Is Elon Musk trying to commit 'suicide by SEC' by taunting the agency? - <AUTHOR> https://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-elon-musk-sec-contempt-20190226-story.html <comment><USER2> >Of more concern to Tesla investors: What if he knows something they don't know about the company's financial future — and is hoping to hang any failure on the nasty, overreaching regulators rather than his own dubious management skills?

That seems very possible.

I think the reality of scaling up Tesla to live up to its valuation might be too daunting for Elon to handle. It might even be impossible. EV sales as a % of total vehicle sales is surprisingly low. If EV's do take off, it's likely to be the established car manufacturers who are good at making cars at scale who eventually capitalize on the opportunity. And the most likely to drive the S-curve adoption.

Being taken out by the SEC would be a way to keep confidence in Elon Musk Inc going which would obviously be beneficial to his other companies. He could even team up with Mark Cuban to rail against them on Twitter.

<comment><USER3> > If EV's do take off, it's likely to be the established car manufacturers who > are good at making cars at scale who eventually capitalize on the > opportunity.

This is what I used to think, but every year the "Tesla killers" fail to kill, or even wound. I never even hear about the other EV's by themselves, only as the competition to Tesla. Anybody who watches the news would have known that the Model 3 was a colossal failure. But it wasn't. It was just 6 months late, which is not bad given the scale of the project. The narrative is just not reality here. Tesla has a head start on the industry. That doesn't guarantee anything, but I think that it's a bigger advantage to Tesla than it would be to any other car company because one of Elon Musk's strengths (Spacex too) is iteration speed.

Last I heard they got the price down to $45K, so they are in striking distance of the $35K target and won't stop there. EV's are mechanically simpler than gas powered cars. Once the technology and economies of scale are there, they will be cheaper. And I don't see any other company in a better position to get there first.

Edit: Predicting that the established players being the ones to take the lead in a new technology sounds like common sense, but it isn't:

> It's likely to be the established electronics companies who are good at > making electronics that take the lead in semi-conductor manufacturing.

> It's likely to be the established mail order companies who are good at > delivery logistics that take the lead in online retail.

> It's likely to be the established taxi companies who are good at running > taxi fleets (and have a legal monopoly) that take the lead in ride sharing > apps.

If the pattern holds (which is not by any means guaranteed), Tesla has more to fear from a yet to be founded startup than it does from the legacy car manufacturers.

<comment><USER4> > every year the "Tesla killers" fail to kill, or even wound

That's true, but I think it's because of bad marketing rather than bad technology. The Chevy Bolt has the specs to beat the Model 3, but it is being positioned as a low-end car, a competitor to the Honda Civic rather than the Model 3. Power seats, for example, are not even offered as an option. That is not a car a rich person is going to buy to impress their friends. But GM could easily turn it into such a car. They obviously know how to make power seats. All the heavy lifting has been done. I have no idea why they aren't doing it, but GM has a long history of shooting itself in the foot when it comes to electric vehicles.

<comment><USER3> Yes I think you're right, but that may be an even harder gap to close than tech.

Good Marketing: Crazy genius CEO who is always in the news, builds rockets in his spare time, launches his car into space, smokes weed with Joe Rogan, and constantly thumbs his nose at the authorities. Customers like this company so much that the CEO can ask for volunteers and actually get a response. $0 advertising budget. All marketing by word of mouth. Direct to consumer sales with transparent pricing.

Bad Marketing: Standard car company. Nobody even knows the CEO's name, and he only speaks publicly in boring prepared statements run through a huge PR team. Massive advertising budget producing totally boring car ads that are indistinguishable from other companies. Sold through dealerships and sketchy salesmen who negotiate a different price for each customer.

I can see the big companies beating Tesla on tech a lot more than I can see them becoming like Tesla as a brand.

<comment><USER5> According to their SEC filings, Tesla spends between $60 and $100 million annually on marketing, and they've definitely placed billboards in major cities since I have seen several of them in the LA area.

<comment><USER3> Was true for a while. I guess that's no longer the case.

<comment><USER6> Which is true? They did and stopped, or started now?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Maybe I'm naïve, but I'm actually buying the obliviousness of his behavior. I don't really believe in Tesla and would gladly buy the whole "suicide by SEC" thing, but reading what actually happened, this doesn't really sound like a big deal. Musk has been having emotional moments for a long time now, at this point it's really easy for me to just shrug off this as "he's always been like this". The last ten years of Musk carrier are just non-stop publicity-stunt drama, it's really easy to believe for me now that he honestly doesn't see the boundary that seems obvious to all lawyery SEC folks and other properly corporate people.

