[Yoric]

Having worked with CEOs of a few start-ups, I suspect that many CEOs feel like they belong to a small circle of people "in the know".

Part of it is going through the VC gauntlet, I believe. Let's face it, to get money from VCs, you need to abase yourself, to learn how to lie to them and to yourself, to focus only on the survival of your company and pretending that you're going to make lots of money, regardless of your original goals and ideals. If you're a bit of a techie, you have just entered a world of appearances, where [it feels like] pretending to be successful and knowing something more than others matters more than actually doing something. And being kicked out would mean losing funding, which means everything for which you've twisted yourself into something you were not.

I think that this strongly favors hivemind/mob thinking.