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Tesla has dominated the electric car space in recent years, but recently their performance has gotten worse, much worse. Let's talk about what's changed and what we can learn from their story about how to avoid a similar situation they find themselves in currently.If you want to reach product-market fit faster, sign up for my free 5 day email course here - https://nxtstep.io/fit/Episode TranscriptHey, folks. Sean here.And today, what I want to talk toyou about are the reasons behind Tesla's meteoricrise and subsequent fall in recent years.From a product company perspective, So ifyou're unaware, things haven't been going wellfor Tesla as of recently.They've been steeply discounting.Their vehicles and their stock prices have been on along, slow slide for the greater part of a year.Now, I want to talk about the reasons for that.And this might come as a surprise, because we're allkind of used to seeing a lot of news aboutall the successful things Tesla has been doing.So I want to dive into some of the thingsthat have been, I think, leading indicators into where they'vewound up performance wise at this point, because most peopleare expecting Tesla just to continue to rise.Now, there are any number of factors for that, butI've read a number of recent articles like one fromBusiness Insider, which in my opinion, essentially knocks Tesla inan area which is the most damning.If you ask someone like myself and that'sthey're considering Tesla to be essentially just anothercar company, I think that's the most insultingthing you can say to Tesla.Or I should say the most damning thing you cansay to them and probably the worst case scenario forthem and everything that they've been trying to avoid.And I'll explain what I mean.I think Tesla's original,essentially value proposition.And A Key Part Of It wasn't as MuchOf Being A Car Company, it Was More OfBeing A Tech Company as and they Were promisingfeatures you really Couldn't Get anywhere else.And that was part of the valueand why consumers were buying it.They weren't just buying it becauseit was an electric car.You could still get electric cars from other companies.But the rise of Tesla was nowhere nearlike some of the other major automotive manufacturers.But where else were you going to get thecool self driving tech and things like that?Where else were you going to get an electriccar that performed better than a gas vehicle?These were things that Tesla had done and figuredout that made their value proposition, in my opinion,a lot stronger, which enabled them to bring theelectric vehicle as a viable option to the massmarket, which is something that, in my opinion, previouslyhad not been done.So Tesla gets a lot of credit for that.And I would consider them to have first moveradvantage in this case, which is a huge dealif you make the commitment and the investment there.From a product company perspective, thatcan be very rewarding for you.And thus far it has been for Tesla.Although recently they've continued aside.So I want to talk about what's changed sincethen because things seem to be going particularly well.I Think There Are Two Key Things That Have Changedin terms of Tesla's trajectory, which has led to theirmore recent slide and why they fall off.And the first is that major automotive manufacturers havefigured out how to become a tech company beforeTesla's figured out how to become a car company.They want to talk more about this one first,and that is that Tesla gets beat up bythings like Consumer Reports all the time.People are constantly tearing apart their buildquality, what the service experience is like,and a number of other things.Consumers complain about it a loton the web as well too. So if you do a little bit ofresearch on what Tesla ownership is actually like,it's not all sunshine and roses.That's a big difference and a real problemfor Tesla because that means they're losing essentiallywhat once was their competitive advantage.Other automotive manufacturers have seen the fact that theelectric vehicle essentially is somewhat established on the massmarket at this point, and they see an opportunityto capitalize on that because they have most ofthese other things figured out that Tesla still hasyet to really figure out.So the second thing that I want to mention isthat Tesla in many ways has over promised and underdeliveredon some of the key features that made them soattractive, like, for example, self driving technology.Now, most of their customers would probably say thatthe self driving technology has experience, is nowhere nearwhat it was once promised to be, and it'sbeen continually promised over and over again.And the can kind of keeps getting kicked in termsof when that experience has ultimately come available for thepeople that have invested in it already, and they've investedreal dollars and a lot of money.It's been an expensive proposition for awhile now, but yet that experience reallyhasn't been delivered upon as such.That creates another frustrating experience.And at the same time, just like I mentionedpreviously, other automotive manufacturers are making big waves anda lot of progress in this area as well. Too.So Tesla seems to have kind of gotten out over itsskis a bit in terms of what it thinks it wasgoing to be capable of versus what it actually is.So what can we take away from this case studythus far for those of us involved in building productcompanies to make sure we don't fall into similar traps?Well, the first is becareful over promising and underdelivering.If you're promising something from a product experience perspectiveto your customers that ultimately you're going to struggleto deliver on or you aren't sure whether ornot you can, don't make that promise.You need to keep that until, from asolution design perspective, you have the level ofconfidence to state that it is something thatyou're ultimately going to be able to provide.And by a certain period of time, because ifyour customers are expecting it and they don't getit, especially if you're charging for it, which issomething Tesla has been doing, that's going to putyou in a really bad situation.And that's where Tesla finds itself today.And the second is if you are luckyenough to have benefited from first mover advantage,you have to continue to innovate.Because if you aren't, other people are goingto have the opportunity to catch up.And that's exactly what's happened to Tesla.So far, ford, GM and others have had the opportunityto catch them in the market because they've been ableto figure out problems tesla has yet to conquer.As such, that's made Tesla's life a lot moredifficult and the competition that much more fierce.People have been educated and trained by Tesla becausethey've had this first mover advantage, which is expensiveand ti...