Nick's Lemonade Stand

Bezos on $AMZN's 1st shareholder letter (a 🧵 on how I believe it relates to $TSLA) “It’s all about the long-term. If everything you do needs to work on a three-year time horizon, then you’re competing against a lot of people. But if you are willing to...

@BillAckman @X Is this a prank?

I am reaching out to the @X community for advice with the likely risk of sharing TMI. I have been sufficiently upset about the whole matter that I have lost sleep thinking about it and I am hoping that this post will enable me to get this matter off my chest. By way of background, I started a family office called TABLE about 15 years ago and hired a friend who had previously managed a family office, and years earlier, had been my personal accountant. She is someone that I trusted implicitly and consider to be a good person. The office started small, but over the last decade, the number of personnel and the cost of the office grew massively. The growth was entirely on the operational side as the investment team has remained tiny. While my investment portfolio grew substantially, the investments I had made were almost entirely passive and TABLE simply needed to account for them and meet capital calls as they came in. While TABLE purchased additional software and other systems that were supposed to improve productivity, the team kept increasing in size at a rapid rate, and the expenses continued to grow even faster. While I would periodically question the growing expenses and high staff turnover, I stayed uninvolved with the office other than a once-a-year meeting when I briefly reviewed the operations and the financials and determined bonus compensation for the President and the CFO. I spent no time with any of the other employees or the operations. The whole idea behind TABLE was that it would handle everything other than my day job so that I would have more time for my job and my family. Over the last six years, expenses ballooned even further, employee turnover accelerated, and I became concerned that all was not well at TABLE. It was time for me to take a look at what was going on. Nearly four years ago, I recruited my nephew who had recently graduated from Harvard and put him to work at Bremont, a British watchmaker, one of my only active personal investments to figure out the issues at the company and ultimately assist in executing a turnaround. He did a superb job. When he returned from the UK late last year after a few years at Bremont, I asked him to help me figure out what was going on with TABLE. When I explained to TABLE’s president what he would be doing, she became incredibly defensive, which naturally made me more concerned. My nephew went to work by first meeting with each employee to understand their roles at the company and to learn from them what ideas they had on how things could be improved. He got an earful. Our first step in helping to turn around TABLE was a reduction in force including the president and about a third of the team, retaining excellent talent that had been desperate for new leadership. Now here is where I need your advice. All but one of the employees who were terminated acted professionally and were gracious on the way out (excluding the president who had a notice period in her contract, is currently still being paid, and with whom I have not yet had a discussion). The highest compensated terminated employee other than the president, an in-house lawyer (let’s call her Ronda), told us that three months of severance was not enough and demanded two years’ severance despite having worked at the company for only two and one half years. When I learned of Ronda's request for severance, I offered to speak with her to understand what she was thinking, but she refused to do so. A few days ago, we received a threatening letter from a Silicon Valley law firm. In the letter, Ronda’s counsel suggests that her termination is part of longstanding issues of ‘harassment and gender discrimination’ – an interesting claim in light of the fact that Ronda was in charge of workplace compliance – and that her termination was due to: “unlawful, retaliatory, and harmful conduct directed towards her. Both [Ronda] and I [Ronda’s lawyer] have spoken with you about [Ronda’s] view of what a reasonable resolution would include given the circumstances. Thus far, TABLE has refused to provide any substantive response. This letter provides the last opportunity to reach a satisfactory agreement. If we cannot do so, [Ronda] will seek all appropriate relief in a court of competent jurisdiction.” The letter goes on to explain the basis for the “unsafe work environment” claim at TABLE: “In early 2026, Pershing Square’s founder Bill Ackman installed his nephew in an unidentified role at TABLE, Ackman’s family office. [His nephew]—whose only work experience had been for TABLE where he was seconded abroad for the last four years to a UK watch company held by Ackman—began appearing at TABLE’s offices and conducting interviews of employees without a clear explanation of his role or the purposes of these interviews. During this period, he made a series of inappropriate and genderbased [sic] comments to multiple employees that created an unsafe work environment. Among other things, [his nephew] made remarks about female employees’ ages (“Tell me you are nowhere near 40”), physical appearance (“Your body does not look like you have kids”), as well as intrusive questions about family planning and sexual orientation (“Who carried your son? Who will carry your next child?”). These incidents were reported to senior leadership at TABLE and Pershing Square. Rather than being addressed appropriately, the response from senior management reflected, at best, willful blindness to the inappropriateness of [his nephew]’s remarks and, at worst, tacit endorsement.” The above allegations about my nephew had previously been brought to my attention by TABLE’s president when they occurred. When I learned of them, I told the president that I would speak to him directly and encouraged her to arrange for him to get workplace sensitivity training. The president assured me that she would do so. When I spoke to my nephew, he explained what he actually had said and how his actual remarks had been received, not at all as alleged in the legal letter from Ronda’s counsel. I have also spoken to others at the lunch table who confirmed his description of the facts. In any case, he meant no harm, was simply trying to build rapport with other employees, and no one, as far as I understand, was offended. Ironically, Ronda claims in her legal letter that TABLE didn’t take HR compliance seriously, yet Ronda was in charge of HR compliance at TABLE and the person who gave my nephew his workplace sensitivity training after the alleged incidents. In any case, Ronda, as head of compliance, should have kept a record or raised an alarm if indeed there was pervasive harassment or other such problems at the company, and there is no evidence whatsoever that this is true. So why does Ronda believe she can get me to pay her nearly $2 million, i.e., two years of severance, nearly one year of severance for each of