A recent post on Twitter has questioned the credibility of the Tesla CEO, Elon Musk. The tweet by SamTwits alleged that the current self-building image of the man is not valid. He claims that the original founders of the electric automobile company, Tesla, Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, were cunningly dragged out of the enterprise. Elon who usually doesn’t give much heed to online attacks has come out to defend his honor. In a series of tweets, he justified his side of the story.
Tesla was originally founded by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning. Both in the infancy years of the company held the posts of CEO and CFO, respectively. In 2004, the company received funding of $7.5 million for a Series A project. Out of this sum, $6.5 million was contributed by Elon Musk. Elon had received $100 million from selling his interest in PayPal. Later Elon became the chairman of the board of directors and the largest shareholder in the undertaking. A lawsuit settlement in 2009 decided that Elon Musk will share the title of co-founder with the rest of the 4 members.
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“Elon Musk Was Just A Series-A Investor Who Bought In”
YouTuber, Jake Broe, on 26 November took to Twitter to apparently “disclose” the truth behind the making of Tesla. He posted a picture of the two initial founders and wrote below in bold letters, “This is a picture of Mark Tarpenning and Martin Eberhard. They founded Tesla. You know in case you thought it was someone else.” The tweet addressed “Musk’s fanboys” correcting them that Tarpenning and Eberhard were the “brilliant men” who founded Tesla and Musk weaseled his way in.
The tweet along with the picture read, “Elon was just a series-A investor who bought in, then sabotaged the company enough until these men were pushed out, then he spent the next ten years telling everyone he founded Tesla.”
Multiple founder and investor, Sam retweeted this and declared the affair to be “so misleading”. Sam who goes by the handle SamTwits on Twitter wrote, “@elonmusk invested nearly all of the Series A round. At that point, Tesla was just a name & 3 guys with no money who’d registered the company 6 months earlier.” Jake Broe’s post on Twitter has been retweeted more than nineteen thousand times. The next day Elon replied to these allegations in a thread of his tweets.
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Elon’s Defense Of “Sabotaging Tesla”
Consequently, on 27 November the CEO of Tesla took to Twitter and told his side of the story in a length of three tweets. In his reply, Elon explained how he was the head of product and lead the design of the original Roadster, the quick four-wheeler. He revealed that Eberhard had the capability to take the risk and invest but didn’t. He wrote in his first tweet, “Eberhard was wealthy and could have risked his money, but was unwilling to do so.” Later he tweeted again that the Art Center College of Design gave him an “honorary degree” for his work on the original Roadster design.
In his last statement, Elon also declared himself getting the Trademark “Tesla Motors” as the initial name and even obtained the URL for the company’s website. “Was also due to me that we got trademark to use Tesla Motors as initial name & later obtained Tesla.com URL,” affirmed the CEO.
In 2008, Elon succeeded the post to CEO of Tesla, and the following year Eberhard filed a lawsuit for allegedly forcing him out of his company. The business ain’t seldom comes out to answer every internet attack. Despite all the bitterness in social media, Elon always dismisses people’s disappointment. Either with a humorous tweet or by ignoring it he has steered clear of these attacks. Unlike before, this time he came out and explained in explicit detail the affair.
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