You are right, the choice doesnt have to be so binary....

I come at this from the other perspective. I was a business guy who has learnt some hacking and got into the whole startup thing about 2 or so years ago. Nearly all my friends are non-hackers, they laugh at me when i receive tweets and think I am crazy and raise eyebrows when I make some programming joke.

But you know what, underneath it all they kind of envy me because I have a palpable passion which many of them lack. They see that for me, life is not something you endure its something you enjoy. I have recently made more hacker friends and have great conversations with them...

But ultimately the people i get on best with are the entrepreneurial types. They can be selling lemonade on the road or trying to do the next big web thing, they dont have to be hackers and so i would suggest you broaden your pallet. Look for those kind of people.

Mix and match and you will be happy. I am sure u can have friends who have little interest in internet startups but still get on well with. I just hope u have something more to you than internet startups.

Maslow wrote that those people who were most successful at life, who were self actualizing, had succeeded at overcoming either-or thinking and had reconciled seemingly contradictory qualities.