<comment><USER8> He's not oblivious. He's being obstinate and bristling at their authority.

He's been CEO of a public Tesla for 9 years now. Respecting the SEC and securities laws is just part of the CEO job. He's got great lawyers that remind him of this daily. And you'd think the $20 million fine and loss of the Chairman role would be enough of a wake up call.

It's so frustrating to see, because I really want Tesla to succeed and I think he's one of the great executives of our time, and he wastes his time and attention on short-term inanities like short sellers and daily stock price movements. If he just buckled down and built cars, he'd blow all of those short sellers out of the water.

<comment><USER9> > Respecting the SEC and securities laws

He should respect the law, as in abide the law. But should he really show respect, as in deep admiration to the law or the commission? I know America is not the land of the free it used to be, but it is not a totalitarian state yet.

<comment><USER10> It's a stupid fight to pick. He doesn't have to like the SEC or the law, but they exist, and they exist for a good reason. If he wants Tesla to succeed, he can't ignore or deny that.

And although I love Elon Musk, the SEC is right; he shouldn't be twittering stupid things to temporarily boost his stock price. There's no gain for him in it, it's misleading, and it undermines long term trust in him and his company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Knowing nothing but chatter on the internet I'd say Musk goes through manic episodes.

<comment><USER12> Would also explain his energy level. Manics can sometimes "use" their episodes to achieve hyperfocus, but as with synthetically induced mania (amphetamine) there are side effects.

<comment><USER11> A old DJ/Raver friend mentioned a friend of his went through episode where he moved to Detroit (or some such) put together a Rap Band as their manager and got it signed to a well known label. He knew absolutely no one in Detroit, nothing about rap music, and had no contacts with anyone at a label.

He did that in three months.

<comment><USER12> LOL. I was huge raver from ~18-22 and saw lots of that type of stuff from both natural and un-natural mania.

I had a friend once who had a (natural) manic episode and wanted to get rid of a non-running car in his garage. He cut the car into small chunks with a large Dremel-type tool and threw it away in the dumpster. I mean the entire car. This took about 48 hours. The dumpster was so heavy they had to bring a special truck, and someone had to ask who threw away a car. I think the apartment complex forwarded him a bill for special industrial trash removal.

HN-worthy nerd tangent:

Remember all the discussion a while back about the threat posed to humanity by runaway self-improving AI super-intelligences?

I've always thought that you don't need a super-intelligence in the IQ sense. You just need something with the intelligence of a moderately smart human with super-focus and super-motivation. Imagine something that ran by default in the state you describe above but with no cognitive impairment side effects. That would be super-human. A "race" of these would find conquering humanity trivial even if their IQ-type intelligence were merely comparable to ours.

Most humans exist in a state of low-grade depression most of the time. I have for years thought that the dopamine pathway is the rate limiter for human achievement, not IQ or memory or anything else. It's one of the many reasons I'm a moderate IQ skeptic. Our reward/motivation system is calibrated for a very slow hunter-gatherer lifestyle. The problem is that we have not found a good way to artificially boost this without side effects that impair cognition in ways that result in things like dumb comments on Twitter that get you in trouble with the SEC.

Amphetamine|coke|mania is a helluvadrug.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Musk is another tortured CEO prodigy, as was Jobs. You can get rid of him, he can inadvertently get rid of himself, but at the end of the day he _is_ Tesla. Take him out of Tesla, and you get for electric vehicles what happened to the iPhone / Apple after Jobs died.

Yeah they may pump out a few more Model X's, S's, 3's with some minor mods, keep milking the cow (if it even is a cow, maybe a potential cow, and also if they can even get to a point where they can scale) and eventually... who knows? The scale problem hasn't even been solved yet. You're not going to find another leader with that much raw energy, intellect, drive, and passion who's going to have a chance at bringing us to that reality even close to as quick as Musk can.

My only concern with the whole show is, can anyone (particularly seasoned auto veterans) stand to work with him long enough for the scale and production problems be addressed. As well as iron out all the wrinkles with the designs (some notoriously faulty parts which take quite a long time to fix sometimes..)

