[fastball]

Hostile takeover seems like a stretch. Generally you use that phrasing when someone takes over a company in order to kill it and loot its corpse, not "invest heavily in the company and make it one of the most successful in the world".

A borderline non-sensical accusation w.r.t. PayPal, since he definitely didn't takeover PayPal, he founded X.com and got a payout through that after the merger and subsequent IPO + acquisition by eBay.

For Tesla, he was the first investor and took an active role in the company, starting in 2004 – less than a year after its inception and four years before they produced their first car (the Roadster). By the time the Roadster actually hit production, he was the CEO. Was the Roadster (a Li-ion sports car) Eberhard's idea? Absolutely. But it seems very unclear that it actually would have existed if not for Musk. And the rest of Tesla's vision/direction (that has made it the world's most valuable tech company) seems to have come almost entirely from Musk.

He wholly founded SpaceX and they're doing pretty well.

[rchaud]

> Generally you use that phrasing when someone takes over a company in order to kill it and loot its corpse,

You may be thinking of a leveraged buyout or LBO.

A hostile takeoever is one where the management of the company are excluded from acquisition talks. The potential acquirer goes over their heads and proposes a deal with the shareholders directly.

[fastball]

An LBO is a type of hostile takeover. In either case, the motivation from the "aggressor" is not typically "gee I just really want this company to succeed".

In any case, I certainly don't think Musk's relationship with Tesla qualifies.