I would estimate maybe 1 in ~7 billion odds
(statistical liberties taken)
(statistical liberties taken)
Not really. Look at Jobs' second coming to Apple. He replaced a sequence of CEOs that all failed to turn Apple around. Jobs turned a near-bankrupt company into the biggest company in the world, with the same crew and technology of the near-bankrupt company.
Pixar enormous success was Jobs' doing. Nobody else believed in Pixar.
NeXT was a failure, but Jobs found a way to salvage it.
He sold that failure for $429m.
Likely the $400m was really to buy Jobs.
So someone who flips a coin an gets heads 10 times in row isn't lucky, they must be good at flipping coins? Jobs certainly had certain talents, but luck was definitely the bigger contributor to his successes. However, lots of people lose sight of that, and almost join a cargo cult centered on him.
And that proves what, exactly? If lotto tickets were free, I'd buy a billion.
If he failed early, then nobody would know of it or him.
Tesla was made by two other guys, Musk contributed PR, marketing and government money.
SpaceX is a lot of public money.
If Musk is good at anything, it is taking other people's money and building a cult of personality.
That doesn't sound too hard. Why is Elon the only one good at it?!