He's most likely only talking about venture-backed startups or those startups that have the potential to be venture-backed but forego it for other reasons. The

He's most likely only talking about venture-backed startups or those startups that have the potential to be venture-backed but forego it for other reasons. These are obviously not "57 lessons for any business anywhere", especially since there is an entire section called Fundraising. In that context that's a perfectly reasonable piece of advice. Without an "enormous potential for growth" you're likely not going to get substantial interest from investors or have the kind of outcome that folks joining your "startup" would expect. If that's the case then your critique is off-point. He was deliberately excluding the those kinds of businesses from his analysis.