Viswanathan K's Thoughts

Car companies sell their vehicles through dealers. Elon Musk though decided the best way was for Tesla to sell the car directly, writes Tim Higgins . But this brought the company into “unchartered territory” – in most American states, car companies are not allowed to sell directly to customers!   Given that Tesla had enough challenges – building a car company from scratch, not just another car but an electric one, and the need for huge cash investments – why was Musk trying to create one more challenge for the company? Well, Musk ideologically hated the “hard sell” approach – coming from the Internet age, he felt a great product would sell itself. In addition, Musk understood that buyers would need to be educated about electric cars – and for that, he didn’t trust the dealerships; instead, Tesla should build its own sales team. And yet: “He tended to show little interest in the boring nuts and bolts of sales operations.” This is just one of many contradictory stances Musk...

When my 7 year-old daughter wanted to take money to buy stuff at the school canteen, I tried shooting it down pointing out that she didn’t know to subtract in her head. “How would you know how much they should return?”, I asked. “It’s OK if they don’t return the right amount,” she said. Seeing my jaw drop, she explained her stance, “It’s your money, I am fine if you spent a little extra”. Another time, she told me that giving extra money for something is better than giving the exact amount. “Why?”, I asked. “Simple,” she said, “That way they give you back some money. Imagine that: giving you money for buying something from them .” Patience, I reminded myself. She will learn when she is ready. Or even better, when she has an incentive to learn such things. I think that incentive driven moment to learn about subtraction and accounting has arrived. Of late, she has taken to growing plants. It soon became a group activity with her friends where they’d all plant seeds in cups,...