You are getting the timeline wrong. Musk said he didn't have time or interest in perusing Hyperloop before he even released the Blue Paper. Maybe Hyperloop as

You are getting the timeline wrong. Musk said he didn't have time or interest in perusing Hyperloop before he even released the Blue Paper. Maybe Hyperloop as a concept is a failure, that is correct. But for Musk, releasing a idea as a short paper and not perusing it beyond that isn't a relevant failure. If he had invested 100M$ and then walked away, then I would consider it a real failure for him. As it stands, its a couple of wasted weekends doodling on project. If that is the most people can come up with talking about failures, then its really not worth talking about.