her years at the company? Well, here is where some more background would be helpful. Over the last two months, I have been consumed with a major family medical issue – one of my older daughters had a massive brain hemorrhage on February 5th and has since been making progress on her recovery – and I am in the midst of a major transaction for my company which I am executing from a hospital room office next to her . While the latter business matter is publicly known, the details of my daughter’s situation are only known to Ronda because of her role at our family office. Now, let’s get back to the subject at hand. Unfortunately, while New York and many other states have employment-at-will, there has emerged an industry of lawyers who make a living from bringing fake gender, race, LGBTQ and other discrimination employment claims in order to extract larger severance payments for terminated employees, and it needs to stop. The fake claim system succeeds because it costs little to have a lawyer send a threatening letter and nearly all of the lawyers in this field work on contingency so there is no or minimal cash cost to bring a claim. And inevitably, nearly 100% of these claims are settled because the public relations and legal costs of defending them exceed the dollar cost of the settlement. The claims are nearly always settled with a confidentiality agreement where the employee who asserts the fake claims remains anonymous and as a result, there is no reputational cost to bringing false claims. The consequences of this sleazy system (let’s call it ‘the System’) are the increased costs of doing business which is a tax on the economy and society. There are other more serious problems due to the System. Unfortunately, the existence of an industry of plaintiff firms and terminated employees willing to make these claims makes it riskier for companies to hire employees from a protected class, i.e., LGBTQ, seniors, women, people of color etc. because it is that much more reputationally damaging and expensive to be accused of racism, sexism, and/or intolerance for sexual diversity than for firing a white male as juries generally have less sympathy for white males. The System therefore increases the risk of discrimination rather than reducing it, and the people bringing these fake claims are thereby causing enormous harm to the other members of these protected classes. So what happened here? Ronda was vastly overpaid and overqualified for the job that she did at TABLE. She was paid $1.05 million plus benefits last year for her work which was largely comprised of filling out subscription agreements and overseeing an outside law firm on closing passive investments in funds and in private and venture stage companies, some compliance work, and managing the office move from one office to another. She had a very good gig as she was highly paid, only had to go into the office three days a week, and could work from anywhere during the summer. Once my nephew showed up and started to investigate what was going on, she likely concluded that there was a reasonable possibility she would be terminated, as her job was in the too-easy-and-to-good-to-be-true category. The problem was that she was not in a protected class due to her race, age or sexual identity so she had to construct the basis for a claim. While she is female and could in theory bring a gender-based discrimination claim, she reported to the president who is female and to whom she is very close, which makes it difficult for her to bring a harassment claim against her former boss. When my nephew complimented a TABLE employee at lunch about how young she looked – in response to saying she was going to her 40-year-old sister’s birthday party, he said ‘she must be your older sister’ – Ronda immediately reported it to our external HR lawyer. She thereby began building her case. The other problem for Ronda bringing a claim is that she was terminated alongside 30% of other TABLE employees as part of a restructuring so it is very difficult for her to say that she was targeted in her termination or was retaliated against. TABLE is now hiring an external fractional general counsel as that is all the company needs to process the relatively limited amount of legal work we do internally. In short, Ronda was eminently qualified and capable and did her job. She was just too much horsepower for what is largely an administrative legal role so she had to come up with something else to bring a claim. Now Ronda knew I was a good target and it was a good time to bring a claim against me. She also knew that I was under a lot of pressure because on March 4th when Ronda was terminated, my daughter had not yet emerged from consciousness, she was not yet breathing on her own, and my daughter and we were fighting for her life. I was and remain deeply engaged in her recovery while at the same time I was working on finishing the closing for the private placement round for my upcoming IPO. Ronda also knew that publicity about supposed gender discrimination and a “hostile and unsafe work environment” are not things that a CEO of a company about to go public wants to have released into the media. And she may have thought that the nearly $2 million she was asking for would be considered small in the context of the reputational damage a lawsuit could cause, regardless of the fact that two years of severance was an absurd amount for an employee who had only worked at TABLE for 30 months. She also likely considered that I wouldn’t want to embarrass my nephew by dragging him into the klieg lights when her claims emerged publicly. So, in summary, game theory would say that I would certainly settle this case, for why would I risk negative publicity at a time when I was preparing our company to go public and also risk embarrassing my nephew. Notably, she hired a Silicon Valley law firm, rather than a typical NY employment firm. This struck me as interesting as her husband works for one of the most prominent Silicon Valley venture firms whose CEO, I am sure, has no tolerance for these kinds of fake claims that sadly many venture-backed companies also have to deal with. I mention this as I suspect her husband likely has been working with her on the strategy for squeezing me as, in addition to being a computer scientist, he is a game theorist. My only advice for him is to understand more about your opponent before you launch your first move. All of the above said, gender, race, LGBTQ and other such discrimination is a real thing. Many people have been harmed and deserve compensation for this discrimination, and these companies and individuals should be punished for engaging in such behavior. Which brings me to the advice I am seeking from the X community. I am not planning to follow the typical path and settle this ‘claim.’ Rather, I am going to fight this nonsense to the end of the earth in the hope that it inspires other CEOs to do the same so we shut down this despicable behavior that is a large tax on society, employment, and the economy and contributes to workplace discrimination rather than reducing it. Do you agree or disagree that this is the right approach?

