You're right, the reality is far more nuanced than what's presented here. Setting aside the current Color fiasco, Bill Nguyen is a highly accomplished entrepreneur with close to $1B worth of startup exits in his past [1][2]. To say that he's gotten rich from "who he knows", and "marketing" is spitting in the face to a guy who's built real genuine successes from scratch, when he was a nobody. He is not making off like a bandit with the current $41M investment. This is turning out to be a failure from which he will not benefit financially in any significant way.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Nguyen [2] http://www.fastcompany.com/1784823/bill-nguyen-boy-bubble