He got a $20K investment from his dad for his first company, Zip2, in 1995. That's about $40K in today's dollars. X.com/paypal success seems to have happened in spite of him, not due to him. He got billions from it because he had been lucky enough to be one of the early investors.

I'm not actually saying that he's not a great business tycoon, he clearly is based on track record. Plenty of people have the kind of base resources he had without amounting to anything. Either they don't bother to even try or are too stupid or too unlucky too succeed. His parents wealth is still the catapult that launched him to his current success.

There are plenty of people who could have done what he's done but did not because of lack of resources.