> His two successes, Tesla and SpaceX, are companies he purchased. Musk himself founded SpaceX, rocket engineer Tom Mueller was his first employee. He did not

> His two successes, Tesla and SpaceX, are companies he purchased. Musk himself founded SpaceX, rocket engineer Tom Mueller was his first employee. He did not "purchase" SpaceX from anybody. Tesla was founded by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning in 2003. In early 2004, they brought Musk on as an investor, who provided such a large share of the early investment (Series A onwards), he soon owned the majority of the company. Eberhard and Tarpenning would continue as CEO and CFO until they had a falling-out with Musk around 2007/2008, and Musk used his majority ownership to fire them. Under the terms of 2009 lawsuit settlement, Eberhard, Tarpenning, Musk, Ian Wright and J. B. Straubel agreed among themselves that all five can be described as "co-founders" of Tesla. If someone pitches a startup to a venture capitalist–which is the role Musk was playing at the beginning of his involvement in Tesla–who through providing the bulk of the Series A funding (and subsequent funding rounds), ends up with majority control, is that accurately described as a "purchase"? For anyone other Elon Musk, I doubt people would use that word. > He hired people to tackle hard problems, yes, but what has he done personally? Doesn't that describe many founders? For a founder/CEO, a very big chunk of their work, is making sure they pick the right leaders beneath them, and making the right picks vs the wrong ones can be the difference between a runaway success and bankruptcy.