I'm with noname on this one. 99.99% of those excellent engineers are NOT going to be billionaires. They'll be lucky to be millionaires (and I'll envy them if I

I'm with noname on this one. 99.99% of those excellent engineers are NOT going to be billionaires. They'll be lucky to be millionaires (and I'll envy them if I can't join them). For those marvelous engineers to become millionaires, they need to have the luck to be paired with an excellent business team, build the right product and have a large dose of luck. I'd rather have a not-so-brilliant engineer and an excellent team, vision and execution (as in build the right thing at the right time and produce value), for most products (very especially for your AirBnB or Facebook examples) you don't need top-tier talent to build it (you do need some to scale). Edit: some of these marvelous people, which have actually built a succesful startup, tried again and FAILED. So it's not just the person, the idea must be right, the timing must be right and luck has to be on his side.