> I remember reading once that students who excel in high school (valedictorians and salutatorians) are underrepresented as successful company founders, meaning

> I remember reading once that students who excel in high school (valedictorians and salutatorians) are underrepresented as successful company founders, meaning that they occur at a lower rate than one would expect from chance alone I've tended to notice that as well. Perhaps it's because being a startup founder is a financially irrational choice. If you're extremely smart, you can go into medicine/finance/law/comp-sci and make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, potentially over a million. You don't ever have to shoulder significant risk or periods of "poverty". You would spend your entire post-college life enjoying the social status and perks associated with having a high-prestige job and boatloads of money. Why would you give that up to be a founder? "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."