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Comment by insanitybit | Hacker News Reader

> Elon Musk was barely more than a nobody when he got involved with Tesla and started SpaceX.

He was extremely wealthy and had a lot of connections from buying his way into other companies. He was not yet a household name/ global celebrity, only one in more niche (but very powerful) circles, that changed soon after.

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But so were hundreds/thousands of other people, most of whom did not go on to found companies rivaling Tesla and SpaceX.

How many tried? Lots of people don't actually want to do that. I know lots of very wealthy people who are not at all interested in increasing their wealth or running companies or being famous.

The cemetery of defunct space startups is pretty big, including the one founded by John Carmack.

He in fact forced the founders of Tesla out of the company to call himself founder.

You'll see that I noted that in my original comment

Just look at the guys coming from paypal and see what they did. More than a few household names.

You’ve completely moved the goalposts there

I don't see how. I said celebrity and wealth are what they have in common and what they have leveraged. Elon was wealthy before he was famous, he became famous in important circles, and eventually he became globally famous.

Yeah... I'm failing to see how "barely more than a nobody" can be applied to anyone who had access to lot of wealthy networks. Maybe in comparison to others in that universe, but put any one of them out in the general public and the imbalance of power is pretty obvious.

If you can reasonably self-fund a startup with employees for a while, you are not a nobody and you are likely far more powerful than 95% of the population. You can literally dictate what other human beings do for 40 hours a week. That's not being a nobody...

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