Musk is like a 'mirror to reveal the monsters'; all the entrepreneurs who once bragged to him have disappeared. On November 11, 2024, at 08:00, Musk recently topped the global richest list with a net worth of 313.7 billion dollars, while his car company Tesla, with a market value of 1.03 trillion dollars, entered the top ten in global market value.
However, Tesla is just one of his many companies, and it can't 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.
It's unclear whether Lenovo's development peaked back then or if Yang Yuanqing wanted to suppress the upstart Musk. Throughout the program, Yang Yuanqing was full of disdain for Musk, especially when he heard that Tesla only had 30,000 users; Yang Yuanqing smirked disdainfully and then told Musk, this 'ignorant' newcomer, that Lenovo sold over 100 million devices in the first three months.
The implication is that Tesla, compared to itself, is 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 business that year, making it a global company.
However, when the topic of marketing came up, Yang Yuanqing not only showed disdain but was almost dismissive. 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 dollars Lenovo spent on advertising in the past two years was worth it, Yang Yuanqing directly replied that if we don't advertise, will you (the TV station) have food to eat? After this awkward chat, Lenovo began to decline, losing almost all its mobile business, with no achievements in the internet sector, and only the computer business struggling to hold on.
Today's Lenovo has neither core technologies nor impressive products to showcase, and domestically it has been labeled as a computer assembly factory.
Musk's casual remarks have continued to gain value over time. Now, Lenovo's market value is only around 20 billion dollars, while Tesla's scale is already 50 times that of Lenovo, with one still rising and the other continuing to fall; Yang Yuanqing has not appeared in the public eye for a long time.
Musk's second dialogue with Chinese entrepreneurs took place in Shanghai in 2019, and this time his counterpart was Jack Ma. Similar to the previous conversation with Lenovo, Musk remained a humble little brother, and the whole dialogue was still awkward.
The main topic of discussion this time was artificial intelligence, where Musk expressed concerns about the potential threats of AI in the future. Jack Ma, sitting with his legs crossed and snapping his fingers, also disdainfully said that artificial intelligence could never be smarter than humans, and such worries are groundless.
