This is such an excellent article! This is personally quite motivating. It shows that spending time saving money, and bootstrapping a business patiently can still lead to big success. I could spend 5 years trying to build a side business while working and saving, and even in the case of failure I am left with a nest egg to buy into an existing business. If that one also blows up for some reason, I can just start again, but this time with all the skills and experience from all of these.
Not sure if you are familiar with Alex Hormozi, but this essay makes his current business strategy obvious. He takes ownership in other companies that have product market fit (buying other people’s dice rolls) and uses his skills and knowledge to grow them. He talks about how thinking on longer time horizons almost guarantees you will succeed, which perfectly matches the case of Buffett, and the other cases you mention.
It is also funny that this closely aligns with the FIRE movement, as that is just personal, small-scale capital allocation skill. I.e. if you don’t spend all your money and save in ways that compound with time, anyone can reach “financial freedom.” All one needs to do is to take this view and expand the scope of options to capital allocation techniques other than low-risk index funds.