To me this is the fascinating thing about Musk that really sets him apart: He has succeeded at building several companies that make real stuff and tackle hard engineering challenges. And it's not just having money to throw at the problem, we know that because Bezos also wanted a Rocket company and threw tons of Cash at it.

Hard to say from the outside what it is exactly that allows him to do that. It makes sense that its hard to say what it is, because if it was easy to describe, chances are it wouldn't be what sets him apart (the other option being that it's hard to emulate).

There's a short list of people who can start a rocket company and want to: Bezos, Branson and Musk. I think it is fair to say that starting a rocket company is hard. The small sample size of people trying doesn't really let us learn anything from the success or failures.

Must wasn't a billionaire when he started his rocket company. He had in the ballpark of 100 million. There are thousands and thousands of people that could start a rocket company. And he did it when no private entity had ever even reached orbit with a liquid fuel rocket.

The fact that there are so few examples doesn’t tell me its hard, it just tells me its unprofitable. Look at these examples, primarily bankrolled by the megalomaniac billionaire themselves vs the value investors who dollar cost average into lockheed martin et al.

That's a definitive 'yes'. He is extremely good at finding great and very qualified people, placing them in the right positions and getting 110% out of them.

Tesla doesn't seem that well run?

By what metric? Love it or hate it, Tesla is a huge success story.

there are tons of known problems with their hardware and engineering. plus lawsuits from employees, etc. stock price covers a lot of things up, but "well run" can still be evaluated

Tesla is the first U.S. auto company to go public since Ford did so in 1956. Is that not good enough?

Seems well run enough to pull that off.

Tesla was started less than 20 years ago and sold nearly 1 million cars last year.