I like Elon Musk. A lot. But it's sick how it just became the new standard when referring to "genius" or worse "perfect being". He did not start Tesla. Ditto Solar City. Actually, I'd say he intentionally pushed out the former founder and CEO of Tesla. Read the story :-). He "only" started Space X.
He's an easy reference, shouldn't be surprising that he's used - he's fresh on people's minds, recency effect and all that. When I reference Elon and the companies he's leading, it's not stating an assumption he's doing it alone - I'm simply referencing his thinking style based on the videos I've seen of him speaking. They're big industries too he's disrupting, forcing change and innovation from others/competitors - so that makes him even more prevalent in my mind as well.
Who would you jump to referencing if wanting to include an example of holistic thinking, empathetic person, who is known to work/think/make decisions from founding principles?
He started X.com. The founders of PayPal were forced by their VCs to merge the two companies, because X.com had a massive cash position, and a banking license.
