I would say tech startups are beyond mainstream and are pretty clearly a bubble, at least in the informal cultural sense. In some ways, like you say, it's easier to take advantage of all the extra ecosystem that comes with that and to get yourself off the ground without 'institutional' help.

At the same time, _funding as a signal_ is losing meaning with all the cheap money floating around, so it becomes harder to distinguish yourself in the noise. Even if you have a truly great/revolutionary/whatever product, the changing parameters make mis-timing things more likely.

Personally, I'm less worried about early stage and more worried about what the state of the startup world will be when we eventually do need to raise larger amounts of money.