Take a look at its stock chart.

Tesla's 2010 IPO price was $17. After a bit of a bump, for roughly the first two years of its life as a public company, the stock traded flat.

Then the stock exploded. Eventually, it would surge to $291 in September of 2014 and give Tesla a market cap in excess of $30 billion.

CEO Elon Musk was a multi-billionaire. Anyone who had bought shares after the IPO saw a better than 1,000% return.

Of course, that return came with a very typical price: volatility. As you can see from the chart below, after a gradual increase in 2013 Tesla went on a wild, wild roller-coaster ride. Investing was not for the weak or timid.