TechCrunch will publish almost anything, so long as they think it will drive clicks. If you're a decent writer and want to write about a controversial topic for free, they'll likely have you.

The point is that the success of bitcoin does not mean a huge windfall to bitcoin based startups. Reread the paragraph.

I suppose it depends on how broadly you define startup. Surely some drug dealers, online casinos, etc, are doing well. I believe Silkroad did $1B+ in sales.

Starting businesses is outmoded, the new fashionable high growth thing is starting currencies?

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I really like your publication and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

My qualifications include a downstream consumer network of people ripe for my Business Savvy and I'd like to let you in on the opportunity to harvest the wealth which your seeds would grow through my hand.

In fact, I wrote a book about this and it's yours for $50 - the title of the book is "how to get people to pay you $50 for your book"

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Take my money!

I’d like to see your whitepaper!

How do you hit on a network engineer?

Dunno. Show him your whitepapers?!

Send him a SYN packet and see if you get an ACK

Not looking at this part, the whole article makes sense. Nowadays, we all see that it's difficult for small startups to promote themselves. The privilege on major platforms is given to those who pay more(ex: Google). Even if one company gains enough traction and begins to become successful, another larger corporation buys it (in best case) or makes everything to not let it get larger market share. Thus, "big guys" now are a barrier on our way to progress.