> “He’s going to need capital,” said Ross Gerber, chief executive officer of Gerber Kawasaki Wealth & Investment Management, which holds Tesla shares. “That’s the one part of the financials that are a little bit troubling. To underestimate the cash burn over the next six months will be a mistake.”<p>It's not that troubling. Even massive companies (AMZN in 2014) need to raise big capital. When you have something you want to do, you get the money and spend it.[1]<p>This seems to be constantly framed as negative ("they aren't making any money!"), but that's the correct growth strategy for what Musk wants to do. Nobody adds tons of debt just to <i>not use it.</i> Cribbing from my comment yesterday:<p>I've owned TSLA a long time and I hope they don't start making money, and continue the Amazon model and actually build something with years of minimal or no profits, re-investing vigorously. Amazon had almost 20 years in business without "making any money" except a few quarters where they accidentally eked out some non-trivial profit.<p>But without their spending, they wouldn't have become Amazon. Without Tesla's spending, they won't be a <i>future</i> company, they'll just be a tiny car company.<p>For some historical comparison: Amazon added $6bn in debt as recently as 2014. Even very large and very successful companies take on debt to fuel growth far beyond "bootstrap" numbers. Both companies leverage as much investment money as they can to build and expand as fast as they can. If you look at Amazon's raises in the late 1990's you'll find something more comparable to Tesla today relative to revenue. In 1999 Amazon raised $1.25 billion, and their revenue for the year was $1.64 billion. So they raised proportionally way more money than Tesla has so far this year. And spent it all!<p>full comment here: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14915317" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14915317</a><p>[1] The flipside of this is that it's an indictment of companies that hoard huge amounts of cash, like Apple. That they can't find a way spend it building future stuff is a signal that they are out of big ideas, and (in the case of Apple) have been for some time.<p>Musk and Bezos, on the other hand, have clear ideas of what to spend money on to build something.