In the Milo.com example, it seems they succeeded because they were able to establish relationships with the big retailers. Yet I doubt that, had the author picked up the phone and called these retailers, he would have had any luck. It's possible, but business deals seem to be a lot about "relationships". Would the solution be to partner with a business person? Maybe, but how would you go about finding that person? They should be someone with knowledge and relationships in the particular business area (here, retailers), and yet it seems most of the successful business partnerships seem to have been between people who knew each other for a while (e.g. college friends, etc), probably because trust is essential. And yet in that case, it seems very difficult to find a matching relationship between the people involved and the "business idea" / "epiphany".
It would be interesting to learn about how an engineer can learn more about the business-side of things, and how to successfully partner with business people.