You may have missed my point.

I have met both. Again, they are both smart, but many people are smart. Many people who read Hacker News are technically capable of doing what each of them has done. Of those, very few were also able to benefit from a number of the external forces that supported each of them, and fewer still would actually want to do what each of them did.

So while they both may be quite intelligent people, they are not the most intelligent people ever to have lived, and are probably not even close. Being "brilliant" and being rich are not the same and there is no causal link in either direction!

Gates took Math 55 and called it a "neat experience". Dude is exceptionally intelligent.

There are many brilliant people, but their time gets sucked away by Minecraft. It takes brains and balls to start a successful company.