Because you’re looking at the wrong “talent”. Building a startup requires a healthy dose of delusion and it’s more so salesmanship than technical skills. Take

Because you’re looking at the wrong “talent”. Building a startup requires a healthy dose of delusion and it’s more so salesmanship than technical skills. Take Elon Musk for example. He’s not the smartest of individuals but his main skill is convincing people to give him money to fund his vision and then convincing smarter people to work for him to achieve the vision…that’s salesmanship, not intelligence. Startups are high risk and mostly about selling a vision/delusion than having technical know-how. You might be the most technically skilled person alive, but if you can’t craft a story to sell to VCs, you won’t succeed. How did Adam Neumann convince Masayoshi Son to hand him over $10 billion for a co-working space company (and squandered it) when many more interesting startups go unfunded? Charisma and charm…that’s the main skill in startup land, not intelligence and expertise.