...because these companies are engineering companies? 7/10 of the biggest companies are software companies. 6/7 of the software companies were founded by engin

...because these companies are engineering companies? 7/10 of the biggest companies are software companies. 6/7 of the software companies were founded by engineers. Ma is an outlier. Any of these other points might be true, but there's no empirical reason to expect that that they predict "success." The simpler explanation is that software company founders tend to be engineers. Financial companies tend to be run by financiers, etc. Conclusions like "discovery of solutions via techniques like continuous A/B testing" may be true, but they're not required to explain why engineer founded companies dominate the top 10.