<comment><USER14> The Musk/Jobs companions is a bit of a stretch. Jobs had a profitable product and company from the start. Musk never founded such a company, and was booted as PayPal CEO after a short stint.

<comment><USER15> SpaceX.

<comment><USER16> We have absolutely no idea whether or not SpaceX is profitable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I don't see how he can reasonably defend himself in this situation. His tweet was both material and inaccurate. Tweeting material information without clearance is obviously against his settlement.

What confuses me is that TSLA's price hasn't suffered. I have a hunch this isn't as serious of a matter as is being reported, but I'm not sure why.

<comment><USER18> It's easy of you consider he's just promoting facts as any normal CEO would.

He's not yet used to the idea he has to be hyper specific with some data.

He's a showman, a salesperson, he's always going to err on the positive.

Constantly pitching, selling.

It's the SEC etc. that care about very specific details that could affect the company.

So while you're right - as a CEO has has 'no excuse' \- the fact he would do it makes perfect sense.

I don't think he's trolling anyone, he's the same as he ever was, probably under a lot of stress, a little manic, and avoiding what he probably thinks is the narrow confines of corporate culture and language.

<comment><USER19> He's been a CEO for 9 years and the settlement didn't say be more specific, it said get your tweets approved.

<comment><USER18> Yeah, you are right. I'm not defending him, just trying to explain it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm honestly unsure what he has to gain by doing this. I can't imagine that the departure of the counsel isn't related. Maybe the GC announced he was leaving and that rattled Musk somehow? Very strange.

<comment><USER21> I suspect you have the cause/effect of the GC leaving backwards.

<comment><USER22> Exactly.

On Feb 19 Elon Musk tweets 500K cars.

On Feb 20 Tesla General Counsel, after 2 months on the job, says "fuck this, I'm too old to put up with this shit, I'm outta here".

Actually the GC was a little more diplomatic. As CNBC put it: _A person familiar with the matter said he was not a good cultural fit with Tesla and wanted to return to his family and law practice in Washington, D.C._

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Personally I'd rather see him focus on SpaceX and the Boring Company.

The legacy manufacturers have all caught the bug, batteries are achieving mass scale in China, and electric vehicles have irreversible momentum.

Mission accomplished.

<comment><USER24> But which one of those legacy manufacturers would dare put rocket thrusters on their next model?

[https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1005577738332172289](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1005577738332172289)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> It's pretty simple. Musk was hounded by short sellers who bet billions against Tesla and then spread patently false information about the company's activities and prospects[1]. Musk has one of those asymmetric senses of fairness (like the one that drove Gates to tears during Microsoft's anti-trust trials) that lost all faith in the SEC as it stood by and did nothing about what he felt was clearly illegal behavior.

In his mind, he was treated 'super unfairly' by bullies while the guardians stood by and did nothing. He really dislikes them for that.

Is his open disrespect a mature response? No. It's idealistic if not naive and he could be about to find out that the SEC does have teeth.

[0] [https://www.theregister.co.uk/2000/10/25/inside_the_ms_trial...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2000/10/25/inside_the_ms_trial_part_2/) (sorry, couldn't find a better source)

[1] ?

"The SEC similarly should be leading the charge against purveyors of short- and-distort schemes. Unfortunately, the commission inexplicably has been reluctant to do so.Just like a pump-and-dump, a short-and-distort scheme violates the Securities Exchange Act antifraud provisions, as well as SEC Rule 10b-5. In fact, it has brought hardly any enforcement actions targeting this conduct."

<comment><USER26> Just as a heads-up: Your 2nd link doesn't work for anybody but you (references a file on your local machine), and leaks your user name on that machine.

Maybe this is the link you wanted to post (contains the quote you posted):

[https://www.dlapiper.com/~/media/files/people/weiner- perrie/...](https://www.dlapiper.com/~/media/files/people/weiner- perrie/weinerweberhsu.pdf)

<comment><USER27> Maybe dang or another admin could fix his comment? Or at least remove the personal information (first name, last name).

<comment><USER28> Flagged (for moderator attention, not for deletion)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This is a partial transcript of the Q4 2018 earnings call. There is a strong case to be made that the information was not market moving.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from Colin Rusch with Oppenheimer.

Colin Rusch

Thanks so much. Can you talk a little bit about the geographic dispersion for the guidance for 2019, where you're expecting the Model 3s to sell through as well as the other models?