@wholemars More people need to apply this to Waymo

FSD is not a car, it is a driver. Expertise in building cars won’t help you build a human mind.

Did anyone have 9 unsupervised Austin Robotaxis on their bingo card for April?

@Greenbackd Love to see it

This is the most exciting human achievement in my lifetime. This is a spacemaxxxing account now.

Worth watching $TSLA investors 👀

@RampCapitalLLC This isn't definitive evidence. There's no way to know what the Artemis crew said in their prompt

Looks pretty flat to me

@kellyglawson @TeslaLarry History rhymes

@TeslaLarry @CashMoneyLemon Facebook is an interesting comparison. Their stock cut in half immediately after ipo and stayed down for a year and a half.

Idiot comment of the year. Revenue does not equal valuation. We'll hear a lot more from other idiots on this subject in the next 6 months. Fine. If you believe them, don't invest. Your choice.

@E__Strobel 'Dark side' has cultural significance

I weep for the state of education that people *still* call it the 'dark side of the moon' rather than the far side of the moon.

@SantoroSystems This is some Days of Thunder type shit

thick smoke? 0 visibility? that car just disappeared? Full speed ahead.......

Today we're releasing Gemma 4, our new family of open foundation models, built on the same research and technology as our Gemini 3 series. These models set a new standard for open intelligence, offering SOTA reasoning capabilities from edge-scale (2B and 4B w/ vision/audio) up to a 26B parameter MoE model and a 31B dense model. By releasing Gemma 4 under the Apache 2.0 license, we hope to enable more innovation across the research and developer communities. Our earlier Gemma 3 models were downloaded 400M times and over 100,000 variants of those models have been published, so we're excited to see what the community will do with the even better Gemma 4 models! Learn more at blog.google/innovation-and… and goo.gle/gemma-4-apache… Great work by everyone involved! #Gemma4 #AI #OpenSource #ML

Gemma is the glue

I wasn't making an argument that SpaceX valuation isn't justified. I was just pushing back on Larry who clutched his pearls when someone simply posted metrics. And for love of the game, I'll now push back on you. Regarding moatyness... Myspace sold for 35M in 2011 Less than a year later Facebook is worth over 100B. 3000x difference They were definitely farther ahead of their rivas back then, than SpaceX is versus theirs: Exhibit A, $RKLB 53x difference

