"Democracy only works in a growing economy. Without a return to economic growth, the democratic experiment will fail. And I have to think that YC is hugely important to that growth."
That said, although VC funding might be a small percentage of investment overall, it has a leveraged impact on the economy as a whole [0]:
"According to a study conducted at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, 43% of U.S. public companies founded since 1979 were funded by venture capital. These companies now comprise 38% of all employees, 57% of the total U.S. market capitalization, and account for 82% of all R&D spend — a proxy for further innovation growth — in the United States."
Someone care to explain that because I don't see economic growth as a dependency to democracy.
The US and the West experienced a huge gain in resource that is quickly being squandered in a contest of "either we use it or we lose it". Since there was more to go around there is less need to enact stricter forms of government.
The application for the Inc 500 requires revenue disclosure. There are plenty of companies that decline to submit applications for the Inc 500, for reasons ranging from a hesitation to disclose revenue to a media company, to a hesitation to spend resources on PR that could be better spent on growth.
I thought this was an interesting statistic. "80% of the fastest growing private companies did not need to raise capital to become one of the fastest growing companies."