Elon Musk

Well, I think we did, actually. Yes, it's clear in our letter.

Deepak Ahuja

We indicated in Q1, we will start delivering Model 3s in Europe and China. And we also shared a chart showing the potential market size for midsized premium sedans in North America, Europe and Asia, suggesting those markets could be even bigger. So I think that gives a good sense of where we'll be. And we'll launch the right-hand drive version at some point to go to the other markets.

Elon Musk

Yes. Maybe in the order of 350,000 to 500,000 Model 3s, something like that this year.

<comment><USER30> It doesn't matter if it's market moving. Or rather, the terms of his settlement are that all of his communications need to be pre-approved by counsel to determine what is market moving. He didn't get the pre-approval so he's broken the agreement.

<comment><USER31> The actual settlement notice says "put in place additional controls and procedures to oversee Musk's communications" which appeared to happen in this case. [1]

Also, since the 500,000 number was already public and referring only to Model 3s, it's entirely plausible that 500,000 total cars for the year is not material. The SEC conveniently leaves out this exculpatory evidence.

1: [https://www.sec.gov/news/press- release/2018-226](https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2018-226)

<comment><USER32> The press release isn't the full detailed set of conditions.

I don't know that the contract is publicly released, but [https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/16/17983032/elon-musk- sec-s...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/16/17983032/elon-musk-sec- securities-fraud-settlement) says:

> The company also has to employ a lawyer who will oversee all of Musk's > communications, including his tweets. This person will have to pre-approve > any message coming from Musk that could have a material impact on the > company's stock price.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I liked Matt Levine's analysis:

> probably what will happen is that Musk will go to court and the judge will > yell at him and he will say he's sorry and then six minutes later he'll > tweet "my fingers were crossed and I am NOT sorry" and he'll go on TV that > night and be like "you know what I have contempt for? Court," and everyone > will just be like "ehhhhhhhhhh good enough."

( [https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-02-26/elon-m...](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-02-26/elon- musk-keeps-tweeting) )

<comment><USER30> No, this doesn't seem right. Musk is clearly burning through the good will he'd built up. There's going to be a limit to how much his aura can shield him, and it seems like he's really pushing to find that limit.

<comment><USER34> Why do you think he's being intentionally descructive asnd not just not caring what anyone (including the government) thinks?

<comment><USER35> Because Tesla, as a company, is actually majority owned by the shareholders that make up 80+% of the company.

A very small move of the SEC can destroy those investors chances of ever being paid back.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Tesla will not have a $35k EV anytime soon.

The battery pack alone costs more than $20k.

Tesla can't produce that car for $15k and make a profit.

Gigafactory Battery production is expected to continue ramping up, with higher throughput lines, but operating costs are still exorbitant, and battery production is barely breaking even at current production. In fact, from what I know they're in the red.

I don't see a $35k Model 3 until battery production costs cut in half, which I won't expect for another 3-5 years.

I know Tesla is beginning to manufacture it's own batteries, but to be honest, I don't see them succeeding.

</comment><comment><USER37> Musk is clearly not making it any easier and I wish he would be more careful (and continue to be on Twitter). It's not fun for investors. Please don't create these fires.

I also hope that SEC would maintains an objective view of the issue and not get offended at the lack of respect from Musk.

Finally, I would love for Tesla to continue to thrive under Musk's leadership, unless he continues to shoot himself in his foot.

<comment><USER38> _It 's not fun for investors._

It was fun for this investor when I sold calls not too long ago after Musk's last meltdown. Probably not fun for the buyer of that contract who exercised and is now $30/share in the hole.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> What if he's burning out and doing this somewhat subconsciously in an attempt to shed responsibilities?

</comment><comment><USER39> What does he really risk if found guilty of contempt? I don't think the SEC is going to settle again

<comment><USER32> They could ban him from running Tesla and any other publicly listed company. That threat got him to sign this settlement in the first place.

[https://www.economist.com/business/2018/09/28/the-sec- threat...](https://www.economist.com/business/2018/09/28/the-sec-threatens-to- ban-elon-musk-from-running-any-public-company)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> He's a narcissist. He believes his own hype and he thinks he's untouchable.

That and they have about a billion dollars in debt coming due in a few days. Gotta keep that distraction going.

</comment><comment><USER40> This sounds like a targeted campaign to discredit Musk. Careful about what you read.

