Financial independence is more important. Once you attain that you can seriously fight back, it's about picking your battles. With the money he made in the sell he can do some SERIOUS investment into what he believe's in that's going to create magnitudes more mass in the direction he wants to go then piddling around without it. FI should be everyone's primary goal, because only then can you put your effort to what you truly believe in and be able to back it up no matter what.
So where do you draw the line? What if your way to achieve financial independence turns out to outweight the positive effects you could posssibly achieve later with FI?
That's a tuff line to find, but I'd say it probably relates mostly towards age. The older you become FI the less potential you have to effect a larger change using your FI. This isn't 100% though, because the age would pay dividends with wisdom and networking. I don't know what evidence I'd need to see to change my opinion here. My main idea is based on once you achieve FI you are only reporting to yourself, thus you can now set your goals first and foremost and don't have to do the song and dance of aligning your goals with your funder/employer and seems so freeing.
