alt Hacker NewsI'd argue the spirit of entrepreneurialism and salesmanship in the story is more American!
I've just been through this process. Very painful. SF based company, US founder.
Same founder story - couldn't focus on customers, couldn't focus on product, always a shiny new idea to distract him from had just been decided or what needed to be decided. Each idea could be the thing that made the difference. Willing to work hard, very capable of talking a good game, not able to deliver.
Tesla had a product that worked, was essentially first and best on the market, not that many models, not that many features. Focusing on the hype and gloss is ignoring a lot of substance. What even is the point of criticising a startup for its hype when its exactly what people want to hear and aligns to a lot of real, significant, ongoing research?
"If the founder had capital and vision" is pretty much tautological. It's true but not particularly useful to know that people who have money and know what to do with it will probably succeed.
He diluted his vision to garbage on the first enterprise customer. Because he needed to sell now. From OP, there is visible urgency to do sales even when the product is not ready.
Tesla was overhyped in the first decade after acquisition by Musk; it was bleeding money for 15 years. Arguably, the first Tesla cars were worse and pricier than traditional cars.
My point is that compared to the US, in Europe you have very few stories of successful stealth startups or startups that have needed lots of money for many years. That is a main reason why we cannot create a frontier LLM lab.