<comment><USER30> Why this bizarre cultish paranoia? He's in this mess because he committed securities fraud. He got a slap-on-the wrist sweetheart deal and he can't even stick to that.

He's done all of this to himself, and he can't seem to stop.

<comment><USER41> it's not really paranoia when you factor in how much short interest the $TSLA stock has, there are literally tens of billions of dollars to be gained if the people with these short positions can discredit or shift public opinion on musk

<comment><USER32> That's fairly minuscule, really. Short sellers can't make Musk bash the SEC or call people pedos; that's on him.

Musk _himself_ has $55.8B in compensation tied to market cap at stake, which gives him equally self-interested reasons to balance things out. [https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/21/tesla-shareholders- approve-e...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/21/tesla-shareholders-approve-elon- musks-multibilion-dollar-compensation-plan.html)

<comment><USER42> >Short sellers can't make Musk bash the SEC or call people pedos; that's on him.

But they certainly can engineer a fake rumor of an SEC requesting contempt of court by manipulating journalists and forging documents, if sufficiently motivated. Consider the SuperMicro story submitted to mainstream publications last year that was obviously fake and caused a massive decline in their stock. I don't think it's above a sophisticated actor to socially engineer a journalist in service of a "short and distort" campaign. Even Jim Cramer laid out the typical tactics of a short attack: get a short position open and then spread false rumors to a "bozo reporter" [0][1]

I'm no big Elon Musk fan, but the funny thing is -- correct me if I'm missing something -- I can't seem to find any evidence that the SEC ever published the complaint[2] documents supplied by a USA today journalist on the sec.gov website. Searching for "Case 1:18-cv-08865-AJN" only brings up the original settlement from October 2018. That alone gives me pause.

[0]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6gxPCurDJs&t=1m43s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6gxPCurDJs&t=1m43s)

[1]: [https://seekingalpha.com/instablog/2918951-g-hudson/1026551-...](https://seekingalpha.com/instablog/2918951-g-hudson/1026551-how- the-big-players-manipulate-the-stock-market)

[2]: [https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5750664-Show- Cause.h...](https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5750664-Show-Cause.html)

<comment><USER43> So, let me get this straight. You think short sellers are a massive cabal of evil geniuses and they just go around forging court documents and duping journalists? But just in the case of TSLA, not all the other companies it would be possible to short? And you think that's more likely than that the SEC asked the judge to hold Musk in contempt, _which he obviously is by a plain reading of the settlement agreement_?

This is waayayayayayaaaayyyyy off the deep end. Please check your priors, they are busted.

<comment><USER42> You're acting as if market manipulation is some far-out conspiracy theory rather than something relatively common. I don't think it takes a "kabal of evil geniuses" to dupe a few credulous journalists who are incentivized and looking for a scoop by forging some documents. There are far more complex market manipulation conspiracies that are well-documented (see: LIBOR scandal)

Furthermore, why haven't we heard anything from the SEC? They are an increasingly transparent organization. Why haven't they issued a press release or published their court filings on their website? Are we supposed to just trust a journalist's word and ability to verify that an anonymous "source familiar with the matter" isn't just bamboozling them?

<comment><USER32> C'mon, mate. Someone linked you to Musk himself commenting on this story. The "faked court docs" conspiracy theory dies definitively there. [https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1100215984713957376](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1100215984713957376)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> He's gonna get a shareholder lawsuit if he isn't careful

</comment><comment><USER45> Tesla is gaining a lot of free publicity from this.

<comment><USER46> To what end though? Is there anyone plausibly in the market for a Tesla car that doesn't know about the company and cars at this point?

I'd guess their unaided awareness within target market must be over 50% and aided over 95%.

<comment><USER47> How many people haven't heard of Coca Cola? How much do they spend on advertising regardless?

Brand awareness requires upkeep.

<comment><USER30> The old saw that any publicity is good publicity isn't true. Tesla being in the news because their leader is committing securities fraud and acting increasingly erratic isn't helping the brand anymore than Coca Cola being in the news for giving people food poisoning.

<comment><USER48> I wouldn't be so sure about it. We cannot speak in meaningful way whether Musk's kind of publicity is good or it is bad without considering his target audience first. Do we know some group of people who might cheer Musk's behaviour?

