That's not the assumption he made; that's a third argument you may have (accidentally?†) made up just to knock down. It's not the case that the only way to find problems that BigCos will pay you to solve is to be smarter than everyone at the BigCo. You will almost certainly have a different tolerance for risk than any senior BigCo employee. It's likely you'll enjoy product development more than they will. It's almost certain that you'll enjoy the trappings of "brand new company" more than they will; Matasano's "brand new company" trappings were "desk at a library", followed by "attic of a print shop with no air conditioning accessible only by a freight elevator".
You also don't need to acquire the trust of BigCo decision makers to sell them products. You can learn about problems BigCo's have just by having routine conversations with the right people, and you can sell anybody a product if the product solves a problem for them at the right price.
Scott Wensing solves the White House Situation Room's "tracking devastating storms" problem. How much do you think Barack Obama trusts Scott Wensing? He has an account in StormPulse.
How much do you think Barack Obama trusts Scott Wensing?
Barack Obama cited Matt Wensing by name as an American innovator solving American problems in a public speech, but to your point, several years ago the decision to use StormPulse in the White House was made by a GS-whatever with a nondescript .gov email address, and it was certainly not made due to StormPulse's superior access to the Valley in-crowd. (Disclaimer: I invested in them.)
You also don't need to acquire the trust of BigCo decision makers to sell them products. You can learn about problems BigCo's have just by having routine conversations with the right people, and you can sell anybody a product if the product solves a problem for them at the right price.
Scott Wensing solves the White House Situation Room's "tracking devastating storms" problem. How much do you think Barack Obama trusts Scott Wensing? He has an account in StormPulse.
† I'm a little pissy today