[thisisbad]

  Except that Musk currently only has two...

Batista had one EBX Group and the ones mentioned were subsidiaries.

  ...both are doing quite well and delivering on their promises

They are not profitable, which means they are not doing well.

  ...he's landing rockets on ships and selling tens of thousands of enormously expensive cars per year.

Batista's companies were drilling for oil, doing construction, shipping and many other things.

[mikeash]

SpaceX is profitable. Tesla is not, but only because they want to take over the world. If they concentrated on being a niche high-end car maker they'd already be profitable.

According to your link, Batista's companies never did the quantities they needed or said they would. The oil drilling didn't produce much oil, the drilling equipment manufacturer didn't sell much equipment, and the shipping company didn't do much shipping.

What's the Elon Musk equivalent to "Batista’s oil wells only pumped 1/50th of the barrels he predicted they would"? Tesla said they'd sell 50-60,000 cars last year, and they sold somewhat over 50,000, not 1,000. SpaceX said they want to do 18 launches this year, so far they're on track for more like 12, but certainly not 0.36.

[AJ007]

Really Batista is like an anti-Musk. I'm not sure I could find two billionaires(ex-billionaire) who were further apart.

Charlie Munger's quote I read in Poor Charlie's Almanack a really long time ago resonated with me pretty well when I saw Batista being interviewed on Charlie Rose years back. “Bernie Ebbers and Ken Lay were caricatures – they were easy to spot. They were almost psychopaths." * Since no copy of the book online, https://25iq.com/charlie-munger-book-to-date-chapters-1-5/

[synaesthesisx]

This is America, where profits are irrelevant (take a look at any of the recent companies with multi-billion dollar valuations that surely aren't on that level of profitability).