"If you don't understand last couple of sentences, or you don't believe them, you haven't read up enough on how to grow startup business. If so, I get it, you're dev. You're wrong though. I'm dev that has gone through few startups and picked up bunch of business on the side, which is why I'm trying to explain from the viewpoint that I hope makes sense. Assuming you're genuine person that has interest in discussing things, and not a troll. We had bunch recently, but from your first couple posts, I don't think you are."
I'll be the first to admit I could be wrong about a great many things, and if I was 100% sure of my short position than I would have much more into it. I manage risk first meaning if i am either wrong about the final price or the timing, I lose a manageable amount of my liquidity. I won't rehash my opinion of the financials, but part of my short here is also against the market as well - of which tesla is not my only short here. In fact I am not long too many names right now to be honest with you.
A great example would be cisco, which was one of the stellar performers of the 90s and saw its prices appreciate something wild like 10,000%. The company literally owned its space ( networking hardware), and posted a record consecutive number of quarters of earnings growth. However in 2000 after its peak, its price dropped precipitously 80%, and is still down something like 30% from its all time high 17 years later. Do I still like Cisco as a company? Heck yes - they still own much of the market, and are still the standard for network certs ( got one of their books on my desk at work in fact). The point is to me that any company is susceptible to the vicissitudes of the markets -leaders, laggards, and everyone inbetween.
Concerning start ups, one of the reason I got into development was to start my own business so I have some startup experience. Like zip2, I have coded my own ideas from scratch as well and let me tell you it aint easy what he did. The lessons I learned from Ries, Blank, et al. was that capturing the early adopters is key. Tesla did this very well and I commend them for that. Before Tesla, Electric cars were not sexy at all, and this is not the case today. Crossing the Chasm is another thing entirely, and this struggle is why I am short the company at the present time - in my mind the business model doesn't work. But if they do, i'll admit I messed up, close up my short and find other trades.