My shareholders expect me to make the most profit. That's the ugly, dirty truth.
A movie studio has to answer to a marketing department, and to shareholders, to ensure the broadest audience possible for its product; it tends to err on the side of caution as a result.
Being a public company certainly doesn't stop you from taking a really long-term time horizon, but it does make it more difficult.
I wish we could be private with Tesla. It actually makes us less efficient to be a public company.
When you start to get shareholders, clients, employees, rating agencies, and everybody converging, and then your competitors bad-mouth you, you know you did the right thing.
I hated being a public company CEO.
When you face the shareholders, then you can feel the heat is on you. For 20 years I got to answer to my shareholders. It's not easy.
I think there's a lot we could do that maybe would give a little more decision space to CEOs, to shareholders who want to hold for the long term, to investors who want to be part of the long term, that they would maybe have a little more room to withstand the pressure that is otherwise coming down on them.
If you want me to do things only for ROI reasons, you should get out of this stock.
