Every quarter analysts and reporters ask Elon Musk about deadlines. The analysts build their models. The reporters write their articles. I consider most of this information of little interest. It’s artificial. It’s noise.

In business, there is only one deadline. The deadline is when you run out of money. It’s your burn rate. It’s the pitch you tell investors when you’re raising a round of funding. It’s your credit rating when you borrow.

Elon Musk and Tesla typically raise money on the heels of good news, incredible opportunity and Elon Musk is often plowing his own fortune into the company as well.

In the early 2000s when Tesla was looking to raise funding. They created a prototype. It accelerated really quickly. It blew people’s minds and they wrote checks.

In 2008, in the depths of the financial crisis, Tesla was nearing bankruptcy. The investors were skidish. Elon Musk plowed the last pennies of his fortune into the company and that conviction helped convince their investors to write checks.

In 2013 Tesla had a profitable quarter. They raised money.

More recently, Tesla got 100s of thousands of pre-orders for Model 3s. They raised money.

My guess is sometime in the next year Tesla will be profitable, the Model 3 will be a blockbuster, and they will unveil the Model Y and raise money to build new GigaFactories in China, and Germany.

I am interested in investing in companies with conviction and opportunities. I’m not interested in artificial deadlines.

Update: 5/4/19 I was mostly right about my predictions although they got a cheap loan from the Chinese to build a GigaFactory, and they raised money on the heels of releasing their new FSD computer.