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Comment by lylejantzi3rd | Hacker News Reader

There is no conflict of interest. Companies do this all the time. It's even considered a good thing in business circles. If you want preferential treatment, pricing, or scheduling, then buying the company is a great way to get it. Businesses call it "synergy."

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Tesla doesn't own X/Twitter though. Elon does. If I were a Tesla shareholder, I'd be mildly[0] irritated that Elon feels it's OK to take money out of "our" company to spend it on "his" company, even if there is some nominal benefit.

[0] the amounts are so tiny, I wouldn't really care. I'd be more angry that he thinks he can reasonably function as a full-time CEO for Tesla while gallivanting about with his other ventures.

Have you ever worked for a company that bought a software package that was so bad, you thought "who on earth would actually choose to buy this?" Chances are, the decision maker owns part of that company. It's considered a value-add because that said decision maker can put pressure on that company to make changes they want made, where if they went with another company they wouldn't have that inside leverage.

TIL that I must know a lot of people owning ATLASSIAN stocks.

To what extent is marketing via shareholders viable.

Let’s say company does $1bn a year, and my decision adds $1m/y revenue (0.1%) and my share holding is 0.1% and worth $10m. This has made me $10k. Not insignificant but a person making that decision $10k bribe to make a suboptimal decision is bad value. Especially when it is not clear it happened due to volatility.

The real reason they may do it is favour for favours.

At least according to Elon, you have it backwards. It was the shareholders pressuring Elon to advertise, not him trying to pay one of his companies at the expense of the other.

200k is tiny though. It is a non issue.

The spend is $200k now. It’s a non-issue now. It may become an issue later if the spend increases.

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