Peter Thiel himself would tell you, that "he would never compete with Musk" [1]. He went on to say, in an interview with Rubin, "...after Paypal, Elon set off to start both the rocket company and the electric car company, Space X and Tesla, and I think the conventional wisdom about Elon was that if one of them succeeded, you'd have to question it, but when both of them succeeded, it suggests, you know, he knows something that other people don't."
I'm not going to comment on SpaceX. As CEO since 2002, Musk is instrumental in the operations of SpaceX, and ultimately the buck stops with him. [2]
As for Hyperloop, that was an idea that Musk put forward. I imagine that he would create a Hyperloop company, if he wasn't already CEO of two companies (SpaceX, Tesla) and core founder of a third (The Boring Company).
Tesla could die tomorrow and you would still have to call the company a huge success. 10 years ago, nobody thought that big oil's hold on the transportation industry would ever end. The establishment auto companies piddle paddled for decades with fuel cells [3]. Even by missing whatever bold milestones Tesla has ever set for itself, it has surpassed any other company's progress in producing oil-free autos. Now, it's within reach, and that's in no small part due to Tesla.
Sure, I suppose you can look at quarterly profit, if that's your sole metric for success. And I suppose a lot of bean counter types would look at that metric, but what I'm telling you is, if you only looked at metrics like that and raw odds of financial success...those same bean counter types would never, ever take the same risks that Musk took.
By the way, Amazon was criticized for years for never showing a profit, they kept re-investing their profits in their business [4]. And what they've transformed themselves into is a nearly unstoppable behemoth. That's because Bezos is a visionary, like Musk. And people like that, are not a dime a dozen. They're exceedingly rare.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h10kXgTdhNU [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_cell_vehicle [4] https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2014/9/4/why-amazon-...
intuition, intelligence, and risk-taking capacity to create the kind of innovative companies that Musk has.
Citations needed. Paypal's success was based on Thiel's technology and IP, not Musk's. SpaceX was a non-contender until Shotwell took over running things. Hyperloop hyper-hasn't gone anywhere in 5 years. Tesla has missed every deadline and milestone its ever set for itself, and has never made a profit--it's only cash-flow positive quarter was from a one-time flash sale of emissions credits.