Lol. The lack of accountability is amazing.
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One thought on California (and Tesla): we often hear about the feedback loop that exists here. You have awesome universities feeding smart people who have access to VCs who tolerate failure but we often forget that there is a very special set of consumers here too.
They are willing to dabble with a circuit board kit or buy an early Tesla roadster because the conditions to do so here socially etc. are fundamentally different than other places.
Tesla could only have been started in California because this is the only place where anyone would have bought one in the early days. And thatâs true for a lot of other tech as well.
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Tesla could have only started here because only Bay Area people are crazy enough (or prescient enough depending on your love/hate relationship with California) to believe in it. I suspect people who bet big money on TSLA when it was down skewed heavily Californian.
Zuck can say all he wants to please the flyover states. Back in the days he tried to get Boston VCs to invest in his website but nobody did. If he didnât move his company to Palo Alto there wouldnât be Facebook.
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I remember climbing into one of the first roadsters at the Menlo Park showroom. It was so tiny I had to be pulled out. It was a joke. Basically a Lotus with a Tesla battery. Tesla has come a long way, but It has a long way to go. BTW since the Iowa Democrats canât pick a winner. Let me show you who won. Trump
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Which state has a more modern economy? Notice Texasâ dependence on fossil fuel extraction.
Find more statistics at Statista
Find more statistics at Statista
Couldnât agree more. It was a joke. The Apple I was a joke too. But people in the Bay Area bought them, gave feedback on them, went to work for them, and in many cases invested in them.
Tesla has been on a tear lately and it looks like CEO Elon Musk is trying to think of new ways to spend some money. Tonight he dropped a hint that, in addition to current gigafactory projects in China and Germany, Tesla is considering one in Texas.
@manch So sorry, Elon wants to build a new Giga in Texas.
On Monday he announced an AI hackathon amid a recruiting effort for Teslaâs autopilot team, stating that Tesla is also looking for âworld-classâ chip designers to join Teslaâs team in Palo Alto or Austin. Austin, Texas has become quite a tech hub recently attracting a lot of young tech talent who are looking for somewhere to get away from Silicon Valleyâs insanely high cost of living.
Austin is on par with PA! @manch Take that. Note the key words, ârecentlyâ, âyoungâ and âtech talentâ.
While Musk didnât specify where Giga Texas would be, we could imagine that somewhere near Austin would work well, to take advantage of the growing tech industry there.
Oh no! Tesla is coming to town. Buy buy buy. Donât get too near to Apple Campuses please.
Tesla. Texas. Tesla. Texas. Tesa. Teas.
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How much are you Austin taxpayers paying Elon for him to come? Remember even Bezos is jealous of of the free money Elon gets. 
@manch runs out of idea. You can do better than that. If Elon can squeeze $$$ out of Austin city council, I salute himâŚ
Canât find Austin on this chart⌠where is it? 
Wake me up when itâs at least the size of Seattle, which by the way is smaller than LA, another proud Californian city.
Key words, ârecentlyâ, âyoungâ 
Not about the past.
2019 not recent enough for you? 
I talk tech talents, you talk invested dollars.
Love, Texas style.
No PC necessarily.
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Ironic. HP is the first tech company to start in valley. Even before silicon valley was silicon valley, much older than fairchild.
They pioneered employee stock ownership which literally created the engine that fueled SV.