And secondly, this was an unmanned test launch to LEO. I think it'd be more prudent to wait till we get reliable manned launches to LEO before dreaming about other planets.
It's very cool that private companies are now doing this type of stuff. But imo the technical challenges still remain.
What they said was they couldn't be funding the whole Mar endeavor. They certainly can and plan to fund Mars launches. They stated their aspirational goal of sending the first unmanned spaceship to Mar in 2022, followed 2 years later with a manned one. They have seemed to pivot a bit to Moon, so I'm not so sure what their current plan is, but a trip to Mar isn't out of their reach financially.
Source? I highly doubt this is accurate.