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That compounds the material risk of doing these ventures with a social riskI think part of the issue here is that people may be talking about optimizing different risks. For example, minimizing financial risk may lead to wholly different decisions than, say, minimizing the risk that you will have a fulfilling careers. At times, they may even be orthogonal.
I don't actually think "excellence" is that hard to define. It basically boils down to effectiveness at solving organizational problems (and those may not always be technical in nature). The difficulty is when the problems the individual values doesn't align with what society values. If you can build excellence at a problem highly valued by society, you might be able to have high-status as well. Jonas Salk comes to mind, even though he didn't necessary get financial success.
I personally think the "high prestige" path is followed because there is a clearer template. I couldn't find the excerpt from William Deresiewicz's book, but I remember a quote from a student who was relaying why some from elite colleges struggle upon graduation. The gist was that from kindergarten to college graduation to accepting their first post-graduation job, there was a relatively clear cut template of moving from scholastic excellence, strong extra-curriculars, elite internships, etc. But after graduating and accepting a job at one of the few "prestigious" fields like law, finance, medicine, or consulting. there was no longer a well-defined template and many struggle to know what to do next.