Tesla DEBT

# Tesla DEBT

### Simplified answers / considerations

Tesla is a great example of a company with a lot of DEBT. What can you see might be their:

- Dependencies
  - Their entire supply chain for every part of the car. And a car is largely an assembly of many parts.
    - For example, initially they bought the design of their first car from Lotus in the UK and had them manufacture it
      - Lotus in turn was buying materials from other suppliers
        - Those suppliers
- External factors
  - Government subsidies of EV purchases - a very positive influence
  - Public awareness of climate change and the problem with fossil fuels
- Barriers to entry, backlash and burden as they have scaled
  - Barriers to entry: The automobile industry has it’s own unique distribution and servicing network and Tesla had to break into that with it’s own dealerships
  - Backlash: Problems with batteries busting into flames, and the self driving software and accidents
- Timing issues
  - The availability of charging stations has become a major issue for buyers as they experience the reality of hours versus minutes to recharge vs refuel

## Hear how Michael taught it (lecture)

Tesla is the fun, still-current whole-product/DEBT example. The car is only part of the whole product; a huge dependency is charging: the availability of charging stations and reliable electrical access. To this day that dependency shapes buying behavior. I know plenty of people who won't buy a Tesla, not because of the car, but because they know they can't yet rely on being able to charge it where and when they need to. That's a dependency outside Tesla's own product that directly gates adoption, exactly the kind of external factor DEBT forces you to surface, because if you ignore it you'll be selling something that can't fully solve the customer's real-world problem.

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Source: https://startupsecretssandbox.com/tesla-debt-143
From the Startup Secrets Field Guide (unofficial), frameworks by Michael Skok.

Simplified answers / considerations

Tesla is a great example of a company with a lot of DEBT. What can you see might be their:

Dependencies
- Their entire supply chain for every part of the car. And a car is largely an assembly of many parts.
  - For example, initially they bought the design of their first car from Lotus in the UK and had them manufacture it
    - Lotus in turn was buying materials from other suppliers
      - Those suppliers
External factors
- Government subsidies of EV purchases - a very positive influence
- Public awareness of climate change and the problem with fossil fuels
Barriers to entry, backlash and burden as they have scaled
- Barriers to entry: The automobile industry has it’s own unique distribution and servicing network and Tesla had to break into that with it’s own dealerships
- Backlash: Problems with batteries busting into flames, and the self driving software and accidents
Timing issues
- The availability of charging stations has become a major issue for buyers as they experience the reality of hours versus minutes to recharge vs refuel

🎙 Hear how Michael taught it the lecture, cleaned & woven in

▶ Watch the original lecture

▶ Startup Secrets Part 1: Value Proposition — watch on YouTube ↗

Tesla is the fun, still-current whole-product/DEBT example. The car is only part of the whole product; a huge dependency is charging: the availability of charging stations and reliable electrical access. To this day that dependency shapes buying behavior. I know plenty of people who won’t buy a Tesla, not because of the car, but because they know they can’t yet rely on being able to charge it where and when they need to. That’s a dependency outside Tesla’s own product that directly gates adoption, exactly the kind of external factor DEBT forces you to surface, because if you ignore it you’ll be selling something that can’t fully solve the customer’s real-world problem.

View the original page ↗