I understand the difference between inventors and entrepreneurs. My point is that to be a *great* entrepreneur one needs not only to make money, or to convince investors by way of charm, confidence or bullshit.

To be remembered in history as a great entrepreneur, one needs to fulfill the higher ideals of changing the world significantly and for the better.

There was a world before Ford, where only a few rich people could afford cars and where industrial products were built with cluncky and very manual processes, and there is a world after Ford. In the case of Jobs, the Macintosh would not have qualified in my opinion as a world changing product (unlike the PC), but I concede that the iPhone does.

However, I am in the market for an electric car recently, I have test-driven many. The Tesla is not significantly better in any way of the dozens other cars on the market, its fraudulent claims of “full self driving” are ludicrous and, in some coutries, criminal. Other cars are better built, have more autonomy, have better AI (some constructors are at SAE level 4, while Tesla is still at level 2). Electric cars will probably change the world, but Elon Musk has no claim to have invented them, or to have produced and commercialized the best ones, nothing.

Meanwhile, the Boring company is a total fiasco and the claims of Mars colonization are ridiculous to say the least.

Musk made a lot of money selling snake oil and false promises (he keeps peddling fully autonomous cars every year, and every year nothing happens, yet he insists, and yet more scores of deluded fools and fanboys swear by his lies).

There wasn’t a world before Musk’s great products, and one after them. He has made no real difference except the one in the fantasies of those believing in his pipe dreams.

That is why Musk is not a great entrepreneur: he is a great illusionist.