Not to mention it required a nation state to fund its roughly $40-80B development cost. Can only guess, but would expect the development costs of the Falcon 1/9/Heavy were maybe $3-5B?
That said, Space X has benefited from all of the R&D done in the past. They weren't building it in a vacuum.
That doesn't include the original costs to develop the Falcon 9 and all of its subsequent variants, nor the cost to develop the original Falcon 1.
1. No privately funded rocket venture has ever gotten nearly this far
2. Reusable boosters are a Big. Deal.
3. The BFR will have a higher LEO payload and is likely to begin testing next year
4. Payload size is a poor metric by itself, launch costs are an extremely relevant part of the equation
I could go on, but what I'm saying is that even with "a little perspective", SpaceX has achieved something hugely unprecedented, astonishing and inspiring. The prior existence of the Saturn V adds some context, but it doesn't even begin to address the question of why no other 'rich dude' has tried to put together a team to do something similar at this level, which I think is a fascinating one worthy of discussion.