Why Tesla Wasn’t Just a Tech Toy—And What Social Impact Brands Get Wrong #tesla #entrepreneurship

Most of the people that I knew told me it was a big career mistake to work at Tesla, that electric cars were not going to be ever someone's main vehicle. It's just like a tech toy. It's an iPad with wheels on it. It's for tech forward suburban dentists who want to show off to their friends. They have this cool novelty toy. But I was just excited to be part of it. One, because I was early in career. It was a cool company. I liked the product. It was interesting. I liked the environmental impact. And one of the big learnings that I had from that experience was that if you're going to do a business with a social impact, the product has to be able to stand on its own. You [clears throat] remember Tom's shoes, those like loafers? Nobody bought those because they gave away a free pair. People bought them because they liked the shoes and it was an extra benefit that they gave away an extra pair. There were electric vehicles that existed before Tesla, like the Nissan Leaf for example, but they were really profoundly uncool and they were not better cars. — Profoundly for anybody who's never seen a Nissan Leaf, they are not uh they are about the polar opposite of a Model S design-wise. Yuck.