Certainly no need to give him a pass. Even if we is an absolute genius in some areas, and even if he was major factor in the success of some of his companies, it gives him zero credibility on unrelated topics. He's a narcissist who does not understand or care where his expertise ends. That said, even though Tesla isn't doing great as a business, I think it's only fair to call it a success. Ditto for Starlink which provides orders of magnitude more bandwidth than e.g. Eutelsat, which much cheaper and easier to use tooling. I think that's true even if you account for the fact that these enterprises are heavily subsidised by stupid investors and government subsidies. The question then is: is it just a coincidence that Musk bought himself into these two companies, or did he actually have a material effect on their success? The presence of perhaps a dozen failures doesn't really matter I think. There are plenty of rich people, and even more corporations, that spend billions and billions on hundred or even thousands of ambitious projects that go nowhere. Which makes me think that two is statistically significant. But you'll have to ask Taleb :-)