And my point is that trying to start a company as a FAANG-level engineer is very often not worth the opportunity cost unless you're receiving certain signals (Y

And my point is that trying to start a company as a FAANG-level engineer is very often not worth the opportunity cost unless you're receiving certain signals (YC, hockey-stick trajectory). Most millionaires aren't entrepreneurs. As a world-class engineer, you can become a millionaire by working for 5 years at Google/finance/big-4 with very little risk. And giving that up to start your own business is really only worth it for founding a breakout trajectory/unicorn startup. People tend to bias themselves and their abilities, but they need to take a realistic look at the profiles of those successful unicorn founders and use that as a yardstick to evaluate their own potential to avoid wasting their time and money. And I agree with you that tech is necessary but not sufficient for starting a successful unicorn (the line between "tech" and what you describe as "product innovation" is very blurry). This is Hacker News, after all. Tech-focused investments is their thesis.