out of this world.”
Musk stated four years ago in an interview with Recode that he has worked 120 hours per week, but that working 80 hours per week is “pretty sustainable.” The average chief executive works 62.5 hours per week, according to a Harvard Business Review study.
“There were times when, some weeks … I haven’t counted exactly, but I would just sort of sleep for a few hours, work, sleep for a few hours, work, seven days a week. Some of those days must have been 120 hours or something nutty,” he explained. “The pain level for hours increases exponentially. It’s like nonlinear above 80.”
