Tesla already existed before Elon. Can you make the case that they wouldn't have been as successful without him? I don't see any specific performance that would indicate that he's instrumental to their success.
> Can you make the case that they wouldn't have been as successful without him?
Easy. They never, ever would have sold it to Musk if they knew it could be such a runaway success and make them container ships full of money. They had no idea how to do it. Musk did.
This is the crux of my argument. If Tesla failed, would it been because of Elon? Did X.com, Boring Co., etc fail because of Elon?
I could point to his bitcoin investments, many discrimination cases, failure to release Autopilot (against his own promises), SEC action, and Tesla share price manipulation as examples of him hurting the companies success, and directly connect them to his actions. Could you do the same for the companies success?
Easy. Nobody else's electric car company succeeded.
What's the common factor in Tesla's and SpaceX's highly unlikely successes? Elon Musk.
What's the common factor in Pixar's and Apple's recovery from near bankruptcy and catapulting to the top? Steve Jobs.
Define "succeeded"? Tesla was definitely not first to market, Ford is expected to surpass them in EV cars shipped by end of this year, and Tesla is well known for their poor car QA + service (as an owner myself).
The comparison between Steve Jobs and Elon Musk is very apt, but I think you lack the historical knowledge to understand why that is.
You might not be aware that your replies to me have exhibited 3 characteristics of losing the point:
1. inserting extra words into what I wrote so you can then attack the strawman
2. diversion into arguing about the meaning of words
3. lobbing a personal insult
I'm sure you can do better.
If I say with "provide a reason why Elon is necessary to the success of the company", and you respond with "Look at the success of these two companies he led" that's completely tangential to the question.
So in exchange for "doing better" answer a simple question for me: What specific actions did Elon take that led to the success of Tesla and/or SpaceX?
I've provided several specific actions that were to the detriment of Tesla, so it should be straightforward to do the inverse.
By your "make the case" criteria - has there been any business leader who clearly deserved credit?
Other players on the same team were not remotely as successful.
The owner of the team matters less to the success of the team than the participants, as is easily proven by the argument you have just made.
If Elon had consistently led successful teams, as Jordan has, then the correlationary argument would be more convincing. Since he has led a mix of failures and successes, the likely indicator is the teams that worked for him, not his own ability.
> Since he has led a mix of failures and successes, the likely indicator is the teams that worked for him, not his own ability.
Or far more likely, he knows how to assemble a team that can deliver, knows how to motivate it to succeed, and knows how to get financing for it. Which is an essential skill for an entrepreneur.
If we knew how many companies Elan has lead, and the percentage of barely-founded little companies from ~2003 which have been as successful as SpaceX and Tesla over the past 2 decades, then we could perform the calculations, and see what the odds actually are on Elan hitting two such jackpots by random chance & survivorship.
Elan's Wikipedia entry only has him leading ~10 companies. If you could name a few hundred more, that would help your case...