Of course, VCs make their money by occasionally finding the one that breaks the mold. Picking winners is hard.
But that's beside the point. You can't make the argument that "most will fail" and conclude that "this category of tech will never bring success to any company". Fallacious nonsense if I ever heard it.
Microsoft's PC has disrupted IBM and created a new "monopoly". Same with the web and mobile platforms, which are now dominated by a handful of oligopolists that appear stronger than everything seen before.
I think incumbants can always be disrupted, but can they be replaced with something structurally less prone to centralised control or are we just headed for the next cycle of disruption and re-centralisation of power?
* Given they fail to recognize a technological tipping point
Microsoft won on the PC. Linux won (in the server world) on standards and open source. Google won on tracking and advertising. Facebook won on mobile.
In the past, people also said that the losers would fail.
There are many more losers than winners, that doesn't really mean anything.
Airing skepticism of a technology does little more than fuel forum fights after all.
Famous last words.
Seriously though, this is the kind of thing people said about PCs, Microsoft, Linux, the iPhone, etc. (And today, about machine learning, blockchains, and VR.)
It's nearly impossible to tell what will disrupt the world, but typically it's the kinds of things that bring back the balance of power. All of these things are enablers, and allow your 3-person startup to innovate in spaces with huge powerful competitors.