I guess it probably depends on what you mean by exceptional. The real top players seem to be entrepreneurial within the e-sports space but I don't know of much

I guess it probably depends on what you mean by exceptional. The real top players seem to be entrepreneurial within the e-sports space but I don't know of much branching beyond that. If you look at simply high ranked players (masters or grandmaster) it might be more interesting. My anecdotal experience, I only competed locally in Washington DC, was there were a lot of developers or technical people (~75%). It was also disproportionately asian (~50%). And Male (~90%). Pretty much every stereotype about who was playing was my actual experience. The better players (masters or higher+) were all technical people of some sort that I can recall. 4 were developers. 1 in grad school for machine learning. 1 biochem engineering. It wouldn't shock me to see some talented starcraft players who also are founders. I just am not convinced that being a good starcraft player has any/much effect on being a successful company. Correlation != Causation and all that. It may just be a common hobby among the demographic we're interested in.