This isn't true. The employee account was 2 or 3 (depending on accounts) at the time when he supplied almost their entire funding round after basically no one else would, and continued to supply funding rounds. Saying "in about a year after it was founded" implies that they had done real work in that year when in fact they couldn't even pay their own salaries. The company would have ended right there, just like so many other "two guys and some incorporation papers" companies.

Musk invested in the company, became chairman of the board and quickly became active in their normal everyday operations.