[TL;DR - Time, Place, Industry booms, and being from a wealthy enough family, have more to do with the current crop of tech billionaires].

Occam, you have an oversized degree of faith in meritocracy. Most of them are either right time/place/company type deals - aided by rich parents and being somewhat able to Capitalize on local industry booms (sometimes generationally).

How are you even claiming to measure intelligence? By standardized tests? That's not really applicable to what we're talking about (causes of wealth and opportunity). Money, time and place, and parentage are more pivotal than "intelligence" (whatever the hell that means).

I mean Peter Thiel's parents were in mining in apathied Zambia, Elon Musk's father was also wealthy, involved with mining in a different African apathied county (so both have local booms/Colonialism, money, and family behind them). Jeff Bezos parents were wealthy enough to give him $300,000 for a business idea, and to send him to Stanford University. Peter Thiel's parents were wealthy enough to send him to Princeton University.

The Huangs appear to have been wealthy enough to send their children to school in America for a Western education (a big deal for Taiwan which was receiving a boom in American funds at the time). His father was actually in the same line of work (Chemical Engineering) as Thiel's father.

Actually a lot of these tech billionaires were also born in a specific era as well (1955 -1975) so their working lives/careers were peaking around the tech / dot com booms.

The Huangs were in a position to flee communist China in the 1970s and chose to live under the ROC (which despite having 'Republic' in the name - was a rightwing millitary dictatorship up until the late 80s, hence received a lot of anti-communist American funding as a country).

So you see, it's not some meritocracy of "intelligence" - it's being from a wealthy family, born at the right time, and already being in certain boom industries as those industries boom that gives most of these families/men a specific advantage. It's time, place, boom, and pre-existing wealth that are the drivers. Intelligence is secondary at best.

I'm not a huge subscriber to the idea we even have a good concept of "intelligent" to go on. When I say he seems kind of dumb, it's associational. He has something about him that makes him seem kind of dumb. An affectation, type of expression. Musk and Bezos also have a bit of dumb guy energy too. Thiel - less so. He seems kind of mentally ill.

You’re clearly not from the US then? Or have you just ignored every rich person in the news the past 6 years?

You are correct.

The fact that most of them started businesses with massive family seed money has no bearing on their success.