Comparing MacArthur Genius Grants and similar awards to venture capital isn't particularly apt. YCR or the fellowship might be slightly more comparable, but sti

Comparing MacArthur Genius Grants and similar awards to venture capital isn't particularly apt. YCR or the fellowship might be slightly more comparable, but still pretty off mark. To the parent: MacArthur Genius Grants have been given to computer scientists... IDK about "coder"; ostensibly, that code should be pretty remarkable if you're getting that kind of windfall. And if the code is so remarkable, there's probably some science or engineering behind it that is the actual reason for the award. In other words, by the time code is doing something that is societally significant, there are probably ideas extant in that code that are worth codifying and explaining in something other than a programming language. And probably those ideas/results have impacts that go far beyond a particular implementation.