edit: this seems to me like she's confused. YC's preferences on companies that they would like to invest their time and money in doesn't necessarily equal "the best way" for all entrepreneurs under all situations and circumstances.
That is certainly true. We would never claim otherwise. YC invests in startups, and only a tiny fraction of the millions of small companies in the US are startups. Nearly all are service businesses whose prospects for growth are minimal.
Startup founders are a very small subset of entrepreneurs.
EDIT: Updated for clarity.
It looks like the definition a lot of people use is one that includes your startup as a subset.
I find it so frustrating reading through threads like this that get all bogged down in semantic nitpicking. It also opens a door to a particularly annoying type of quasi-trolling or baiting. Maybe 'startups that exit' or something
In standard usage, a startup does not mean any newly created company. It means a newly created company designed to scale dramatically. Most of the 20 million businesses in the US are not startups, because they aren't designed to scale. They're either service businesses or niche product businesses.
Anyway, the terms they offer don't give them any way to demand anything. They are a common shareholder in the company with 2%-10% of the shares and no seats on the board. They can't steer the boat, they're merely passengers. So, it makes sense for them to choose companies that the most obvious outcome is one that will be profitable for them.
It's "This is the way to do business."
That's the issue.
If people interpret what I say more broadly than I mean, there's not much I can do about that, but if you go back and look at the actual words I use, I could not be more explicit.
I wish you'd be either less contentious or less mistaken. It would be fine if you were one or the other, but having to deal with both simultaneously gets kind of wearing after a while.