Elon Musk: “Don’t Convince People With a PowerPoint — Convince Them With a Working Prototype”

Elon Musk to entrepreneurs: Don't try to convince people with a PowerPoint or a website, but with a working prototype.

“Try to get to a useful prototype as soon as possible with the least amount of money. I think that's usually a good idea. Everything works on PowerPoint and so people are somewhat skeptical if they see a PowerPoint presentation or a website or something, but if they see the actual hardware and it's working, that is much, much more convincing.

That's why the first thing we did with Tesla was to create a prototype Roadster. That was the first order of business to show people that it was real and it actually did work. And even though it was somewhat of a hack, it still gave people the feeling of what it could be.

So, I think generally that's a good move. It also will help identify if what you're trying to do is impossible or extremely difficult or something like that.”

Cleantech Summit, 2011