My background is technical also and I figured out what you mean and your sentiment. I'm one of the attendees that was impressed by Jan Koum has chose Erlang for an intuition or by the Kevin Systrom estimation for rails. Maybe you wrong your approach to a startupschool as many tecnical people like us. Basically the startup success formula does not exist

I think that startup school has an implicit and very powerfull message: Startup successful founders are common people and not divinity