> he bet nearly all of that money on SpaceX and Tesla, and that's why he's a billionaire

There's a survivorship bias occurring too.

You see the same selection going on with huge commercial real estate winners: they keep doubling down and the majority eventually fail out. You see only the winner, not the failures. “Keep rolling till you crit-fail.”

Lots of successful businesses like Nvidia or Standard Oil have a similar story too: https://austinvernon.substack.com/p/how-rockefeller-and-his-...