But when they were early stage, which is when the discounts being discussed apply, they were bootstrapped companies.

Parent's argument is that bootstrapped companies are dramatically less likely to ever grow and that only VC backed early stage companies are, therefore it makes no economic sense to provide discounts to bootstrapped early stage companies.

My point is that I don't believe that this holds out in the data that expected long term value of a bootstrapped company is significantly lower than a VC invested on.

Personally, I find there is ample evidence that "VCs largely are just handing money around to each other to give the illusion of growth" is a solid hypothesis.