I think that your other points would follow if you assume that there are two primary ways for a venture capitalist to invest in a startup that's achieved product/market fit:
1. Get in before they have product/market fit, spread your bets across many small startups, double-down on your winners, and replace the founders with professional management once the company has taken off. This is much of the current seed investing climate, and the valuation worksheet you saw.
2. Wait until they have product/market fit, but differentiate yourself from other VCs by providing non-financial resources needed for a novice entrepreneur to become an effective CEO. This is the a16z/Sequoia approach. They try to keep a founder as CEO (because they often have knowledge of the market and organization that would be very hard to replicate), but supplement it with generous advice and the VC's own networks.
I point this out because there is such a strong ethos around SV as being this kind of "Anti Wall-street" which I think is reinforced because founders/employees genuinely to want to make impactful stuff. The founders here and elsewhere in the startup world constantly talk about "making a difference," "changing the world" etc. So whereas the junior analysts and salesmen on Wall Street all know and acknowledge that making shitloads of money is the primary goal, I have a hunch that the VC's and LPs in SV (and elsewhere in the startup world) are using the naivety of high producing young, enthusiastic people to make a killing. This is why the archetype of the SV founder is someone who is personally low risk (single, young), is expected to work an insane amount to get growth going, tapping into growing markets and has already validated the market.
That is not to say that founders & finance are de-facto in conflict across the board, and it is also not to say there is some kind of conspiracy between Ron and Jim to juice labor, but I do think that founders are largely seen as a commodity to the finance class in the startup world. My guess is that they VCs are threading the needle really carefully with giving out information about how to get more "founder friendly" terms because founders are too smart to get screwed.
[1] http://exiledonline.com/confessions-of-a-wall-st-nihilist-fo...
I think that there is some element of truth to that, for some people. Remember that VC is first and foremost a financial profession: they have a fiduciary duty to their LPs to get the highest returns possible. They invest in a different asset class, but they are money managers responsible for allocating capital to the teams most likely to make good use of it.
I also think that there are some founders who are clearly in it for the money as well. Probably moreso of late, with the gold rush mentality these last couple years.
I'd disagree that this is everyone. I think that there are still a large number of founders around who genuinely want to change the world. Many of them are not seeking venture capital, or if they are, they are getting turned down. But I also think that among this population, VCs are seen as the commodity, a resource to be used when their startup has proven itself and needs to scale. Sam Altman used to say many things to this effect, back when he was on the entrepreneur side of the table.
One of the most illuminating quotes was something I read in Dale Carnegie, to the effect of "The guy you're holding a conversation with probably thinks himself superior to you. Let him. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain from maintaining this illusion." It made it clear that there's nothing wrong with different people having different perspectives on who's got the higher status in the relationship, or, more cynically, on who's using whom. In fact, the world runs on this status ambiguity - nobody would ever do a deal in which they think they are going to get screwed, so the only reason we have any commerce at all is for both parties to believe they are the ones getting the better end of the deal. We wouldn't be able to function without Lake Wobegone. (There's another interesting psychological finding where the only people with a realistic self-image are clinically depressed; apparently, if you lack this inflated sense of self-worth, it really does make you unable to function.)
I would agree if there was some equality between who is getting shafted. SV is replete with examples of founders or employees getting screwed over and burned up by contract clauses or other financial shell games.
(Perhaps it comes down to the old tale of the pig and chicken making breakfast. The chicken can always make more eggs.... The pig not so much)
1. Management abilities aren't valued in founders
2. It's almost 100% a finance game
To the first point, if you go back and listen to the first day, Sam talks about how young/inexperienced founders are probably the best at identifying new opportunities, and it would follow then that they are the best founders. This is in direct contrast to the idea of being good at hard management tasks like the ones that Ben brings up here. Also in contrast to the talk that PG gave in the same series about waiting to be a founder and his discussions about founders who are over 30. This is reinforced by the idea that a lot of Angel/VC money seems to be going to young, inexperienced founders who have a little traction.
Which leads me to think that, in actuality the funding sources do care about management, they just don't think it matters at the outset because they plan on bringing in "real" management at some point along the way. This is reinforced both by just looking at the history of high growth companies and in something one of my advisers sent me from Kaufmann and it was the Valuation worksheet [1]. you'll notice that a key determinant of valuation is: "founder willing to step aside if necessary for a new CEO." With anything but yes basically ending a deal.
To further the point, Ben's great walk-through of Sam's equity/vesting blog post really reinforces the notion that to get value out of this whole startup thing as anything but and investor you really have to be lucky and savvy, and really hope that your investors have your best interest in mind. To me that is the kind of "dirty secret," which isn't so much of a secret anymore, of Silicon Valley. When someone mentioned during the video making more "incentive to stay" with a company, this is exactly the kind of talk I expect from the Gordon Gecko types, not the Wozniak-esque communal tech focused, make great things founder. While I doubt the person shouting that intended for it to come across quite as nihilistic, the unintended truth came out. Baking in equity incentives that promote retention are probably not good for employees in a competitive market, and thus not good for morale and "culture" in the long run, especially given the average shelf life of a startup.
Edit: Just so this isn't completely negative, I think the startup world really has the ability to have a big impact on management trends worldwide. We have seen this to a degree with the "rise of the developer," however generally speaking things are about the same structurally for employees even if the term sheets are more founder friendly than the 2000s. What thought leaders should be pushing in my opinion is the idea of flat organizations like Morning Star [2], and to a lesser extent Valve. The real revolution in management is having as little as possible and I don't hear that coming from the SV VC/Angels, yet we hear alot about board seats, equity/vesting etc...
[1]Page 16: http://www.angelcapitalassociation.org/data/Documents/Resour...
[2]https://hbr.org/2011/12/first-lets-fire-all-the-managers/ar/...