Good leadership
SpaceX has had 34, THIRTY FOUR, funding rounds. Usually 3-4 per year. They cannot operate except this way. Most investors and boards would balk at this mode of operation.
It's not good leadership, though. It's easy to spend money that others aren't willing to spend to achieve results that that other companies aren't willing to pay the price for. Progress while being capital efficient is true leadership.
That’s only makes sense in a world where SpaceX stockholders have mandated SpaceX operate at a profit. I don’t think that’s what’s happening—investors know they’re putting money into a highly risky R&D project that could take years to pay off, if ever.
So far they’ve gotten Falcon, Starlink, and Starship out of the deal. I’d say it takes pretty good leadership to achieve those results.
Meanwhile NASA’s Artemus is expected to cost $93b and so far they’ve only had one launch.
It's also possible that honeybadger1 only wanted to make a brief comment. Vs. writing an essay about the myriad causal factors and millions of people who played at least some small role in SpaceX's success.
*Using a "good" != "profit maximizing" convention.
On that note, it's funny how some people attribute results to different people depending on whether the results are good or bad, with no consistency at all regarding their responsibility.
Day-to-day leadership is performed by Gwynne. Musk is founder, majority shareholder, CTO and CEO. According to Musk himself, he spends the majority of his time at SpaceX as engineer, letting Gwynne lead the company.