Starship is intended to be a dual-purpose cargo and human flight vehicle and Falcon 9 + Dragon were iteratively improved through many cargo launches before Drag

Starship is intended to be a dual-purpose cargo and human flight vehicle and Falcon 9 + Dragon were iteratively improved through many cargo launches before Dragon 2 for human flight. What has likely changed is that there is sufficient demand for cargo flights to bootstrap an affordable human flight program on top of it.