Everyone on HN complains about everything being turned into a business but everyone also wants to create their own start up and turn it into a unicorn.
Never ever have I thought of "monetising" them, I mean, even if I wanted that I don't see there being that big of a market for people interested in the location of Medieval villages in Walachia (even though some of them had first been mentioned in documents written during Vlad the Impaler's reign, maybe I could market that) nor for knowing where exactly were the locations and houses that used to belong to former Bucharest Jewish residents (that is until they were nationalised post-WW2), as I also have an interactive map for that.
I've worked for most of my career (~15 years now) in start-ups and small companies (that's what I think actually made me pursue those personal projects, I think working in a big company/corporation would have numbed me down) and I don't personally find unicorns that interesting, there's one located just down the street where I daily walk my dog and I don't feel any need to stand behind a big thing like that, I would have way less time to walk my dog plus I'd feel that experience would also numb me down, in a different way from working in a corporation, but numb me down nevertheless.