Academics isn't really that bad. It's full of many of the smartest people in the world trying to do things which are fundamental but aren't seen by the market as important and can't be funded any other way besides charity. Sometimes it doesn't go that smoothly and there's some bureaucracy like in any organization (people are constantly fighting very hard to cut what little funding there is so academics have to fight over it) but it's really not all doom and gloom like some people make it out to be.

Graduate students tend to love to complain as much as possible about things that aren't that bad (I know I was one) and people leaving something idealistic often have a compelling need to try and put it down in any way they can to justify their decision to give up on the idealistic goals and try to make some money -- which is why you see so many "goodbye academia, you are broken" posts and blog entries. And some people have genuinely bad experiences like at any job -- bad manager, particularly low funding, bad co-workers, you're going to have a bad time.

That being said YC research sounds amazing. Basic research was funded by charity from the superwealthy (or only carried out by the independently wealthy) for most of human history, the model works. Researchers tend not to look into areas or find results which are bad for their backers. It's good to have some public and some private sector; we need to balance out the conflict of interest a bit.