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Very true in my experience:

"When you take people like this and put them together with other ambitious people, they bloom like dying plants given water. Probably most ambitious people are starved for the sort of encouragement they'd get from ambitious peers, whatever their age."

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I've had the opposite experience, depending on what kinds of personalities are involved. Sometimes when you put several ambitious people together, they all destructively interfere with each other with the strength they radiate, particularly if they're young and inexperienced.

Ambitious people are almost always more granular and more preoccupied control freaks than people who are less ambitious. That can be a problem unless they are also diplomatic, pragmatic and wise.

This has been my experience as well. Their ambitions must align, at least somewhat. If ambitious person A wants to go one direction and ambitious person B wants to go another direction, it probably won't work. But being around other ambitious people at least gives you the opportunity to meet someone with ambition and goals that align with your goals.

That's exactly what I feel hacker spaces do. http://hackerspaces.org

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