If it's an "age old question", then it must mean no one has come up with a satisfactory answer despite a lot of data? That would seem to indicate that if the answer is not a firm yes or no, then it is possible. The post, however, says "no".
It seems as if there is always a debate as to whether this is a yes or no question. In the post, I say "no" to startups and yes to scalable startups. I think that this topic is subjective and hard to define as yes or no.