Steve Blank in thinkgrowth.org
Most great technology startups — Oracle, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Tesla — were built by a team led by an entrepreneur.
It doesn’t mean that if you have technical skills you can’t build a successful company. It does mean that success in building a company that scales depends on finding product/market fit, enough customers, enough financing, enough great employees, distribution channels, etc. These are entrepreneurial skills you need to rapidly acquire or find a co-founder who already has them.
Origen: The Difference Between Innovators and Entrepreneurs
Nothing makes me happier than to see my students getting great grades (and as they can tell you, I make them work very hard for them). But I remind them that customers don’t ask for your transcript.
Until we start giving grades for resiliency, curiosity, agility, resourcefulness, pattern recognition, tenacity, and having a passion for products and customers great grades and successful entrepreneurs have at best a zero correlation (and anecdotal evidence suggests that the correlation may actually be negative).