Kim Java

Elon Musk's Tesla pay plan could be worth $1 trillion. The man who started Tesla before him says: "When I got kicked out of Tesla I had no money." His name is Martin Eberhard. In 2003, he and Marc Tarpenning started Tesla Motors. In 2004, Musk invested more than $6 million and became chairman. Eberhard was CEO. In the video below, Eberhard talks about his shares, his exit, and why Musk still attacks him. The Roadster ran late and over budget. In 2007, Eberhard lost the CEO job. By the end of that year, he was out of the company. He later told Forbes: "When I got kicked out of Tesla I had no money." He sold most of his shares, "probably too soon," he says. In 2009, he sued Musk for libel, slander and breach of contract. Part of the fight was over who could call himself the founder. They settled. Five men could now use the co-founder title. Musk was one of them. Musk kept bringing it up. In 2022, he wrote that Eberhard was "fired unanimously by the board in July 2007 (for damn good reasons)." "I'm still occupying real estate in his head," Eberhard says in the video. The case for Musk: he says early Tesla was "a shell corp with no employees, no IP, no designs, no prototype." He says he led the Roadster's design and risked everything to keep Tesla alive. The $1 trillion isn't cash in his pocket. It's a shareholder-approved stock plan tied to huge targets. I post one story like this every day. Who deserves more credit: the founders who started Tesla, or Musk, who helped turn it into a giant?