Disagree completely about (5) in the context of SR&ED in Canada.
It is actually pretty easy -- you might spend a few days out of a whole year to pull it together, and get back back 2/3 of your R&D expenditure. Surprised that more start-ups don't go for this.
2) Yeah that's actually normal here (EU) too, not sure if the VCs in Silicon Valley are generally(!) different though? (question here :)
3) Was that different? I once applied via a someone who knew what he was talking about and he said if you are under 40 and have plenty of money it's a shoe-in, otherwise it sucks. This is 8 years ago.
4) I can see that, but so what? You want to meet great people or you want to meet great people at startups? Anecdote; I was standing in the supermarket in this 40 people (!) town in Spain and behind me was this old scruffy guy. I was playing with my s2 and he said something like amazing tech. He is a founder of a quantum computing texan company who goes here on vacation. I met more interesting ACTUAL good people here than in Berlin. I don't know about SV but I don't really care about wannabe's, I want to meet people I can learn from and/or start something with; in startup-mekka people have little experience and are engaged to be married to some crap anyway all the time. And cocky. Work for life, not money! It's all too short. I digress.
5) This is also a thing they have in most EU countries; big companies find it great as they do that paperwork anyway, small companies drown in the paperwork. I did a 6 year project like that and the paperwork took around 25% of the time. That doesn't sound like a lot but it REALLY doesn't benefit the research. Agreeing with the parent here; big companies use & abuse, small companies don't.