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Comment by ryandrake | Hacker News Reader

> If there's no Elon, there's no SpaceX.

Why not?

What mystical gift does this one person have that 7 billion other people don't, that permits him and only him to run the company? This is a really unpopular opinion on a web site that exalts founders, but I don't think it really takes much special skill to run a company. Most (but admittedly not all) CEOs are in their position not because of their know-how, but because 1. They founded the company, and happened to be the one that flipped a coin heads 20 times in a row; or 2. They were born into that Ivy League class that closely gatekeeps CxO and SVP positions for themselves; or 3. Were descendants of one of the above.

Assuming a successful CEO is uniquely skilled is like assuming a lottery winner is uniquely skilled at winning the lottery.

I think many people, if given Elon’s financial war chest and basic knowledge of and an interest in rocketry, could have made SpaceX.

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Musk didn't have that much money in the early 2000s. Compared to Bezos, he was small fish back then and SpaceX almost went bankrupt developing Falcon 1. If it really did, I don't doubt someone would explain persuasively why it could not have avoided that grim fate with a jackass founder like Musk; but they would have been forgotten already by now.

Attrition rate among space startups is insane. A lot of exciting projects like Armadillo Aerospace (by John Carmack of DOOM fame) crashed and burned. The graveyard of defunct space companies is huge.

I'm sure there are lots of other people out there who could run today's SpaceX as a space cargo trucking company. But Elon deserves the credit for creating two wildly successful companies that revolutionized their respective industries, both in the face of hugely entrenched competitors in highly regulated markets that hadn't seen successful new players in decades, and both as a side effect of his actual goal of getting humans to Mars.

The only people who were even competing were eccentric billionaires so let's be clear that he only beat a handful of other people who even had access to attempt the business. It's not that huge of an accomplishment because private space was theorized for a long time but NASA sucked up all the air in the room for the longest time but Elon's timing was just right. He out of the handful of billionaires working on this would get a chance to succeed at scale.

Well, he was clearly competing with the faceless environment that allowed only eccentric billionaires to appear to be his only competition. If it was an open niche it would have been filled with others. Reading other threads here I learn that there have indeed been multiple failed attempts at space companies.

Maybe it's just a selection effect, but maybe they played their cards wisely and maybe some of the key choices can be attributed to the founder of the company that set the vision and picked the team carefully.

I'm personally not a fan of personality cults, but I don't think it's fair to swing too much on the other side. It doesn't strike me as plausible to think that Musk is just sitting on his ass and reaping the benefits of hard work of other people, and did that successfully with at least two companies.

Honestly it’s hard to read your comment without an envious tone. You even admitted his timing was right, that alone takes skill. The point others are making is that there are lots of examples of failed companies, yet his have been successful. If anyone could have done what he’s done, why haven’t they?

He wasn't a billionaire for years after SpaceX had its first major successes and the "millionaires bad" narrative got retired since Bernie Sanders became one, so that's not going to work either.

>the credit for creating two wildly successful companies

From reading comments in other similar threads I seen the argument that Elon did not created Tesla, so maybe would be more honest to rephrase your "created" wording, I am wondering how many people know that Elon did not created Tesla so he is assigned the role just because of his big social media presence.

he didn't create it but can definitely be credited for its success... Tesla that he bought was a failing company.

Do you really, really think that Musk is just a "big social media presence"? Why doesn't Trump or any of the Kardashians achieve similar feats?

Let me be super short

1 if you know Elon did not created Tesla then why would you use the word "created" and not be precise, even if you don't like the truth about Tesla creation you can avoid spreading falsehood and having people correcting you and the others you misinform

2 if you were wrong and thought Tesla was created by Elon, then who is at fault, Elon, Elon fanboys, the Illuminati

> Why doesn't Trump or any of the Kardashians achieve similar feats? they probably don't care about cars and space, one dude in your list managed to accomplish a big thing, he got elected by a large number of people

There are people that accomplished big things and we don't know their names or faces because they are not media stars, think at people that saved lot of lives by inventing medical procedures, or the ones that promoted introduction of safety belts in cars, or the ones that proved some chemicals are dangerous and we stop using them. \ In comparison Elon bought got his hands on an existing car company and used public money and a lot of PR to increase it's value. The timing is not a coincidence, only at this moment the batteries and climate change allinged to make it possible and remember there were electic cars before Elon appeared on the scene.

Apparently Tesla was: founded (as Tesla Motors) on July 1, 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning in San Carlos, California.

It gets a bit more complicated however: Ian Wright was the third employee, joining a few months later. The three went looking for venture capital funding in January 2004 and connected with Elon Musk, who contributed US$6.5 million of the initial (Series A) US$7.5 million round of investment in February 2004 and became chairman of the board of directors. Musk then appointed Eberhard as the CEO. J.B. Straubel joined in May 2004 as the fifth employee. A lawsuit settlement agreed to by Eberhard and Tesla in September 2009 allows all five (Eberhard, Tarpenning, Wright, Musk and Straubel) to call themselves co-founders.

So I guess it depends on your definition of "created".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Tesla,_Inc.#The_beg...

Then Elon is a god , depends on who defines what god means,

When Bob created his company X and later got some money from his dead uncle your "created" definition will assign the dead uncle the creator of X, I really want to see this definition, but don't segfault if you can't manage it.

Musk set an improbable goal and he's heading to it. The other people from the Ivy League could do the same but didn't. He deserves some credit for that.

Another example Cook (coming from Compaq) is perfectly able to run Apple. A lot of people could have thought about iPhones and Macs but Jobs deserves some credit to actually start the company with Wozniak and actually pushing it to deliver those products.

Repeat with any successful FAANG or company in general.

> Jobs deserves some credit to actually start the company with Wozniak and actually pushing it to deliver those products.

...not to forget the period between 1985 and 1997 when he was ousted, founded NeXT and Pixar, and then re-hired to save Apple, which was on the brink of bankruptcy.

If all it took was money, spacex would have lots of competitors.

> Why not?

Check out how Bezos's space company is doing.

Heck, check Armadillo Aerospace if you think that Bezos is "all money no skill" and doesn't count.

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