You are correct -- the insight is what matters. But in this case, I do not think the patronage analogy is helping. Giles brings up patronage as an explanation

You are correct -- the insight is what matters. But in this case, I do not think the patronage analogy is helping. Giles brings up patronage as an explanation for why VCs -- who are otherwise interested in money -- are not interested in hearing about a profitable microloan business. From the patronage analogy he gathers that they are more interested in power than money, hence their class hierarchy and why microloans are beneath them. I feel the patronage analogy misses the point because it implies that VCs are somehow not interested in profit. If you follow this logic through, you'd conclude that startups are profit-losing ventures kept alive only for the power trips of VCs. While this may be true in a few cases, I think it is an incorrect conclusion, since VCs are interested in profit (or, at least, their investors are), and there is apparently enough return in startups that investors do not go elsewhere. There is a simpler explanation for why VCs are not interested in microloans: it is far enough out of their geographic and technical areas that they don't think they could do very well at it.