I haven't read her bio, so would be interested to know more about her being rejected from academia. The official story is that she dropped out during her undergrad and immediately formed a company. Or are you referring to her professors telling her they didn't think her idea would work? If so then they were right, but her profs are not the people handing out grants. There's no sign she wouldn't have got a grant for such a thing given that government funding is justified by the fact that it can fund long shot ideas that some say won't work, and people doing things that clearly can't work regularly get grants.