America the Start-Up

I was reading William Goetzmann’s Beyond the Revolution: A History of American Thought from Paine to Pragmatism, when I came across this:

Thanks to [the American revolutionary thinkers’] efforts, certain Enlightenment qualities or habits of mind became traditional American values. Among these were a reverence for principles, particularly individual liberty, a dedication to reason and the rational solution, a belief in order and at the same time constant change, a talent for practicality and down-to-earth political organization, a faith in learning, a sense of world responsibility and mission, and perhaps most important of all, an extreme and sensitive receptivity to new ideas, and a confidence in intellect.

Don’t those values seem similar to the best traits of great start-up companies?