I don't if that is a Valley thing though. Many people, particularly intellectuals would choose the first. However, let's be honest how many of those Valley startups are on a path to contribute anything remotely close to that level, even if they were maximally successful? Many of them are like "We're changing the way people sell houses" or "We are disrupting the auto-insurance industry" and that's fine but it's hardly the stuff of Newton or Leibniz.

So if you take different point from the article, it may make sense to attempt to achieve whatever your goal is another way than slaving away for 3 years on some "Growth Hacker" startup that goes nowhere, because, again, it's not going to get books written about you 200 years from now. Or not.