One way I think of Renaissance and some of these other quant funds is almost a retirement package for so many of these academics and researchers.
As has been mentioned elsewhere, these are some of the best and brightest people from their fields who have established reputations and are well-known in their fields. I would assume most of these people have spent the bulk of their professional lives working in academia or in pure research, so I do wonder how many of the RenTech employees are people have been working for (relative) peanuts in academia before making the switch towards the end of their careers and "cashing out" essentially. Pretty sweet if you ask me.
The inanity of the comparison knows no end... If you think Tesla and Amazon are similar businesses in any way, I have a short-term, tech-enabled, real-estate company to sell you, too.
You're right, the goal isn't to be profitable next year, it was to be profitable this year. Actually, Elon said "I am optimistic about being profitable in Q1 and all quarters going forward," not even a year ago. So much for that. Also, Tesla isn't a startup--they've been in business for more than 15 years.
Tesla's annual depreciation outpaces their capital spending, so they aren't even spending enough to maintain their current assets. Last year they missed their planned CapEx by something like $1 billion. Also not something a "growth" company does.
That's because they are (and have been) in a precarious financial condition for almost their entire history, only made worse by the recent acquisition of an insolvent solar company in order to bailout you and your family members financial stakes.
Growth companies are always in a precarious financial position. That is their nature. Default dead, as pg put it. The goal is to achieve market scale, then make that financial position stable and profitable, rather than precarious and feeding on investment.
Right, the Business Roundtable, led by venerable and respected institutions such as Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Exxon, Chevron, General Dynamics, and--wait for it-- Amazon.
No, but it will slow the innovation in that space, which I consider to be a positive development. It's on-topic, because slowing innovation is why people are complaining about Google's position being strengthened.
(Also, my perhaps naive hope is that the better the Google's market share here, the more damage will be caused by EU regulating the space.)
His point it seems, was that strengthening Googles position (by making it harder for competitors to comply) was a price worth paying for stronger privacy protection afforded by the GDPR legislation.
As has been mentioned elsewhere, these are some of the best and brightest people from their fields who have established reputations and are well-known in their fields. I would assume most of these people have spent the bulk of their professional lives working in academia or in pure research, so I do wonder how many of the RenTech employees are people have been working for (relative) peanuts in academia before making the switch towards the end of their careers and "cashing out" essentially. Pretty sweet if you ask me.