Perhaps. "Large quantities" comes from generalizing my personal anecdotal experience of people with great ability, and plenty of vision, but without that sense

Perhaps. "Large quantities" comes from generalizing my personal anecdotal experience of people with great ability, and plenty of vision, but without that sense of where to go with it (one could argue that this is a defect in their vision). I wasn't comfortable enough with the generalization to go into "most" territory :> I think it's to a great degree a cultural thing. If you are exposed to something repeatedly and told it is good, such as being an academic scientist, a programmer for a company, yes, even an entrepreneur, you are more likely to see that thing as a promising path. Here on HN everyone is inundated with "startup this" and "startup that", so I seem to be belaboring a point, but my personal experience has been that "out there" entrepreneurship is not often enough seen as a viable option and that the inclination to do it is a variable (somewhat) independent of the brilliance of the hacker.