He means nothing of the sort. This comment is entirely about the fact that easy VC money and a virtuous (or vicious?) old boy network of founders & funders has

He means nothing of the sort. This comment is entirely about the fact that easy VC money and a virtuous (or vicious?) old boy network of founders & funders has made it way too easy to create companies that shouldn't exist but never fail because they've never had to be run like a "real" business. He's merely noting this in the context of the public markets forcing professional business discipline, which imho is a perfectly reasonable thing for an investor to expect.