Mark Gemmell

Scottish brain. Home is Spain.

[Yann LeCun @ylecun]

Not sure what you think is at stake, but whatever it is, working to elect an egocentric, incompetent, authoritarian, convicted felon is throwing the baby with the bathwater.

And then, eroding the trust of the public in democratic institutions, the electoral process, the press, institutions of higher learning, science, and scientists, by spewing conspiracy theories, all for political expediency, is downright evil.

You might mean well, but what you're doing is very destructive, highly dangerous, and would have the opposite effect of what you're hoping for.

[Rob Maurer @robmaurer]

I have voted FOR the ratification of Elon Musk’s compensation plan. I just reviewed my thoughts from Tesla Daily in January '18 when it was announced:

“To sum it up, I think for existing shareholders this proposal is extremely beneficial, extremely friendly to stockholders.”

Buying In:
“I think instances like this where Musk is able to fully buy into the company and fully predicate his returns on this amazing growth for Tesla — where if that doesn’t happen he gets literally nothing — just goes to show how invested he is.”

Message For Short Sellers:
"When shorts kind of question [Musk's long-term vision], or say that he’s just hyping up the stock for some temporary gains or things like that, stuff like this just immediately proves those sort of arguments to be complete false.”

Amazing Growth
“I believe that if the $650B market cap were to be achieved, for example by 2023, that Elon should definitely be rewarded for that kind of amazing growth. I mean, that would be the market cap increasing by 11x in less than what, six years? Which would be crazy, and certainly worthy of the payment that Elon would receive.”

Market Didn't Believe It:
“I remain extremely positive on this plan, I was actually surprised the stock was not up further yesterday on this news.”

Plan Helped Tesla Recruit Talent:
“I think maybe an under-appreciated aspect of Tesla is their ability to use equity to attract talent. So when prospective talent is kind of weighing their options and deciding potentially between Tesla and another competitor, the opportunity that exists within Tesla's equity is probably much greater than an alternative.

The fact that Musk's compensation plan is tied to these aggressive market cap goals is a strong signal for anyone looking at [equity compensation] and trying to evaluate what their compensation could eventually equate to when including that equity.

That should be a pretty big advantage, certainly against companies like Ford and GM, but even against companies like Google and Facebook, where there's maybe less upside in terms of the market cap and therefore possibly less upside in the equity stake that an employee might expect to earn.

The fact that the CEO's compensation plan directly spells out a path to 11x in terms of the market cap is pretty significant when evaluating those options, I think. For a company like Facebook or Google to grow to that level, they would have to be $6-8 trillion in market cap, and there is no single company right now that's even above $1 trillion, so to expect that kind of growth from those other companies would be pretty unrealistic.

I also think that this provides a similar benefit to investors in terms of spelling out that clear path and those clear growth targets, because part of the bear narrative of Tesla is that it's overpriced and that even if Tesla achieves their wildest dreams, that the market cap should still only be like $60 billion or something, which in my opinion is a pretty ridiculous argument, but with this compensation clearly spelled out like this, it shows that Tesla themselves believe that the market cap is not overpriced and that it does still have tremendous growth potential at these levels. I think that will encourage more people to invest, and I also believe that it will encourage stability as Tesla continues to grow, hopefully to those levels of market cap.”

Back To Today
I have always believed this plan was excellent for shareholders. I was right — the shares I owned when recording these thoughts are up 800% compared to the S&P 500 up 80%. This compensation plan was fundamental to that outperformance in many ways, from securing Musk's leadership, to talent acquisition / retention, to investor confidence, and more. If Tesla would have underperformed, @elonmusk would have received nothing.

What Tesla has accomplished is unparalleled. For anyone to look back in hindsight and diminish how extremely difficult these milestones were to achieve is outrageous. I think the primary reason some shareholders are questioning this vote is due to the share price performance over the last couple years, and I believe that is extremely short-sighted, on top of being irrelevant to this issue.

I held shares from 2013 that were in the red in 2019, six years later. People were also frustrated then, but it would have been wrong to use that as justification to retract Elon's (very similarly structured) 2012 compensation plan. Fortunately, I let my analysis and my ethics determine my actions, rather than being influenced by market sentiment, and it paid off.

I hope other shareholders won't be prisoners of the moment in 2024.

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

Thanks Ashok!

Ashok was the first person to join the Tesla AI/Autopilot team and ultimately rose to lead all AI/Autopilot software.

Without him and our awesome team, we would just be another car company looking for an autonomy supplier that doesn’t exist.

Btw, I never suggested that he say anything and I had no idea he wrote this until I saw it 10 mins ago!

[Mark Gemmell @markgemmell]

@dpeilow But their advertisers aren't interested in positive EV news David. How can you be so audacious as to suggest a journalist write something against an advertiser's interests!?

[David Peilow @dpeilow]

Journalists: Can we stop with the EV sales are collapsing nonsense now, please?

[Mark Gemmell @markgemmell]

@dpeilow Not trouble free 😂, but Tesla did fix most things gratis. I might have spent 2k in total on top of tyres and brakes.

[Rob Maurer @robmaurer]

I always look forward to Tesla’s delivery reports, but it doesn’t make much difference to me precisely how many cars Tesla delivered in Q1. The progress we have seen on FSD this quarter is far more important than the difference between 400k and 450k deliveries.

[Mark Gemmell @markgemmell]

@dpeilow IMO they have come to their senses. Why do you say corruption?

[Mark Gemmell @markgemmell]

@dpeilow Hope you clicked Not Interested!

What bollocks in social media

[David Peilow @dpeilow]

Can confirm the grid still works and everyone around here manages with on-street parking...

52% Plugin Vehicle Share In The Netherlands! Tesla Model Y #1 Overall! https://t.co/5vJUQFfCr1

[Mark Gemmell @markgemmell]

@dpeilow At least they acknowledge the oil industry isn't squeaky clean 😂

No one worried about cobalt before EVs either, and yet half of all cobalt is used in oil refining and has been for decades.

I'd love to know the person behind these posts. There will be an inquisition!

[Bloomberg Markets @markets]

President Xi Jinping says China wants to be friends with the US and that his nation won’t fight a war with anyone, one of his clearest remarks yet proclaiming a desire for peaceful ties between the world’s two largest economies https://t.co/V7FjiQJasx

[Mark Gemmell @markgemmell]

@dpeilow Not a surprise, and frankly.... who cares. Hydrogen lost any credibility many years ago. Kinda like 8 track cartridges. Frankly I think even hydrogen for trucks, boats and planes is destined for failure too. Batteries are just getting too good.

[Mark Gemmell @markgemmell]

@dpeilow I'm not a fan either but if owners say they're ok, fair enough.
LHD is a much bigger issue IMO.

[Mark Gemmell @markgemmell]

@dpeilow Any reason not to knife his tyres?

[Mark Gemmell @markgemmell]

@dpeilow Wonder if the pedestrian accidents are up too? I remember that was another fossil fuel invented concern back in the day.

[Mark Gemmell @markgemmell]

@dpeilow Frankly, who cares? It's about as relevant and a series running on tomato puree 😂

[Mark Gemmell @markgemmell]

@dpeilow Hydrogen for any transport will fail. Short term due to fragile and inadequate fueling infrastructure Long term due to costing 4x per km best case.

[Mark Gemmell @markgemmell]

@dpeilow Great to hear. The sooner hydrogen is exposed for its inefficiency the better. Let's just get on with direct electrification plus batteries.