(I know it’s unpopular these days but) this is where I think Elon has to be given some credit.
He set an implausible but interesting ’mission’ from early on. He set the culture of the company from the start such that the concept (borrowed from the tech world) of failing and iterating fast actually happened (rather than just being talked about in corporate presentations). He brought naive but effective ‘first principles’ thinking to many of the questions or problems which probably helped avoid the conservatism of ‘old space’. He brought enough money to start, but it was little enough that they had to be scrappy and lean for survival, which probably fed into the culture and built a great team further. And (by luck or judgment) he hired the right people, like Tom Mueller, who was already a rocket engineer, but was frustrated by his previous industry experience.
(And of course, back then he didn’t have the baggage he has now, which made these things easier to achieve.)
He set an implausible but interesting ’mission’ from early on. He set the culture of the company from the start such that the concept (borrowed from the tech world) of failing and iterating fast actually happened (rather than just being talked about in corporate presentations). He brought naive but effective ‘first principles’ thinking to many of the questions or problems which probably helped avoid the conservatism of ‘old space’. He brought enough money to start, but it was little enough that they had to be scrappy and lean for survival, which probably fed into the culture and built a great team further. And (by luck or judgment) he hired the right people, like Tom Mueller, who was already a rocket engineer, but was frustrated by his previous industry experience.
(And of course, back then he didn’t have the baggage he has now, which made these things easier to achieve.)