bfwi

This is not truly a 0% loan.

Because of the fees, you will pay a minimum of 0,74%.

Also because these mortgage instruments are traded at a price less than 100, you have to take out a loan larger than the amount of money that will be payed out. For example, to loan $100 you might have to take out a loan where you start out owing $105, which further increases the actual interest.

I'm not convinced that selling some of his SpaceX stock on the secondary market is difficult, or that selling some of his Tesla stocks would cause a rout, especially when the immediate consequence would be paying back the debt, thereby saving the company.

But I hope some experts (e.g. stock analysts) would comment on this scenario, I think it's interesting.

Thanks for the facts.

You state that he can't buy out Tesla, which is true. But why does he need to buy out Tesla to cover their debt? On the contrary he would need to sell some of his Tesla (and perhaps SpaceX) stock and give the cash to Tesla to cover their debt.

Why is the Tesla stock illiquid? It's publicly traded.

I'm sure he could sell SpaceX stock on the secondary market quite easily. SpaceX has never lacked in interest from investors.

The CEO has shown willingness to fund Tesla Motors and SpaceX with almost all his personal funds. If I remember correctly, he is worth more than Tesla's debt, and unless he is somehow unable to liquidate enough assets to cover that debt, it won't be the end of Tesla.

How does secondary market transaction work, in these cases? Is it only when a round is raised that shareholders can take money off the table, or does it ever happen between rounds as well?

If you're a profitable private company, aren't you legit?

I don't imagine Sam Altman made enough money from the sale of Loopt to lead a $50m round (only guesswork though). Is he somehow leveraged by having raised a fund for "personal investments". The latter would be a really interesting.

Maybe @sama himself could answer this, if it's not too personal.

"never publicly demonstrated" still leaves the possibility that they privately demonstrated a prototype to investors.

The landing page is probably just for showing people that they're working on the product. Very few of the eventual consumers are going to visit the site in its current form.

As always, the people of HN have found the weaknesses in this product that the founders haven't thought of at all, and they will surely shut the whole thing down now.

So this guy invites people to interviews by saying: “You know what, I've really enjoyed this conversation. Is there any chance you have a couple hours in the next few days to come in and meet a few people on the team?”. Then, as stated under "PHASE 3", the process is not staying for a couple hours and meeting a few people on the team, but actually an interview lasting at least 50 minutes with hiring manager, a 90 minute session working on a problem, then a talk about culture, another technical interview and finally an interview about fit.

This might be an effective way to get people to accept the invitation, but it doesn't seem totally honest.

Look at Uber's job postings, and you can see what kind of employees are required for each new geography.

This seems to insinuate that financial firms are not as numerous or maybe not as big as before. Does anyone know whether the financial sector has significantly grown or diminished from 2001 to now?