He founded Tesla through force of will. They had a concept but no funding and no drivetrain. Elon got them funded and hooked them up with an engineer he had been funding to build a drivetrain. Their original roadster was going to cost $200,000+ just to build, Elon pushed them out of the way and saved the company.
If he hasn’t gotten involved, it would have failed. That’s indisputable. The common usage of founder nowadays doesn’t require someone was an employee on day 1, it means they were instrumental in its early days and Elon certainly was.
