Yeah, if companies are homogenous then that's fair, but it's not a stretch to believe that certain types of companies require VC funds more than others... in which case losing VC as a funding option would mean up to 20% of new companies fail at the concept stage, or have a harder time. Based on that I think "awfully silly" is a bit unfair.

Sam's contention, as far as I can tell, is that YC is hugely important to economic growth. Startups are a small fraction of growth. Of that small fraction, a fraction (20%) require VC funds. Of that fraction, another fraction may not have made it but for YC. So, we're looking at a fraction of a fraction of a fraction that YC is involved with. I'd say that suggesting that YC is hugely, or even just important, to economic growth is absurd (and reflects the massively outsized view SV has of itself).

I read it as "...I have to think YC [can someday be] hugely important to that growth," not that it already was.

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."

[0] http://a16z.com/2016/09/11/vc-economics/

I personally read that as an ambition rather than a reality, Sam wants to make YC an organisation that will have an important effect on economic growth.

> "Democracy only works in a growing economy. Without a return to economic growth, the democratic experiment will fail.

Someone care to explain that because I don't see economic growth as a dependency to democracy.

In this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27Tf8RN3uiM Milton Friedman does a great job of explaining how capitalism is a necessary condition for democracy to thrive but not a sufficient one for the same.

As soon as you hit resource scarcity, there is no cushion to give people "rights" and the state begins to change the economic rules to maintain stability.

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.