Just be a good employee. Do as being told, and as neil gaiman would say, just "make good art".
Also, the problem with doing as told is you are taking for granted that the person doing the telling is worth listening to. My advice to most new grads is don't do startups. Go to a company like google or fb for the first 2 or 3 years and get a solid handle on good software engineering practices, then go do startups.
+ At least moderate technical skill, which is acquired thru study and experience.
+ Significant domain knowledge (understanding of the problem being solved), again acquired thru study and experience.
+ Sufficient familiarity with the organization you're working in to know what you can and can't get away with, acquired thru social interaction.
+ Ability to find unexpected better solutions to things. Unless someone's figured out how to teach this, it just requires lots of practice with good feedback.
The only "in your nature" here, is whether you find these things interesting enough to put in the required study/practice time.
One of my great fears is putting in the study/time and getting no results.
Some people are good at some things. They pick them up quickly, flesh out their skills quickly, and apply those skills well in an almost intuitive way. You can call this "intelligence," but some people will be very intelligent in other ways, and have no aptitude for a particular skill.
Maybe the aptitude is innate in your biology, maybe it's the result of nurture in your childhood, maybe it's even somewhat learnable as an adult, I don't know, but when you teach people things, some of them pick it up and apply it well, and others are much slower.
I think trying to control the variable is optimistic or unethical. It is kinda a black swan. It seems like you would require substantial behaviour modification and would mess with the wolf to soldier ratio.
If you want a great read, check out Leadership by Gen. Hillier. There is an entire chapter on this.