Compare SpaceX to Blue Origin - while SpaceX has succeeded in conquering over 50% of the orbital launch market, Blue Origin still hasn’t made it to orbit - nor has ULA’s new rocket using Blue’s engines. Is that the fault of Blue’s engineers? I don’t think that’s fair - some of them are just as brilliant as SpaceX’s. The real blame, I think, is at the executive level. Bezos has never invested anywhere near as much of his time and energy and personal wealth into Blue as Musk has invested into SpaceX. And Musk has made much better choices of executive leadership (Gwynne Shotwell vs Bob Smith). That’s just one example of the massive difference the ability and commitment of a founder can make to the success of a business. (You’d think on a forum owned by a Silicon Valley VC firm, that point would be uncontested and accepted as obviously true.)
