First start-up success is very rare as well, so perhaps it should follow that it involves a rare breed of people.
As for multi-threaded programming-- that is one skill that universities generally teach well as a part of undergraduate computer science programs (although I can only speak for mine). It's also generally about recognizing patterns (consumer/producer problem, dining philosopher problems) and being able to see them irrespective of the implementation (I first began playing with POSIX threads before college, learned the formal concepts in a class which used Solaris threads and am now working through Doug Lea's book about concurrency in Java: http://java.sun.com/docs/books/cp/).
There are many people who go into MBA and JD programs with CS and EE undergraduate degrees (it's excellent preparation in the sense that it's a lot of brain gymnastic; statistics also show many undergraduate engineer majors also go on to medical school as well). So one may not necessarily be a hacker (they don't code for fun) but have a CS education -- or they may even be a hacker (they do code for fun) without being a professional developer (they've never worked in a software engineering organization).
Incidentally, I can describe people that fit all of those molds (many CEOs of big companies generally fit the "has a technical undergraduate background, climbed the technical ladder at big-co, got an MBA and switched to management or sales" pattern; start-up founders frequently fit the "worked on Wall-Street by day, coded for fun by night" pattern).
I didn't say all his startups were successful ;)
His third (I think) startup, the current one, is quite successful though, and he hopes to be able to sell it for at least a billion eventually. Current estimated valuation is a quarter of a billion with at least 50m in VC (don't know the exact numbers). About ~60 employees.
On the topic of the GP post: you talk about a "businessperson who magically acquired hacker skills"--but is it somehow more likely to have a "hacker who magically acquires businessperson skills"?
I think business is very simple. Profit. Loss. Take the sales, subtract the costs, you get this big positive number. The math is quite straightforward. - Bill Gates
Then there's negotiation/persuasion/deal-making/people skills. Most people engage in activities involving variations of those everyday. You'd almost have to be a hermit to avoid picking up some people skills. While some hackers may halfway fit that description, I doubt that most do.
Acquiring hacker skills, OTOH, involves rather more specialized effort.
Sorry, but that kind of super-hero is a very, very rare breed. When did he learn about multithreaded programming? You don't just pick that up along the way anyhow.
Honestly your story sounds more like a Hacker who turned business-guy a while ago than a business-guy who magically accumulated hacker skills.