People take the longest possible paths, digress to numerous dead ends, and make all kinds of mistakes. Then historians come along and write summaries of this messy, nonlinear process and make it appear like a simple, straight line.
“I could have started a for-profit, venture-backed business that has a good spirit, and I think there are many of them - Google for instance. Maybe I could reach a billion people. That is high impact, but what happens in 50 years?”