I am planning on putting up a 'Proposition HN' in a week, with this exact thing in mind. I want to pay talented HNers to work on their dream/vision/side-project in exchange for participation/equity.
Watch this space.
trumanshow.. I just created a throw-away gmail account:
hnproject2013@gmail.com
drop a line there and I'll email a link to the HN post once its fleshed out and posted.
+4 sigma for certain things, not overall. It's not even possible to measure "+4 sigma overall intelligence" and if it were, I doubt I'd be the one who has it. But there are certain subdisciplines where I'm in that range.
I say "+4 sigma" because for the vast majority of companies I've observed, I could run them better, and they seem to at least think they have 2-3 sigma talent.
If we accept that the people who actually are in charge are +2 to +3 sigma minds, then I'm easily +5 based on the difference between me and them. If we assume they're idiots, then it'd be generous to give me +3. The reality is probably between the two.
~ = snark, allow me one snark ! :)
I'm actually reasonably happy with where I am, because I have a career strategy that I think will work. Startups aren't the only path and, if you have no connections and are going to be "just a programmer", they're not always even a good path.
Most successful entrepreneurs started in finance because, for better or worse, that's a way to build credibility. Remember that VCs are also financiers and will be biased in favor of that experience, even if it's not relevant to what most startups need.
Attempting to see if I can create that niche (data science) in a large company, first for myself. If so, then things will go really well. If not, then I'll probably be getting back into "regular tech" mid-2013.
This would have been great when I had time off to work on my compiler back in the summer. Oh well, the algorithm still had/has bugs in then anyway.