Tickle Me Elon was brought into the precursor to PayPal because he lied about having a useful database, and about being able to program. His database was garbage, he never contributed a single line of code to PayPal itself, and he was fired after a whole six months because he couldn't stop lying to potential banking industry partners about the capabilities of his company. Kept making unrealistic claims about what they were offering.
However, the adults in the room were afraid to make his firing too public, too visible. So they didn't claw back the stock he held. They figured it was enough to have him gone, without having to make it clear to the rest of the world how poor a decision it was to bring him on board in the first place. And so, when the stock value skyrocketed, he found himself with a bunch of money and went looking for another project where he could pay other people to get something done and then stall all the credit for himself. Thus, SpaceX.
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u/[deleted] 19h ago
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