in my opinion, elon musk has a big influence on the growth of coinmeme, namely shiba inu. but that doesn't mean that memecoin can't develop without Elonmusk. because every altcoin developer must have a strategy for promotion and sales. and if it was without elonmusk some time ago then i think shiba inu and some other memecoins that musk tweeted wouldn't be as big as they are now and shiba inu wouldn't be in the top 20 on coinmarketcap.
Meme project was already there even without Musk though we can't deny the fact that it was Musk who really created the big push for this kind of assets making investors believes that in each meme project there're opportunities of being pump and if you are lucky, riding with the project you will earn huge compensation the way those early holders have when both Doge and Shiba was pumping so hard.
It's mostly from how you take the risk and how good you are in analysing the pump to ride along with meme project that will be used as instruments of pump and dump project.