This critique seems to focus on startups as something specific to the tech scene as opposed to the wider picture of small business startups across the U.S. I su

This critique seems to focus on startups as something specific to the tech scene as opposed to the wider picture of small business startups across the U.S. I suppose though that Graham also is focusing specifically on that category as well. There's approximately half a million businesses being created each year in the U.S. (that number used to be higher) [1], the vast majority of which are not tech focused. They are getting credit to do this from a variety of different ways, but not normally from investors. It's mostly the credit card companies profiting off of these ventures as many small businesses self-fund through personal credit cards. We (Kiva) have a fair amount of data on this as our focus is on interest free loans for startups for poverty alleviation, though we are increasingly also funding social impact small businesses in the U.S. I do wonder if our model of charitable crowd-funding small businesses [2] will have a dent on the overall way startups are funded in the U.S., there's a lot of other folks doing it now asides us but probably too early to tell. I guess point is that both parties here seem to be discussing a broader set (all startups) when really actually just focusing on the minority of tech startups in the bay area and it'd be worthwhile to consider the broader U.S. picture and/or the global numbers. [1] https://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/Startup%20Rates.pdf https://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/Startup%20Rates.pdf [2] https://zip.kiva.org https://zip.kiva.org