Elon Musk is the poster boy for being mediocre but being in the right place at the right time, then leveraging power law gains after that. Enthusiasm is not a skill.
Curious. What was this time and place.
First - if you want to raise money today in silicon valley - the place is flooded with money.
Second - elon's not (that) famous for paypal or his other earlier companies - he's famous for tesla and spacex. Even as a rich person he put a huge amount of money into them relative to net worth.
Third - he did this and took on two entranched systems. In space he took on the existing govt backed space launch system type industry. These were players with BILLIONs of annual costs for very little return (SLS will be $20B to develop and $2B+ per launch). He's offering launches in $50M - $100M range by comparison. Etc etc. 100+ launches so far (SLS has zero even though govt spent many billions on it).
For cars - he had to build his entire car charging network, fight dealers and their govt cronies, fight oil, all while govt / politicians were spending billions again on this hydrogen superhighway nonsense.
You need to look at what govt is paying for existing defense / industrial launches. What they spend on development. Asia / Russia / Europe and US.
Atlas the govt paid $15B+ to develop and then 200M+ per launch.
Most other programs have been govt funded / cost+ contracts. SLS fits this.
Can you give me a specific example of the "billions" spaceX has gotten in "corporate welfare"? They are providing the deal of the century on development and ops costs, and are putting in far more private capital then most other providers as well, taking much more performance risk (ie, not all cost+ contracts) etc.
The idea that this approach is somehow more costly than the pure pork style of the past is a pretty bold claim.
There's really no detailed notes on any SpaceX subsidies.
The article talkes about $1.3B Nevada provided Tesla for a battery factory in Nevada. Digging a bit deeper, you find that these are mostly tax incentives commonly used by all auto mfgs and these are not actually cash payments.
Again, tesla is not unique in getting support from the govt (and likely has received relatively little over its lifetime compared to others).
From 2012
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/02/us/how-local-taxpayers-ba...
From 2008:
$80B bailout (not tax incentives - cash).
Ridiculous FIFO inventory valuation methods allowed for tax purposes. etc.
The actual incentives here are things like 10 year waiver of property taxes. That's not super uncommon if you built out somewhere that is less developed, which gigafactory nevada did.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giga_Nevada#/media/File:Tesla_...
Usually corp does have to pay some user fees and covers much more onsite stuff than you would see in an urban area for example (ie, Tesla would generally need to run onsite fire protection management vs Nevada building a fire station next to factory).
The idea is that after 10 years you've helped build a manufacturing base, the land and area is (much) more valuable, and long run your tax base in significantly increased. But since nothing much is there to start with you don't charge someone that much to develop it (you may even pay them in some cases though nevada may not have).
Note that businesses take this same approach with each other frequently. Intel wouldn't help Apple with chip for first iphone, Samsung (ARM) did. Was a good investment for ARM.
There's more to it than merely "wanting" to raise money. First, build a product, then market the product, get customers, get revenue, and then start pitching like crazy and hope that you get investment before your own savings or friends and family round money runs out.
If you're aware of a more straightforward or reliable path, I would love to hear about it.
Sure, but let's not pretend that is unique. Our government subsidize many (most?) companies in Energy, Automotive, and Aerospace.