I can think about just one possibility linked with age, but found it unlikely: if average age of owners of S, 3 and X models was between 43 and 53 years[1], it would be unlikely to drop significally. Didn't Musk promised for next models to be cheaper (and more affordable for younger generations) than previous?

Though idea of Musk running campain targeting younger and rebellous generations seems implausible for me regardless of price.

[1] [https://www.teslarati.com/survey-model-x-owners-income- doubl...](https://www.teslarati.com/survey-model-x-owners-income-double- model-s/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> search "Elon Musk" at crazydaysandnights.net for a different perspective on this guy

<comment><USER50> From that site's footer:

> Crazy Days And Nights Is A Gossip Site. The Site Publishes Rumors, > Conjecture, And Fiction.

Not what I would use for gathering real information.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> His behavior is not unusual for someone who is burned out and/or a pothead. Ignoring consequences is typical stoner behavior. We'll have to see how this plays out.

<comment><USER52> Ignoring consequences is closer to being drunk behavior than stoner behavior. Also weed is used medicinally as well, and it's no good demonizing all those medical users and labeling them as bums that ignore consequences. In general, I'd advise against senselessly judging and stereotyping people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> > The SEC says Musk has manifestly violated an agreement reached in September, > when he settled an SEC lawsuit by consenting to have his tweets preapproved > by Tesla attorneys before sending them out on Twitter. > That didn't stop > Musk from issuing an unapproved tweet at 7:15 p.m. EST on Feb. 19,

Who the fuck this people are?!?! Besides, no one got the 420 stock price joke???!?!!

</comment><comment><USER54> Musk paid the SEC $20m in his last settlement, what do they want, gratitude?

There is definitely a cabal gunning for him, what I don't understand is why. There are funds short TSLA who are talking their books as well, but he seems to have provoked a deeper coalition of interests that is hard to pinpoint. All I can tell is much of the criticism seems contrived.

Maybe he's truly checked out because this is all just a simulation, and he wants to test what is symbolic and artificial, and what is real because philosophically and existentially it's the only meaningful problem to address, but from an investor and mental health perspective, that's dissociation and if that's really the case, I hope he likes painting in watercolors.

<comment><USER32> > Musk paid the SEC $20m in his last settlement, what do they want, gratitude?

They want him to follow the other terms of the settlement, presumably. The fine's only a part of the punishment.

<comment><USER21> But it (aside from the $20 million fine) it isn't even a _punishment_. Every publicly-traded company has their tweets reviewed. Every. Single. One. It's _normal_. It's reasonably prudent for both the CEO _and_ the shareholders. No shareholder wants to wake up and find 5%+ of market cap has been wiped out with a tweet.

<comment><USER19> Uh, he also got removed as a chairman.

Having the sense to review tweets is different than having an SEC settlement enforcing such action.

<comment><USER21> Remember, the SEC's function is to protect _investors_. Likewise, the function of the Chairperson of the Board is to represent _investors_ on the Board. The SEC didn't remove Musk as Chair to punish him for his actions. The settlement required Musk to step down as Chair to give investors the representation they're entitled to because Musk didn't fulfill the fiduciary obligations of the role.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Putting retargeting to work for your startup - <AUTHOR> http://planscope.io/blog/putting-retargeting-to-work-for-your-startup

<comment><USER2> I kind of ignored all Internet advertising (adblock plus makes it fairly infrequent, the only exception being on mobile, which I'm working on fixing myself...), but I've been seeing how effective retargeting is firsthand -- the "Tile" bt4.0le tracker tags have retargeted me ~everywhere, and it eventually was enough to make me purchase.

I was curious how one would do this kind of thing as a startup, and this customer case study is really informative. I was assuming it would be a several thousand dollar minimum investment, but it's on the order of an adsense trial, so a lot more approachable.

<comment><AUTHOR> We've got a $25/week minimum and even offer a free trial. You're right, a few years ago it did require thousands to get started, but like anything else, retargeting is being democratized and productized.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Got a chuckle out of me when I noticed the Planscope news feed ad after reading this post.

I think the important distinction here is about providing value rather than the fact Brennan used retargeting for his product. There is a lot of value in having well educated customers; particularly when their education came from you, the service provider. This is why webinars can be very effective in securing the trust of a first-time customer and elevating the lifetime value of current customers.

Teaching people how to get more out of your product helps them see the path to ROI more clearly and creates more trust.

