Buffett did pretty well before having a team. I still think Musk is quite good at physics/engineering type stuff. It's not everyone who can start with modest money and transform industries (rockets and evs mostly).

> I see this get thrown around once in a while and I really don't get it. Isn't this true of basically every leader? Gates, Jobs, Buffet, Obama, they all wouldn't existing without their teams. Isn't that just obvious? Isn't one of the important markers of a good leader to be able to build a good team?

The others don't claim the extremes of power and genius, based to a large extent on what their teams do. They also build good teams - look at DOGE, for example.