Top investment advisor Gary Black quotes Apple founder Steve Jobs to ‘send message’ to Tesla CEO Elon Musk
Top investment advisor and managing director of The Future Fund LLC, Gary Black has once again pressed Elon Musk’s Tesla to strengthen its marketing strategy. In a post shared on social media platform X (formerly known as Twitter) Black has warned that engineering along will not guarantee success in the era of robots and artificial intelligence. Black also gave a reference of Apple founder Steve Jobs, whoonce said that customer experience should be of prime importance. Black used the quote by Steve Jobs in order to send a direct message to Tesla CEO Elon Musk that even groundbreaking products need effective marketing to reach their full potential.
Read Gray Black post here
Steve Jobs famously said:“You start with the customer experience and work back toward the technology – not the other way around.”Many $TSLA bulls forget this basic concept that a product with great engineering won’t sell itself.TSLA FSD has a take rate of just 15% despite huge advances in unsupervised autonomy in 2025.Stephen King put it differently:“A product is something made in a factory; a brand is something that is bought by the customer. A product can be copied by a competitor; a brand is unique. A product can be quickly outdated; a successful brand is timeless.” $TSLA needs to invest in brand equity and marketing muscle to increase its intrinsic value.Black also stressed on the fact that Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) technology, despite its major advances in unsupervised autonomy in 2025, the take rate remains just 15%. “A product with great engineering won’t sell itself,” he wrote, underscoring that Tesla’s challenge lies not in innovation but in convincing customers of its value.He also cited author Stephen King, who once remarked that “a brand is what the customer actually buys,” emphasizing that Tesla must build stronger brand equity to maximize its intrinsic value.This is not the first time Black has urged Tesla to invest in marketing. He has repeatedly argued that the EV giant risks falling behind rivals if it does not bolster its brand presence, particularly as the industry shifts toward robotics and autonomous vehicles.
