The initial Google work was done at Stanford, Woz worked for HP while developing the Apple I, and I'm not sure which "startup" you're referring to for Elon, but

The initial Google work was done at Stanford, Woz worked for HP while developing the Apple I, and I'm not sure which "startup" you're referring to for Elon, but the early Confinity investors included a major bank and one of the CyberCash founders, while Tesla and SpaceX were necessarily heavily-funded long-term projects that were inherently unlike what tech VCs typically go for. You've listed people whose stories bear little resemblance to the vast majority of little tech startups that subsist on ramen and go through accelerators.