@CashMoneyLemon @TeslaLarry Still if you consider Facebook IPO it would be one of the thousands of software companies and maybe houndred of social media platforms. When you are talking into SpaceX their moat and dominance in their respective industry it's like 80%. That could justify the multiple difference

@johncoogan @sama Congrats guys!! OpenAI video strategy 2025: Sora 2026: TBPN

My favorite band just sold out 😭 Jk! I've always hated that sentiment. Congrats to the whole team!!! 💪

HERE'S THE VIDEO: 🌶️Why we believe Micron $MU will be more profitable over the next 12 months than Tesla $TSLA will be in 2030🥵

Google is the best advertising company in the world, like Amazon, you tell them exactly what you're looking for. It's easy money. Meta, on the other hand, has to figure out what you want without you asking for it. Does it make market sense? I think the proof is in the pudding, and there's 14 years of public pudding.

Sure I can. But what percentage of that ad money are effective and legit ad money that bring sales revenue and make real market sense? If you are a business would you buy meta ad time? I have several businesses and I never have. Alphabet ad time - yes. If you go deeper you might find Meta is just a money channel for certain corporations,political circles, government and non-profits to channel money and then re-distribute. Much like USaid scheme rather than a real advertisement company.

Yes of course, the valuation worth considering is all future cash flows properly discounted back to today. But in practice no one is good at this, so when comparing valuations it does make sense to compare objective data. @amitisinvesting is comparing TTM revenue to market cap. Moreover, he's making no assumptions, he's just stating facts and posing a question. You say the idiot would have ignored Facebook? Let's add context to your Facebook IPO comparison. He used revenue so let's keep it apples to apples. Facebook IPO'd at 25x revenue, and at the time they were still a desktop company, with mobile waiting to breakout. SpaceX will be 116x revenue and likewise 'waiting to breakout.' Using his framework, clearly he'd be less likely to have missed Facebook, particularly when the smart phone was more tangible than AI data centers in space, on top of the 4.5x cheaper valuation. Additionally, it's a pretty big assumption that he's comparing a now 'mature' company with one that is 'breaking out' Is Meta mature? $META is as old a company as $TSLA but has a younger, singularly focused founder/CEO. Has an underlying business that is growing significantly faster and with much higher profitability. Has an underlying business that is getting stronger fundamentally with AI and they're investing in AI dwarfs Tesla. My point isn't that Meta is a better investment, I don't think it is but I'm not confident either way, I'm just saying that you wouldn't call Tesla 'mature,' so to use your words it would be idiotic for someone to classify Meta as such. Which brings me back to the point... What did he say that was idiotic? He cited objective data and posed a question.

Yes of course, the valuation worth considering is all future cash flows properly discounted back to today. But in practice no one is good at this, so when comparing valuations it does make sense to compare objective data. He's comparing TTM revenue to market cap. Moreover, he's making no assumptions, he's just stating facts and posing a question. You say the idiot would have ignored Facebook? Let's add context to your Facebook IPO comparison. He used revenue so let's keep it apples to apples. Facebook IPO'd at 25x revenue, and at the time they were still a desktop company, with mobile waiting to breakout. SpaceX will be 116x revenue and likewise 'waiting to breakout.' Using his framework, clearly he'd be less likely to have missed Facebook, particularly when the smart phone was more tangible than AI data centers in space, on top of the 4.5x cheaper valuation. Additionally, it's a pretty big assumption that he's comparing a now 'mature' company with one that is 'breaking out' Is Meta mature? $META is as old a company as $TSLA but has a younger, singularly focused founder/CEO. Has an underlying business that is growing significantly faster and with much higher profitability. Has an underlying business that is getting stronger fundamentally with AI and they're investing in AI dwarfs Tesla. My point isn't that Meta is a better investment, I don't think it is but I'm not confident either way, I'm just saying that you wouldn't call Tesla 'mature,' so to use your words it would be idiotic for someone to classify Meta as such. Which brings me back to the point... What did he say that was idiotic? He cited objective data and posed a question.

Because only idiots look back on a previous year of cash flow as the basis of valuation. Based on that the idiot would have ignored Facebook's IPO (the very company he cites): FCF 2011=$943m, IPO priced at $104B. About 1100x. SpaceX is about on par. And even more idiotic is to compare a company that is mature to one that is breaking out. Such a specious post. Sorry to use such strong language, but the post was ill considered, at best. If the guy is so bright, then why wouldnt he do the research? Intentional, IMO.