No, just speculation based on the gap between skills required to market a successful VPN business, and skills required to implement a secure and private multi-tenant overlay network (not to mention the ethics required to do so honestly).
some years ago i ran a vpn service together with a friend. we had the second skill set you mentioned, but not the first.
we didn’t overhype the privacy aspect (and would in fact explain what _wasnt_ private about vpns, not that anyone was interested in listening) and primarily existed to serve a customer base for other reasons.
it was a good experience, but it went nowhere really. but i did quickly figure out that almost every large vpn provider out there has more of the first skill set you mentioned.