[staunch]

I think what we all want is a lot more more Elon Musks to push the world forward more quickly.

But he was only able to create Tesla and SpaceX because he gained a massive windfall from PayPal. That payout could have easily been an order of magnitude smaller, or even gone to zero. He wasn't even involved in the company so he got super lucky with that.

Even though he had a network of powerful friends, virtually all of them were too cowardly to invest in SpaceX or Tesla, especially after things got hard. They all thought he was a dumb "web startup guy" tilting at windmills and burning up his money.

His early investors totally bailed on him. The fact that he could personally bankroll his companies is the only reason they exist today. Having to answer to anyone else would have doomed him to failure.

So, you want more Elon Musks? Find super smart and crazily ambitious people and give them massive fortunes.

[burkaman]

Elon Musk did not create Tesla, and it succeeded thanks to a massive low-interest government loan.

If you want more Elon Musks, start electing politicians that are willing to invest in things that private citizens can't or won't, and stop caring about whose name is on top of the org chart.

[staunch]

He was the primary funding for the company throughout its early life and then personally saved the company from failure. Without Elon Musk the company would not exist at all.

The DOE loan probably did save the company, but before Telsa there was no electric car company worth giving a government loan to in the first place. And they paid it back 10 years early.

Fisker, a Tesla copycat, got ~$1.4 billion in DOE loans and failed completely. Tesla got a third of that and succeeded because they had Elon Musk.

[hoaw]

I am not sure I would focus on the money as a factor for Musk's success. There are a lot of rich, including newly rich, people who aren't Musk. The reason he isn't one of them is because he didn't want the money more than doing something real. Chances are that if he didn't end up with that money he would still have tried. As far as I know the plan wasn't really to build a company the size of SpaceX in the first place. But it was still to create a real company. Once he had literally shown up to the launch pad, opportunities presented themselves.

This is in many ways counter to current models for success. Where everyone wants a quick fix. Zero to hero. Where substance is a liability. Because if you have to accomplish something in particular, what is the angle? "Oh, a physics degree would be useful? Well, that is clearly unreasonable I want to be successful".

You want another Musk you get 'real' companies, doing 'real' work, selling 'real' technology. And where that is the main purpose. If it isn't, there is no need to work on technology that you sell. It becomes a disadvantage in an endless quest of prototypes and promises to please investors.

And yes, it is sort of ironic, but at the same time not, that one of our most celebrated entrepreneurs had a lot of backing of the US government and already existing industries. I don't think it makes much sense to critic that as such though.

[avmich]

> But he was only able to create Tesla and SpaceX because he gained a massive windfall from PayPal.

Agree. Bezos was earlier, but threading lighter. Carmack didn't have enough resources. Investors were slow even after 2004 X Prize. So Musk had little competition.

EDIT: interesting that just a few years earlier Andrew Beal folded complaining about unfair NASA competition. And less than decade before that McDonnel Douglas were trying to jumpstart with Delta Clipper... The window of opportunity isn't that big...