Musk is like a 'mirror to reveal demons'; all the entrepreneurs who once boasted to him have disappeared. As of 2024/11/11 08:00, Musk recently topped the global rich list with a net worth of $313.7 billion, while his car company Tesla has entered the global top ten by market value, valued at $1.03 trillion.
However, Tesla is just one of his many companies and cannot even be considered the most promising one. Many people first learned about Musk during a CCTV program in 2014, when CCTV invited Musk and Lenovo's Yang Yuanqing.
I don't know if it's because Lenovo's development peaked back then or if Yang Yuanqing wanted to suppress Musk, the younger generation. Throughout the program, Yang Yuanqing was filled with disdain for Musk, especially when he heard that Tesla only had 30,000 users. Yang Yuanqing sneered and then told Musk, this 'ignorant young man', that Lenovo sold over 100 million devices in the first three months alone.
The implication is that Tesla, compared to itself, is like the size of an ant versus an elephant. However, at that time, Yang Yuanqing indeed had the capital to be proud, as Lenovo was rapidly developing in computers, mobile phones, and internet businesses, being a global company.
However, when it came to the topic of marketing, Yang Yuanqing not only showed disdain but was in a state of complete arrogance. When the host asked Musk about his views on marketing, Musk said he felt marketing was unnecessary; as long as the product is good, people will buy it. When asked if the $1.8 billion Lenovo spent on advertising in the past two years was worth it, Yang Yuanqing directly replied, 'If we don't advertise, will you (the TV stations) still have food to eat?' After this awkward chat, Lenovo began to decline, losing almost all of its mobile business, with no achievements in the internet sector, and only the computer business still barely holding on.
Today, Lenovo has neither core technologies nor noteworthy products, and domestically it has been labeled as a computer assembly factory.
Musk's casual remarks have continued to gain value. Currently, Lenovo's market value is only around $20 billion, while Tesla's scale has reached 50 times that of Lenovo, with one still rising and the other continuing to decline. Yang Yuanqing has also not appeared in the public eye for a long time.
Musk's second dialogue with Chinese entrepreneurs took place in Shanghai in 2019, with Jack Ma as the counterpart. Similar to the previous conversation with Lenovo, Musk remained a humble younger brother, and the entire interaction was still somewhat awkward.
The main topic of discussion this time was artificial intelligence, where Musk expressed concerns about the future threats of AI. Jack Ma, lounging with his leg crossed, kept snapping his fingers and similarly dismissed the notion, claiming that AI could never be smarter than humans, and that such concerns were absurd.
