That's odd. We get excited when we see an entrepreneurial profile like yours. We have several developers who want to start companies and actually try to help them along that path.
The benefit to a motivated engineer is you can give them problems to solve instead of specs. The outcome or results can be less predictable but can also be much more effective.
When I got out of contracting, and later after 2008 business failure, I lost count of interviews that went thus:
"You're perfect for the role", "You have just the skills we need", "you're by far the best of those interviewed"
but by email later, sometimes directly
"we think you'll get bored", "we think you'll leave after six months" etc
(Sometimes, "we think you're a bit overqualified")
For sanity's sake I went on a few contract interviews, and usually got an offer.
My experience was that employers are utterly terrified of someone who's got some entrepreneurial or business history. Sure the money was less, but there many reasons to want to go back to employment.
As they didn't like it, I always wondered why so many invited me to interview when the 5 years of successful business and 4 years of contracting was very clear to see on my resume.
I've had the same experience as the poster you're replying to. I had to remove any bits of the fact that I bootstrapped my own fledgling (small, successful in it's own right, yet not capable of sustaining full-time wages) startup from my resume to get interviews. I was told that my resume was "intimidating" and "sending the wrong signal" by friends who are developers whose input I trust.
But I completely agree with what you've said. I am a problem solver or a product engineer or whatever this skill set combination is being called these days. I pull from a wide range of experiences to solve problems and I'm not very happy when I have to work off of a rigorous spec.
Unfortunately, that doesn't mean much to most employers in my experience. I don't fit in to most places and most places don't know what to do with me. It's made for a rather frustrating career over the last decade but I simply don't know what else to do.
How do you feel about the potential for high turnover with entrepreneurial types, as it seems the general consensus is they will inevitably leave to start their own thing? How long do you expect someone to work for you before hiring them, getting them up to speed with your system, and integrating them into the company is a worthwhile investment?
When I get asked this in an interview, I always answer the same way: yes, I will probably go to the next gig faster than other employees. But I will get up to speed faster, and I will produce more output for the business itself in the time I'll spend in your company.
The benefit to a motivated engineer is you can give them problems to solve instead of specs. The outcome or results can be less predictable but can also be much more effective.