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"Torturous chaos for 6 months... before hockey-stick profitability" is the exception. Most startups have to grind it out for years before becoming anything more than ramen profitable.
That said, I would've enjoyed seein some examples of folks with 1, 2, and 3+ years of fog before they hit liftoff.
I don't get it. I mean getting a customer in the first month would be ideal but having revenue in month 2 doesn't sound all that torturous to me. That one of the fastest examples of revenue traction I've ever heard.
If he was trying to make the valid point that many startups that on the surface appeared to have overnight success were in fact trucking away for years filled with uncertainty of getting traction it was unmade by the examples presented.
Without specifying his false premise, however, he comes to a false conclusions. The truth is that there is more than just making numbers go up, and the truth is that it is easy to tell when you're working on the next Google. (As a rule companies on hn are not).
* edit: there's nothing wrong with building a company on numbers, instead of building the next multi $B company