Starting your own company and making it successful was the only way. 
Hackworth had thought about it from time to time, but he hadn't done it. He 
wasn't sure why not; he had plenty of good ideas. Then he'd noticed that 
Bespoke was full of people with good ideas who never got around to starting 
their own companies.
And he'd met a few big lords, spent considerable time with Lord Finkle-McGraw 
developing Runcible, and seen that they weren't really smarter than he. The 
difference lay in personality, not in native intelligence.