I'm curious to see how the 5 Day Course performs as lead generation in a normal campaign vs. retargeting campaign test.

<comment><USER4> I actually did run comparison test for our client - regular product retargeting (a site that is very heavy on educational material) vs content retargeting (specific landing pages with content). The engagement level on content were off the charts (up to 90% download rate, TOS, Bounce Rate). So educating works far better. Only trouble is, you need email, which 95% of visitors are not ready to give you on first hit - that's why retargeting works so well here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I doubt it's retargeting that made the difference. Originally, his CPC was > $1(that's way too much) and he reduced that to ~$0.20. That obviously gave him more clicks for a fixed budget.

Secondly, the "forced sign up" landing page helps as well.

Reference: [http://andrewchen.co/2013/07/29/the-highest-roi-way-to- incre...](http://andrewchen.co/2013/07/29/the-highest-roi-way-to-increase- signups-make-a-minimal-homepage-guest-post/)

<comment><USER6> AFAIK there isn't a way to set a CPC with Perfect Audience newsfeed ads. I plugged in a weekly budget and that was it.

<comment><USER5> Hmm, that doesn't give you much control. I suggest you go straight to the source and use FB's Power Editor. You get control over everything. Facebook has one of the most comprehensive targeting tool in the world. As a startup, you'll want to think of the way you advertise as a customer discovery process.

Know your target audience and target these people as specific as you can. Then set the maximum price you'll pay to get these people's attention. Fine tuning can come later.

<comment><AUTHOR> Power editor doesn't do retargeting, with off-site data captured from your visitors. Power editor is just for targeting people using on-site FB profile data and activity. I agree though, Facebook's targeting is indeed awesome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Retargeting can be effective, but it starts getting really annoying a few weeks after you decided against a product and for me creates a negative image of that company because I feel almost harassed. If you use it, I would recommend trying to limit the time frame or frequency of ads shown to something reasonable. Maybe a lot of impressions for a few days, then a few impressions per week for up to 2 weeks, then maybe just a few brief impressions after that. But don't go on for months.

<comment><USER4> Frequency and time capping are actually a common sense in retargeting. Having said that, current tools are not great at it as it's hard to do proper cohort campaign/analysis. We're addressing it with both time and impression caps, as well as cookie lifetime. Retargeting people on leisure sites or in times when they're usually in 'downtime' mode can also be a problem, which is why precise insight into individual placements is necessary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I didn't know this was a thing, but I'd been noticing this phenomenon. I found it extremely annoying that after going to a website to check something out I'd see ads for the same thing. Even for things that I'd signed up to, i.e. Parse, were showing me ads.

<comment><USER4> Not excluding current clients is a common problem, which is actually technical. Retargeting requires tags placed in multiple places (homepage, blog, marketing automation, and yes - product). Placing retargeting pixels on product pages is often seen as risky, detrimental to product performance or your clients data. I believe the upside from being able to distinguish between clients and prospects outweighs the risk factors (which are quite superficial to be honest). There are other ways to exclude current clients such as custom interactions and landing pages, but that's a longer story.

<comment><AUTHOR> Who says placing retargeting tags on product pages is seen as risky? I've never heard anything resembling that nor can I think of a reason why that may be. No need to spread more FUD in the ad space.

<comment><USER4> Product/tech teams raise that concern (logic being that anything could happen within JS) - in my opinion it's more of a product/engineering/marketing conflict than any real logic/evidence behind it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Or "How I advertised my startup on HN".

<comment><USER10> I found it to be a very helpful post. I learned something that I can apply to my own site.

If such a post gets a few sign ups for planescape along the way, I don't see the harm. But advertising was far from the focus of the post. The author doesn't even say what planescape does.

The article wouldn't have hit the front page if it wasn't useful. How many companies are using retargeting + drip email effectively?

<comment><USER9> Articles hit the front page because they get a few early upvotes, not because they're more useful than the other thousand submissions a day.

And being constantly guerrilla-marketed / growth-hacked / whatever at is tiresome.

<comment><USER6> (Author, but not submitter, here. A few friends on Twitter asked for a writeup of what I was doing with retargeting, and the guys at Perfect Audience ended up submitting it to HN. Not sure how I'm "growth hacking".)

<comment><USER11> I say keep sharing what you've learned. In fact, it would be great to see a follow up on this experiment in a couple of weeks, as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Small sample size much?</comment>