I dunno, Notch seemed to do alright for himself. Having made at least a billion as a result of starting his own company. I suspect that qualifies as an entrepreneur. He didn't seem the KKND type, but I could be wrong.
You're simply presenting a "No True Scotsman" fallacy. Notch created his own company, ran it, and made a billion in selling it. If that's not an entrepreneur, most of HN is going to need to change their business cards.
> He's the success story of a brilliant founder that hands off his work to a parent (Microsoft) to do the dirty work.
All Minecraft versions combined have sold over 50 million copies, and the product is on the decline (since people only buy it once). So what "dirty work" did he hand it off for Microsoft to do?
Fair enough. Words get diluted because of corner cases. How about: Notch had very little to do with growing and running his company. He built an awesome game, and kept improving it until he moved on to build something else in the company. Which he abandoned and sold to Microsoft because the community started turning against him (ala Phil Fish) and it was impacting his life.
He wasnt ever interested in the business side. That makes him much more of an inventor than an entrepreneur.
He's the success story of a brilliant founder that hands off his work to a parent (Microsoft) to do the dirty work.