PayPal was established completely before Elon entered the picture.

"Established completely" doesn't make sense, considering most of its explosive growth happened under Musk's tactics. And considering Elon had the largest share of PayPal when it was sold, you're underestimating his importance in a way that the people involved at the time (such as Peter "I would never bet against Elon in anything" Thiel) did not. You seem to be assuming that PayPal would have succeeded without Musk, which is not clear at all. PayPal didn't exist in isolation. Ebay had its own competitor, and there were many others.

Zip2 was a merged database sold to companies.

Well for one, the product design is far more important than the technology in the backend. You'd probably say myspace and facebook are the same thing because they're both "just social networks". This also wouldn't change the fact that Zip2 was a successful company led to its success by Elon Musk.

I don’t give a shit what Elon’s pr department wrote in a Reddit thread.

Well aren't you fucking sophisticated. That means you think he doesn't know what he's writing, or you're dodging because your ego depends on Musk not being way more skilled at way more things than you are. Pretty smart PR team if they know know that much about rocketry. Or maybe they just learned from Kerbal Space Program. But the fact remains that you'll never believe Musk is anything more than a marketer. OK.