But that was my whole point, that in practice, successful companies seem to be run by the engineer, and not by some business type and a good CTO of some sort. I

But that was my whole point, that in practice, successful companies seem to be run by the engineer, and not by some business type and a good CTO of some sort. I even forgot Mark Zuckerberg in my original post. So it seems that at the top level, you need to understand the engineering part to be successful. My guess is that the leader needs to have a vision for the product, market, but also the development. And if the last part is lacking, you cannot make up for it in the lower levels. Or maybe it's because an engineer better understands what can and can't be build, and so has a more realistic vision for the product to build. A non-engineer always needs to backtrack with an engineer how possible something is.