[suckler]

Paypal kicked Musk out for being annoying and useless and wanting to implement bad ideas. He bought Tesla after it already put out its fan-favorite car. To say he contributed anything is questionable, and to say anything he has done is revolutionary is laughable.

[lotsofpulp]

Repeated success along multiple businesses is an objective measure. There is a chance he lucked into paypal, tesla, spaceX, and starlink, but it seems reasonable to assume he is contributing (and detracting simultaneously) something to score 4 successess, even if that is just hiring the right people and making big bets.

These are also hard businesses, dealing with physics, chemistry, and regulations. Unlike SaaS businesses one spins up on cloud services. Which lends some more credence to not just being lucky.

Obviously, he has a reprehensible agenda, but there is clearly a case to be made about his ability to execute.

[jhgb]

> He bought Tesla after it already put out its fan-favorite car

If you mean Tesla Roadster, that came out in 2008, 4 years after Musk's involvement. Or were you trying to say something else?

[pas]

this is a bad framing. he did put in a lot of work, he did mercilessly churn through engineers to get results, cajoled various power-brokers to get subsidies and financing necessary to keep on keeping on.

he is the ultimate right place right time person, managed to turn innovative historically doomed-to-fail ventures into very highly valued mature(ish) businesses.

it's unlikely that someone without his micromanagerial madness could have done these. (and of course in a better world he would have gotten help, employees wouldn't have been fired on a whim, and the market wouldn't reward liars. not to mention that ideally the market would price in the consequences of enriching someone with so loose morals.)